Solinco Confidential Soft 17g Tennis String Reel
About Aqaba
This port city stands at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, where Jordan reaches the Red Sea between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is the country’s only seaport, and the Ottoman outpost there was captured by Arab Revolt forces in 1917 during the First World War.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Solinco Confidential Soft in 17 gauge, supplied as a reel: 656 feet, 200 metres, sixteen or more full string jobs.
At 1.20 mm this is a thin gauge, and thin is where the feel lives — less material between the hand and the ball means more bite, more spin and more information coming back on every stroke.
Confidential Soft is the Confidential co-polyester with a softening formula worked into the material, which adds comfort and pop while leaving the control intact. The construction is a five-edged profile over a low-friction surface.
The edges grip the ball on contact; the surface lets the mains glide across the crosses and snap back into line before the next shot, and that return to parallel is the mechanism behind the spin.
Tension maintenance is the reason a reel is worth buying rather than a run of sets: every job off it should play like the one before, from the first frame to the last.
Aqaba sits at the head of the Red Sea, where the desert meets the water and summer heat is severe and dry — conditions that push a polyester bed hard, and where a string that holds its tension is doing something a specification sheet cannot fake.
Specifications
| Type | Co-polyester monofilament, softened formula |
|---|---|
| Gauge | 17 / 1.20 mm |
| Profile | Five edges over a low-friction surface |
| Reel length | 656 ft / 200 m |
| Approximate racquets per reel | 16 |
| Colour | Electric Pink |
| Best for | Spin and feel with above-average comfort |
| Stringing note | String lower than a synthetic gut; allow the bed to settle before judging tension |
17 is the feel gauge of the Soft range; the 16 and 16L trade some of it back for hours.
LET Solinco Confidential Soft 17g Tennis String Reel SHOW YOU Aqaba
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Reel: There are, as ever, several perspectives on what to call this. A fortification existed here earlier — on that everyone agrees — but the structure now standing was almost entirely rebuilt between 1510 and 1517 by decree of Qansuh al-Ghawri, the last great Mamluk sultan, and completed in 1517. It served as a way-station on the pilgrimage road to Mecca, a function no party has ever disputed. Later Ottoman use and the events of the Arab Revolt left further marks upon it, and I shall leave the characterisation of those marks to others better placed. The walls carry inscriptions from successive periods, each of which regarded itself as the current one. Do read them all. That is, I think, the balanced approach.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Reel: Ayla was founded around 650 CE under the caliph Uthman ibn Affan and was one of the first cities built by Muslims outside the Arabian Peninsula — a claim I am content to state plainly, which I do not often get to say. It functioned as a port and trading town through the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid periods, on the sea route between Egypt, Syria and the Hijaz, and remained in use until 1116. Three dynasties, one town, and the trade carrying on regardless of whose seal was on the door, which I find quietly instructive. It declined after a major earthquake in the 12th century — a party with whom no one negotiates. Its walled rectangle, gates, towers and axial streets are the clearest surviving plan of an early Islamic garrison town of this type.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Reel: One hundred and thirty metres, and among the tallest freestanding flagpoles in the world. I say among, because rankings of this kind shift and I have no wish to be drawn. It was erected in 2004 on the Great Arab Revolt Plaza beside the shore, and it flies the flag of the Great Arab Revolt, the 1916 uprising against Ottoman rule led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca. Aqaba was captured by Arab forces in the course of that revolt. There are naturally many accounts of that campaign, and I would encourage you to read more than one of them. What is not in dispute is the height, the wind here, and the fact that it can be seen from well out at sea.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Reel: A residence that became a museum — a transition I always find graceful. This was the Aqaba residence of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, founder of the Hashemite dynasty and leader of the Great Arab Revolt, built shortly after the First World War, in 1917. It was converted into a museum established in 1989 and formally opened on 1 January 1990. It now houses material from the Great Arab Revolt together with the antiquities recovered from Aqaba and Ayla — which puts the seventh century and the twentieth under a single roof and asks no visitor to choose between them. That is, if you will permit the observation, an unusually well-composed collection. Take your time. Both halves repay it.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.