Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
Volkl V-Pro 17g — monofilament poly, 1.25mm, biting spin control like a well-reduced sauce. Hillerød's castle gardens demand this kind of precision. String it low, play it hard, eat something good after.
Volkl V-Pro 17g Tennis String Set: Frederiksborg Castle was built by King Christian IV in the early 1600s on three islets in Slotssø, which is very ambitious plating for a building. I admire the architecture, but my chef brain keeps asking who had to row out with lunch service.
Volkl V-Pro 17g Tennis String Set: These Baroque gardens were recreated in the 1990s from J.C. Krieger’s 1720s plans, so even the hedges are following an old recipe. The royal monograms in the greenery look like garnish with a crown budget.
Volkl V-Pro 17g Tennis String Set: Hillerød Torv is the town’s central square, and it even has the Konen med æggene sculpture—the woman with the eggs. Finally, a historic site that understands my priorities: footwork, forehands, and breakfast.
Volkl V-Pro 17g Tennis String Set: Hillerød Station opened in 1864 and is now the northern end of Copenhagen’s S-train Line A. That is a long commute for a snack, but I respect any station that can move players, strings, and pastry cravings with equal urgency.
I was standing near Hillerød Station, right there on the platform, and I confess I was not thinking about tennis strings. I was thinking about the rye bread I had spotted through a bakery window somewhere between the station and Hillerød Torv, that dense, magnificent Danish rugbrød that smells like the earth itself has been slow-cooked for several centuries.
Which, in a way, it has. I had my racquet bag over one shoulder and a paper bag of something buttery in my other hand, and it was my training partner who thrust the Volkl V-Pro 17g string set toward me and said, essentially, pay attention. So I paid attention. Eventually.
The V-Pro 17g is a monofilament polyester string, which is to say it is one continuous extruded strand of material rather than a braided or multifilament construction. If you imagine pulling a single long noodle — a very precise, very disciplined noodle, nothing like the chaotic tangle you get when pasta overflows the pot — you begin to understand the philosophy.
The gauge is 17g, which translates to approximately 1.25mm in diameter, sitting on the thinner end of the polyester spectrum. This matters enormously. Thinner strings bite into the ball more aggressively at contact, generating the kind of spin that makes your opponent question their life choices.
One thing, done with intention.
The set itself gives you enough string to complete one full stringing job, which is exactly what it sounds like and exactly what you need if you are not yet ready to commit to a full reel.
I thought about this as I wandered through the Frederiksborg Castle Gardens, still holding my paper bag, now considerably lighter. The gardens are formal and geometric in the Dutch style, which is itself a kind of culinary discipline — everything in its place, no herb growing where it should not, the hedges trimmed like the crust on a well-made tart.
Volkl engineered the V-Pro with that same kind of deliberateness. The string is co-polyester, which gives it a particular combination of firmness and what string enthusiasts call controlled power. It consults with you first.
It does not launch the ball wildly.
The castle itself, Frederiksborg Castle, rising above the lake with that extraordinary copper-green roofline, was built across the early seventeenth century, and I will tell you honestly that when I read about the construction period I immediately wondered what the workers ate. Porridge, almost certainly. Smoked fish. Hard bread.
Men hauling stone across frozen water to build something that would outlast their great-grandchildren, sustained by food that would make a modern athlete weep. Which brings me, not entirely smoothly, to the point that the V-Pro 17g suits the modern competitive player who trains seriously.
It is a string for someone doing the equivalent of fort lauderdale themed cardiovascular tennis training — high-intensity, movement-focused, the kind of session where you are covering the court at pace and demanding that your equipment keep up. The low power profile means you stay in control even when your body is working hardest.
At Hillerød Torv, the town square, I found another bakery. Of course I did. There is always another bakery. I stood outside it for what my training partner later described as an unreasonable amount of time, but I was also, genuinely, thinking about tension maintenance, which is one of the V-Pro's honest virtues.
Polyester strings in general lose tension faster than natural gut, and the V-Pro is no exception to the laws of physics, but within the polyester category it holds reasonably well, meaning the feel you string at is roughly the feel you play with for a respectable stretch of time. String it on the lower end of your recommended range. Polyester punishes you for going too tight.
Like overworking a pastry dough, the result becomes brittle and unpleasant and everyone suffers.
This is a string for the aggressive baseliner. The topspin hunter. The player who wants spin, control, and durability without spending the kind of money that natural gut demands. It is not the string for someone seeking arm-friendly softness — polyester is never that, and the V-Pro does not pretend otherwise.
It is honest about what it is, in the way that a good stock reduction is honest: concentrated, purposeful, nothing superfluous. I bought the string. I also went back for the rugbrød. Both were excellent decisions.
