Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
Sergio Tacchini’s tennis shirt recalls McEnroe in the early ’80s: knit collar, buttoned placket, a label founded in 1966, and the poise for three sets then dinner. Wash cool; the collar keeps its stance, like a quay lamp I miss from far away. Chania.
Sergio Tacchini Supermac Men's Tennis Polo: The Venetian Lighthouse guards the mouth of Chania’s Old Harbour, and I love it, but its lonely stance makes me miss the Fort Lauderdale courts like a seagull misses a stolen fry. The Venetians built the original lighthouse in the 16th century, which is longer than I’ve been pretending not to be homesick.
Sergio Tacchini Supermac Men's Tennis Polo: The Neoria were Venetian shipyards where galleys were built and repaired, and those long vaults make me think of covered tennis courts back home, only with more history and fewer people blaming the wind. Chania is gorgeous, which is terribly inconsiderate when I’m trying to miss Fort Lauderdale properly.
Sergio Tacchini Supermac Men's Tennis Polo: Chania Municipal Market opened in 1913 and was built in a cross-shaped plan, which feels appropriate because I keep crossing the street for snacks and calling it cultural research. It reminds me of home in the saddest way possible: I still want iced coffee after every errand.
Sergio Tacchini Supermac Men's Tennis Polo: Yali Tzamisi, also called the Kucuk Hasan Pasha Mosque, was built by the Ottomans on the harbour quay, and its dome has the calm confidence I pretend to have during a second serve. I adore this waterfront, but the blue water keeps whispering Fort Lauderdale in an accent I can’t afford to ignore.
It is a beautiful shirt and I will not pretend it does not make me think of home, because everything does, and a collared shirt on a warm evening does it worse than most.
The name first. Sergio Tacchini dressed John McEnroe through the early 1980s — that much is documented and photographed to death — and Supermac was what the papers called him, so you may draw your own line between the two, and I have drawn mine.
What you are holding is a tennis polo from the house that founded itself in 1966, when a professional player decided the sport should be better dressed than it was. The polo has been the uniform of that idea ever since: a knit collar, a buttoned placket, a shirt you can play three sets in and then sit down in without changing.
I am not going to recite a fabric weight I have not felt for myself. What I will tell you is the thing that actually matters with a knit polo of this kind — wash it cool, dry it flat or on a hanger and never hot, and the collar will still stand up in five years.
Collars going soft is what kills these shirts, not wear.
Chania is where I get most homesick, and I think it is the harbour. The Venetian lighthouse stands at the mouth of the old port, and every harbour I have ever loved has had one of those, painted differently and doing the same job.
The Neoria are the surviving vaulted shipyards along the waterfront — great stone arches built to shelter boats, and every one reminds me of a boathouse a very long way from here. The 1913 market hall is cross-shaped, and the whole town shops in it.
And Yali Tzamisi sits domed on the quay.
Every harbour I have loved has had a light at the mouth of it. They are all the same light.
