01
Stop one
Castello Dentice di Frasso
Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Reel: It is a castle. Fine, I guess. Okay so the square tower is early 12th century, Bohemond of Hauteville put it up as a hunting lodge — Robert Guiscard's son, prince of Taranto — and the whole town just grew up around it, which is literally why it is called San Vito dei Normanni. Normans. Right there in the name. Then the Orsini del Balzo built the actual castle around the tower in the 1300s, and it is one of the best surviving bits of medieval military architecture in Puglia, and then the Dentice di Frasso family got it and stuck their name on it. …What. I read things.
02
Stop two
Chiesa Madre di Santa Maria della Vittoria
Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Reel: Another church. Cool. Eighteenth century, whatever — except it is dedicated to Santa Maria della Vittoria because of Lepanto, the sea battle, 1571, and every single man from this town who went to that battle came home alive. All of them. Nobody's town gets that. So they built this. Also the barrel vault is one of the largest in Italy, you stand under it and it just keeps going. Okay that is actually sick. Do not tell anyone I said that.
03
Stop three
Chiesa di San Domenico (dell'Annunziata)
Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Reel: Church. Gold-ish stone. Next to the castle. It is fine. They hold the Barocco Festival in here, which is for Leonardo Leo, born in San Vito dei Normanni in 1694, died 1744, one of the biggest names in the whole Neapolitan school of the eighteenth century — the square out front of the castle is named after him too. So this town produced a genuinely major composer and basically nobody outside Puglia knows. Which is kind of a whole mood, honestly. Anyway. Moving on.
04
Stop four
Cripta di San Biagio
Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Reel: We are going into a hole in a field. Great. Okay fine, monks cut this crypt out of the rock in the 12th century on top of an even older rock-cut settlement, and the frescoes are dated by an actual inscription to 8 October 1196 — like, the exact day — and it names the painter, Matteo who paid for it, and Benedetto who ran the community. Annunciation, Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Presentation in the Temple, Entry into Jerusalem, plus St Blaise. Full Christological cycle, one of the only ones in Puglia, and it has barely faded. …I am not excited. You are excited.
A find! An 18-gauge reel of Razor Code, and I shall report on it in full.
Composition: co-polyester monofilament. Profile: round, not shaped — which surprises people, because the string has a reputation for grabbing the ball, and it earns that reputation through the surface and the formulation rather than through edges. Tecnifibre build it with additives specifically to improve feel, so it comes out crisp rather than dead, with a tight grip on the ball for extra spin.
Gauge: 18, which is 1.20mm — the thinnest end of the Razor Code range, and the thinnest gauge is where the spin potential and the feel are highest. It is also, in the interests of honest expedition reporting, the gauge that will break first. That is the trade every thin poly asks you to make and you already knew it.
The reel is 660 ft / 200 m in the carbon-and-white family, this one white. Sixteen frames or so out of the box.
San Vito dei Normanni is one of those towns that has a Norman tower, a Byzantine crypt and a Baroque composer inside a square kilometre and does not think this is remarkable. Thin gauge, high feel, small town, enormous history. Take the reel and go and look.
Deployment note, for the record: two hundred metres will carry you everywhere from a red court out on the Puglian flatland to an indoor hall in Brindisi twenty minutes up the road, and there is still string on the spool at the end of it.
Buy on Amazon
