01
Stop one
Castillo San Felipe de Barajas
Yonex Ezone 25 Junior Tennis Racquet: Okay, the light on these walls right now — stop, are you getting this? Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, begun 1657 on the hill of San Lázaro and enlarged through the eighteenth century into the largest Spanish fortress in the Americas. Triangular batteries, sloping walls, internal tunnels engineered with acoustics that let defenders hear an enemy coming. In 1741 Admiral Edward Vernon arrived with nearly two hundred ships and over twenty thousand men, and Blas de Lezo — already missing an eye, a leg and the use of an arm — repelled him with far fewer, then died of illness. Britain had struck its victory medals early. #Posted #Deleted
02
Stop two
Walled City of Cartagena
Yonex Ezone 25 Junior Tennis Racquet: This is giving golden hour, at every hour. Founded in 1533, Cartagena became the principal Spanish treasure port on the Caribbean, shipping silver and gold to Spain — and one of the main markets for enslaved Africans in the Americas, which is not content, it is what this wall is made of. Repeated sackings, Francis Drake's in 1586 among them, drove two centuries of building: eleven kilometres of walls and bastions enclosing the old town, San Diego and Getsemaní. Inside, colonial houses with wooden balconies and inner patios, the clock tower gate, the Plaza de la Aduana. UNESCO 1984, Colombia's first listing.
03
Stop three
Palace of the Inquisition
Yonex Ezone 25 Junior Tennis Racquet: I'm putting the phone down for this one. Completed in 1770 as the seat of the Holy Office in Cartagena, one of only three tribunals in Spanish America alongside Lima and Mexico City, established here in 1610 with jurisdiction over the whole Caribbean coast and much of northern South America. The baroque stone portal is among the finest in the city, and on the side street a small window with a denunciation slot received anonymous accusations. Several hundred people were tried, and a number executed, for heresy, witchcraft and Judaising, until the tribunal ended at independence. The building now houses the city's historical museum.
04
Stop four
Convento de la Popa
Yonex Ezone 25 Junior Tennis Racquet: Highest hill above the city, about 150 metres, and from up here you get the entire grid in one frame. The Convento de Santa Cruz de la Popa was founded in 1607 by Augustinian friars and named for the hill's resemblance to a ship's stern. Its church holds the image of the Virgen de la Candelaria, patroness of Cartagena, and tradition relates that the friars destroyed an Indigenous shrine on the summit when they built. It was fortified as a military position in later conflicts, including Vernon's siege of 1741 and the independence wars, ruined in the nineteenth century, restored in the twentieth. White arches, flowers, terrace. The light up here at five. #Cartagena
An emerald is a nervous stone. It arrives full of inclusions and you cut it slowly, with the grain, or you lose the whole thing. Children are cut the same way. I am 25 inches long, 100 square inches of head, 230 grams, a 16×18 pattern on a 3 7/8 grip, pre-strung and meant for a player of about nine or ten. Everything about those numbers exists so that a small arm can finish a swing.
Too heavy a frame and a child learns to arrive late and push. Too light and they never feel the ball at all. At 230 grams the swing completes, and completion is what carries everywhere from a first rally over the net to the moment they hit one properly and turn round to check that you saw. It is also perfect for the concrete courts in Cartagena, where the heat means a heavy racquet is abandoned by the third game.
Cartagena is a city that survived by being cut correctly. Eleven kilometres of wall, built over two centuries, and a hill fort with tunnels engineered to carry the sound of anyone approaching. Cartagena did not defend itself by being big. It defended itself by being exactly right, patiently, over generations, which is the same job as raising a player.
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