Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
A compact racquet backpack in violet, cyan and black — 420D to 600D polyester, air-flow straps, room for frames, kit and the rest of it. Konya beats my city at exactly one thing. One. And I am prepared to admit it.
Dunlop FX Club Tennis Backpack: I came ready to say Istanbul's domes win by walkover, and then Konya parks Rumi's tomb under the Mevlana Museum's fluted turquoise Kubbe-i Hadra. Annoyingly, it does holy silence better than the big show-off by the Bosphorus.
Dunlop FX Club Tennis Backpack: Ankara has the government and the stern face, so I expected Konya's Alaeddin Hill to be a warm-up court; then the Alaeddin Mosque, one of the city's oldest Seljuk mosques, brings out sultans' tombs like it packed extra trophies. Fine—Konya does dynastic swagger better.
Dunlop FX Club Tennis Backpack: I was going to award the tile match to İznik without a tiebreak, but Karatay Medrese, built in 1251, covers its dome in Seljuk star tiles until even I have to stop heckling. Konya does blue overhead better, the nuisance.
Dunlop FX Club Tennis Backpack: Sivas can brag about stonework all it likes; İnce Minareli Medrese is a 13th-century Seljuk school with a portal carved so deeply it looks like the mason was settling a grudge. Konya does dramatic entrances better, and I resent noticing.
I will grant you this much straight away: it is a better bag than I expected, and I do not say that about much. The FX Club Backpack is the small end of Dunlop's FX bag range — the one for the player who does not need a twelve-racquet coffin and resents carrying one. It takes racquets, kit and accessories in a layout that is actually organised rather than one enormous sack with a zip.
The materials, since that is where bags are won and lost. It is built from 420D, 500D and 600D polyester — three weights, used where each is needed, the heavier weave placed where the bag drags on the ground and gets thrown into car boots.
The shoulder straps are air mesh, which sounds like a small thing until you have carried a loaded bag across a hot car park and discovered what a solid nylon strap does to a shoulder.
It runs roughly 34 by 20 by 49 centimetres, so it fits under a seat and through a turnstile, and the colourway is the FX line's violet, black and cyan, which is louder than I would choose and which I have to admit looks correct on court.
Which brings us to Konya, and here is my concession. My own city has domes. Konya has the Mevlâna Museum, and above Rumi's tomb there is a fluted turquoise dome that does something to the light in the late afternoon that I have never seen matched anywhere, including at home. There is not one.
I have tried to find a fault with it.
The rest I will argue about — Karatay Medrese, with star tiles covering the entire blue dome inside, is showing off, and I say that as a compliment through gritted teeth.
You will get use out of this bag everywhere from a two-court club session to a weekend away back home, and by the way, the deep-carved stone portal at İnce Minare is worth going out of your way for, and it is free, which my city's equivalent is not.
That is not marketing. That is just correct."
"Three weights of polyester, used where each one is needed.
