01
Stop one
Plonlein
Wilson Roland Garros Clay Court Tennis Ball Case: The Plönlein — from a dialect term meaning little square at the fountain, and I will not have that translated loosely. The yellow house at the junction dates from the thirteenth century. The thirteenth, not merely 'medieval', which tells you nothing at all. Two streets descend from it at different gradients — different, which is the entire point of the photograph — one to the Kobolzeller gate, the other to the Siebers tower, which belonged to the older inner ring of walls and was superseded when the circuit was extended. Nineteenth-century Romantic painters made it famous, then photography and film; it served as reference material for the Bavarian village in Walt Disney's Pinocchio.
02
Stop two
Rothenburg Town Walls
Wilson Roland Garros Clay Court Tennis Ball Case: About three and a half kilometres — and I dislike 'about' as much as any of you, but the circuit declines to give us a round number. Almost the whole of it walkable under cover. Oldest sections twelfth century, outer ring completed in the fourteenth as the town grew rich on trade. Now the essential point, stated correctly: the walls survive because the decline after the Thirty Years' War left Rothenburg too poor to modernise or demolish them. Air raids in March 1945 destroyed roughly forty percent of the old town, and long stretches of wall. John J. McCloy, the American assistant secretary of war, whose mother had described the town to him, intervened to prevent complete destruction. Donor plaques sit in the parapet.
03
Stop three
St James's Church
Wilson Roland Garros Clay Court Tennis Ball Case: Built between 1311 and 1484 — one hundred and seventy-three years, and yes, I did that in my head, and yes, I checked it. Lutheran since the town adopted the Reformation in 1544. The treasure is the Heilig-Blut-Altar, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1501 and 1504 in unpainted limewood: the Last Supper at the precise moment Christ identifies his betrayer, with Judas placed at the centre. At the centre. That is a compositional decision, not an accident of arrangement. A rock-crystal capsule in the cross above is said to hold a drop of Christ's blood, which made this a pilgrimage stop on the route to Santiago. Friedrich Herlin's high altar of 1466 shows the church itself — evidence, not impression.
I cut the little plaques on the wall. Hundreds of them along the parapet, each naming somebody who sent money to rebuild Rothenburg ob der Tauber after about 40 per cent of the walls came down in the bombing of 1945. People all over the world paid for a metre of wall and had their name cut into it. I have been cutting names a long time and I have never yet cut one that did not deserve it.
So here is a case of 24 tins, 72 clay court balls, ITF approved, official ball of Roland-Garros since 2020, natural rubber core, felt that resists picking up moisture and dirt. That is a great deal of tennis to buy at once, and the reason I approve is that a case is a commitment. Tins are impulses. A case says there will be a season.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber is what happens when a town is too poor to modernise and then rich enough to rebuild. The walls survived because after the Thirty Years' War nobody could afford to knock them down, which is the funniest possible reason for a townscape like this.
These balls will roll everywhere from red clay in June to a shale court in a wet October, and by the way, 72 is also perfect for a ball machine, a hopper and a coach with a plan.
Buy on Amazon
