Oh honey, sit down, because I have to tell you what happened at the Nilambag Palace courts last Tuesday and you are absolutely not going to believe it. You know Priya, the one who's been absolutely demolishing everyone in the ladies' singles since she switched her string setup?
Well I finally got out of her — and it took three cups of chai and a very long walk past the Takhteshwar Temple, I want you to know — exactly what she's been hiding in that racket. Volkl V-Torque Tour. Eighteen gauge.
She whispered it like she was confessing a sin and I nearly choked on a biscuit.
Now let me tell you the details because this is where it gets truly juicy. The V-Torque Tour is a co-polyester string, and the scandal of it is how it's constructed — twisted, actually twisted, with a polygonal profile that creates these little edges along the string's surface.
Those edges are not there for decoration, darling.
They bite into the ball on contact and produce spin that I can only describe as absolutely shameless.
The eighteen gauge, which the Europeans would write as 1.20 millimetres, is on the thinner side of co-poly territory, and that thinness is the whole point — it lets the string dig in, snap back, and generate that wicked topspin that's been making Priya's opponents look like they've never held a racket before in their lives.
A single set gets you enough string to do the job, and the tension retention on a co-poly like this holds up admirably for those of us who are on court more days than we probably should admit to.
I heard through completely reliable channels — Meena, who works near the Barton Library and Museum and knows absolutely everything about everyone — that Priya was originally introduced to this string at a Fort Lauderdale themed evening cardiovascular tennis clinic that a visiting coach ran down near the waterfront last spring.
Apparently the coach was stringing demo rackets for anyone willing to run drills for ninety minutes in the heat, and Priya, who is not a woman who passes up a free experiment, grabbed one and never looked back.
The clinic was meant to be a fitness thing, all footwork and endurance, but what people actually took home was an obsession with co-poly strings and a very specific Volkl one at that.
Now who is this string actually for, because I know you're going to ask and I'm not going to leave you without the full picture. The V-Torque Tour is squarely aimed at the aggressive baseline player, the person who swings fast and wants the string to reward them with spin rather than just power.
It is not, and I say this with the authority of someone who has watched many a club player ruin their elbow chasing performance gear, for the recreational player with a slow swing or any history of arm trouble. Co-poly strings in general sit quite stiff on the comfort scale, and this one at 1.20 millimetres is not going to cushion your mistakes.
It is a string that demands something from you. Give it a full swing and it will absolutely pay you back. Half-measures and it will feel like you're hitting with a frying pan.
The chatter around the Gandhi Smriti Bhavnagar during the morning walking crowd has been nothing but this for the past fortnight. Someone saw Priya's match score posted in the club group chat and suddenly everybody wants to know what she's using.
The V-Torque Tour in 18g is Volkl's answer for the player who has already explored the standard co-poly world and wants something with a genuine twist — literally, given the construction — that separates them from the crowd.
If you play with topspin as your weapon, if you string in the mid-to-upper range of co-poly tensions, and if you have the racket head speed to activate what this string is capable of, then darling, the gossip about your game is only just beginning.
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