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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis class Seven Isles — the Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle combined with the national flag of Libya
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli, Roman marble four-way arch standing at a crossroads in the old city of Tripoli, with a low dome inside and carved reliefs on its piers
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Assai al-Hamra (Red Castle) in Tripoli, Large ochre-walled fortress on high ground at the edge of Tripoli's old city and harbour, a maze of courtyards and layered walls above the sea
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Gurgi Mosque in Tripoli, Small ornately decorated mosque in the old city of Tripoli with a slender octagonal minaret, marble columns and imported ceramic tilework
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Ottoman Clock Tower, Tripoli Old City in Tripoli, Square stone clock tower with an open belfry stage standing among the alleys of Tripoli's walled old city near the covered markets
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — the Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle combined with the national flag of Libya

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle

Tripoli, Libya  ·  Bags > 0-3

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle

This is the sensible middle bag: duffle-shaped, wide-mouthed, a couple of racquets plus shoes, kit and balls, with a separate pocket for whatever is damp. Zips, seams and corners are what it judges itself on. First, though: Tripoli, starting under a marble tetrapylon from the 160s AD.

↓   Tour Tripoli, Libya

Four stops before the checkout

Tripoli, Libya
01
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli, Roman marble four-way arch standing at a crossroads in the old city of Tripoli, with a low dome inside and carved reliefs on its piers
Stop one

Arch of Marcus Aurelius

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle: A tetrapylon, then. Four arches, four directions, one crossroads, marble, dated to the 160s AD. Tunis has nothing like it standing in the middle of the medina and I will admit that costs me something to say. Look at the shallow dome over the crossing, carried on four piers, no steel anywhere in it, holding for eighteen centuries. And here is the part I grudgingly love: for much of the last thousand years the old city simply built houses hard against it and half-swallowed it, which is exactly what protected it. Buried is preserved. They dug it back out in the 1930s and found the neighbours had been curating it for free. Fine. One point to Tripoli. One.

02
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Assai al-Hamra (Red Castle) in Tripoli, Large ochre-walled fortress on high ground at the edge of Tripoli's old city and harbour, a maze of courtyards and layered walls above the sea
Stop two

Assai al-Hamra (Red Castle)

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle: Assai al-Hamra, and I came up here fully prepared to be unimpressed, having stood on a good many walls elsewhere. It is not a building, it is a section drawing you can walk around inside. Roman work down at the base, then Spanish, then the Knights, then Ottoman, then the Karamanli dynasty, and not one of them started fresh; every occupier thickened the last one's outer face and moved in. Two thousand years of nobody demolishing anything. On high ground at the edge of the old city, commanding the harbour, which is the whole reason anyone bothered. Siting first, masonry second, and yes, all right, the batter on that seaward wall is better than the one I usually praise back home. I did not enjoy saying that.

03
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Gurgi Mosque in Tripoli, Small ornately decorated mosque in the old city of Tripoli with a slender octagonal minaret, marble columns and imported ceramic tilework
Stop three

Gurgi Mosque

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle: Now this one is personal. Completed in 1833, the last major mosque built under Karamanli rule, small, octagonal minaret, and almost nothing in it is Libyan: the marble columns shipped in from Italy, the ceramic tiles brought from Tunisia, and the carved stonework cut by craftsmen imported for the job. From Tunisia. They came to a city sitting on perfectly good stone of its own and sent to my part of the coast for the tiles, and I have to stand here and watch you all admire them. Sixteen columns. Count them, the spacing is exact. Somebody wrote a specification and refused to be talked down from a single line of it. That is the one discipline this town has over mine, and it is not a small one.

04
cardio tennis class Seven Isles — Ottoman Clock Tower, Tripoli Old City in Tripoli, Square stone clock tower with an open belfry stage standing among the alleys of Tripoli's walled old city near the covered markets
Stop four

Ottoman Clock Tower, Tripoli Old City

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle: A clock tower is a machine with a building wrapped round it, and every city I know gets that wrong. This one dates from the Ottoman period in the later nineteenth century, square stone, open belfry stage, standing among the alleys near the covered markets. The stonework is not the achievement. The shaft is: you need a clear vertical drop inside for the driving weights, and a platform at the top rigid enough that the movement is not twisted out of true when the tower moves in the wind. Get the stiffness wrong and the clock simply lies to the whole market. Thick walls, square plan, no decoration wasted on it. Ours is prettier. Theirs still keeps time. I know which one I would rather answer for.

The Tripoli, Libya track

Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle

Written for this world alone.

I have thrown more bags than you have owned, and I will tell you exactly what fails: the zip, the seam where the strap meets the body, and the bottom corner. Everything else is decoration. Judge a bag on those three and you will never buy a bad one.

The Wilson 2025 Tennis Duffle is the sensible middle size — the bag for the player who does not need a fifteen-racquet tour case but is tired of stuffing kit into a rucksack.

A duffle format means a wide top opening and one big main compartment, which is genuinely better than a narrow racquet-shaped tube for anything that is not a racquet: shoes, a towel, a change of clothes, three tubes of balls.

There is a separate pocket for the things you do not want touching the rest, which after a hot afternoon is not a luxury, and an adjustable padded shoulder strap plus carry handles for the walk from the car park. It takes a couple of racquets alongside everything else. If your gym bag and your tennis bag are currently the same overloaded object, this is the fix.

Tripoli is a city built by people who understood load paths. The Arch of Marcus Aurelius is a tetrapylon — four arches, four directions, one crossroads — in marble, dated to the 160s AD, carrying a shallow dome over the crossing on four piers. That is a load path that has held for eighteen centuries.

The Red Castle, Assai al-Hamra, is a section drawing you can walk through: Roman work at the base, then Spanish, then the Knights, then Ottoman, then Karamanli, each adding a wall to what was already there. The Gurgi Mosque of 1833 was the last major mosque of Karamanli rule, its marble shipped from Italy and its tiles from Tunisia.

And the Ottoman clock tower of the later nineteenth century is a machine with a building wrapped round it.

You will get use out of this bag everywhere from the shade of the Old City lanes to an indoor court in the middle of a wet European winter, and by the way, it is also perfect for a long Libyan lunch of bazin and a pot of green tea poured three times, because a duffle sets down flat beside a chair and the separate pocket keeps the damp kit out of the conversation.

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