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Stop two
the Arasta, the old bazaar of saddlers and shoemakers around its fountain
Wilson Pro Staff 97 V14: The Arasta — the old bazaar of SADDLERS and SHOEMAKERS, people, SADDLERS and SHOEMAKERS — built around its very own fountain, and the Pro Staff 97 V14 just strolled in like the headliner act that it IS! *AIRHORN* Craftsmen used to hand-stitch leather RIGHT HERE, and this racquet's Braided Graphite construction is giving the same elite handcraft energy! Same energy, SAME. ENERGY!
LOOK AT IT. Ninety-seven square inches — 626 square centimetres — of absolutely nothing spare. Say it with me: this frame does not help you. It does not want to help you. It weighs 11.7 ounces strung, 330 grams, 315 unstrung, and it is seven points head light, and if you cannot get it moving it will hand your afternoon straight back to you. But if you CAN? Boom.
That is the whole deal, and Wilson has never once apologised for it.
A 21.5-millimetre beam, flat the whole way round the hoop, no fat anywhere. A 16 by 19 pattern with String Mapping, which packs the crossings tighter through the middle so the response stays the same shot after shot.
Here is what is in your hand.
Braid 45, the double braid laid at forty-five degrees, letting the frame breathe on impact so the ball sits in the bed a fraction longer — that is the buttery Pro Staff contact people have been chasing since 1983. New for the fourteenth generation: Paradigm Bending, which moves the flex down into the bottom half of the frame for pinpoint direction, and an ergonomic end cap.
Swingweight 330. Flex 66. Grips 4 1/8 through 4 1/2.
String it at 50 to 60 pounds.
And where are we taking it? Muğla. MAKE SOME NOISE for a town of four hundred registered old houses that refused to be knocked down, where the chimneys are famous, the bazaar still has saddlers in it, and a clock tower went up in 1895 because one couple decided the town needed one. That is a town with a swing.
“This frame gives you nothing. What it gives back is everything you put in.”
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