01
Stop one
Martinitoren
Yonex Vcore Alpha L 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: I have not slept. Three nights now, which is relevant, because I have been staring at this thing since about four in the morning and I have had time. Ninety-seven metres or thereabouts of late-Gothic brick on the Grote Markt, and the locals call it the Old Grey One. The versions before this one kept getting destroyed, mostly by lightning, because a tall brick spire on a landscape this flat is essentially a written invitation. And here is the bit I kept circling at five a.m.: every time it came down they built it again, taller. Not the same. Taller. That is either faith or spite and at this hour I honestly cannot separate them. There is a carillon in there. Bells. Sorry — yes, up. You can climb it, there is a gallery.
02
Stop two
Academiegebouw, University of Groningen
Yonex Vcore Alpha L 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Right, the Academiegebouw, founded 1614, among the oldest in the Netherlands, red brick, that decorated gable — no, wait, this is not the thing I actually wanted to say. Eighteen seventy-one. Aletta Jacobs is admitted here, the first woman formally allowed to study at a Dutch university, and she went on to become the first Dutch woman to qualify in medicine. But the detail that has been rattling round my skull all night is that she had to write and ask. Personally. A letter, by hand, requesting permission to be allowed to learn things. I have been awake since Tuesday and that is the only sentence in three days that has made me feel anything. Sorry. The brickwork on Broerstraat is lovely too. Look at the arch over the door, it is very — yes.
03
Stop three
Groninger Museum
Yonex Vcore Alpha L 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Okay, so it is four buildings having an argument, and I mean that affectionately. Opened in 1994, sitting out in the middle of the canal on its own island directly opposite the central station, designed under Alessandro Mendini with other designers each handed a separate pavilion, which is precisely why nothing on it agrees with anything else. People hated it. Loudly. And now it is the postcard, it is the fridge magnet, it is the first image you get if you type the city's name anywhere. Which — hang on, this connects back to the tower — this city keeps building the strange thing and then simply waiting for everyone to catch up. That is twice now. That might be the entire tour. I should write it down. I will not remember.
04
Stop four
Grote Markt
Yonex Vcore Alpha L 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Last one and then I am lying down somewhere flat. In 1672 the bishop of Münster besieged Groningen and shelled it hard and the city held, and they still mark the relief every August — an annual party for not losing, which is a far rarer thing to celebrate than you would think. But look at the north side of the square. Much of that is post-war rebuilding, because the fighting here in 1945 destroyed a great deal of the centre. So you are standing in a square that survived twice, nearly three centuries apart, and only one of those survivals left the face of the buildings intact. Two different centuries wearing one frontage, with the Martinitoren and the town hall watching. Right — that is the thought I had at three in the morning, and it holds up. Good. Bed.
Twelve thousand bicycles under one roof and I know where every one of them is. That is a job about lightness and turning circles, so this is the frame I would have chosen anyway: 100 square inches of head, 260 grams unstrung, a 16×18 pattern, balance out at 335 millimetres. Very light, head forward, so the mass you do have is working at the far end where it meets the ball.
This is the step between a junior frame and a proper adult one, and it is the step most players get wrong by going too heavy too early. At 260 grams the swing still finishes, which matters everywhere from a first competitive season to a school final.
And while you are making that decision, remember that in Groningen nobody thinks a light machine is a lesser machine — they think it is the one that gets you there first.
Groningen builds the strange thing and waits for everyone to catch up. A museum sitting on its own island in the canal that people hated and now put on postcards. A tower that kept being struck by lightning and kept being rebuilt taller. A university that in 1871 admitted the first woman formally allowed to study at a Dutch university, because she wrote and asked. Groningen backs the light option early, and so do I.
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