Solinco Confidential Soft 18g Tennis String Set
About Bologna
This city lies on the southern edge of the Po Valley, where routes from the Apennines meet the road across northern Italy. It is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, and its university is usually dated to 1088, making it one of Europe's oldest.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Confidential Soft is Solinco’s softer take on Confidential: a co-polyester built for control and comfort, with a more plush construction that adds forgiveness while keeping the control that made the original a favourite. This is the 18 gauge, 1.15 mm, the thin end of the range.
Thin is where the interesting things happen.
At 1.15 mm the string bites into the ball more aggressively, pockets more deeply, and returns a level of feel a thick polyester simply cannot.
Solinco describe the 1.15 as combining impressive spin potential with above-average comfort and pocketing for a polyester monofilament, generating depth and pace off the string bed and holding a dependable tension match after match.
Be realistic about what that costs. An 18 gauge polyester is a short-lived string by design.
For a string breaker it is a lovely afternoon and an early night; for a precision player who wants directional control and a plush, responsive contact, it is exactly the string, and the restring schedule is the price of feeling everything.
Bologna sits on the Po plain, where summers are hot and close and the winter is damp and cold, and the season splits between red clay outdoors and an indoor hall — two very different beds for one string to hold its tension across.
Specifications
| Type | Co-polyester monofilament, softened formula |
|---|---|
| Gauge | 18 / 1.15 mm |
| Set length | 40 ft / 12.2 m |
| Best for | Precision players wanting spin, pocketing and feel |
| Not suited to | Frequent string breakers |
| Stringing note | String lower than a synthetic gut; allow the bed to settle before judging tension |
The 16, 16L and 17 sit above it in the Soft range and buy back the hours that 1.15 mm gives away.
LET Solinco Confidential Soft 18g Tennis String Set SHOW YOU Bologna
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 18s Tennis String Set: Value assessment. Two brick towers, no marble, pure altitude — the emblem of Bologna and the famous survivors of the forest of tower-houses noble families raised over the medieval city, both built in the early twelfth century, traditionally 1109 to 1119. The Asinelli, 97 metres, is the tallest leaning medieval tower in Italy, and visitors have long climbed its 498 wooden steps for the view over the red roofs: the steps are the product, the tower is packaging. The Garisenda was truncated in the fourteenth century as its foundations subsided, and leans so hard Dante cited it in the Divine Comedy for the stooping giant Antaeus — free advertising, still working. Stability concerns closed it and began a major consolidation in 2023. From the street, both cost nothing.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 18s Tennis String Set: Best-value square in Italy, and I have done the sums. Piazza Maggiore is the civic heart, framed by the great medieval palaces, and on its south side rises San Petronio, dedicated to the city's patron saint — begun in 1390 to designs by Antonio di Vincenzo as a communal project, not a papal one, which tells you who was paying. It grew into one of the largest brick churches in the world, its vast Gothic nave holding tens of thousands, and the marble cladding was never finished: the famous two-toned front, a job half-billed. Inside, Cassini's meridian line of 1655 runs nearly 67 metres across the floor, a giant solar instrument for refining astronomical measurements, with Lorenzo Costa and Giovanni da Modena frescoes in the chapels. The adjoining Neptune Fountain completes it, and standing here costs nothing.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 18s Tennis String Set: Built in 1562 and 1563 by Antonio Morandi to gather the schools of the University of Bologna — oldest in the Western world, founded by tradition in 1088 — under one roof, the finest bulk-buy in academic history. Law and medicine were taught here for over two centuries, and students left nearly six thousand painted coats of arms and memorials on the walls and vaults, the largest heraldic complex of its kind: decoration the institution never had to pay for. The jewel is the Anatomical Theatre of 1637, lined entirely in spruce, its canopied lecturer's chair held up by the famous skinned figures, the Spellati, where public dissections were held by candlelight. Bombed in 1944 and faithfully rebuilt, it is the municipal library now, open to visitors.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 18s Tennis String Set: 666 arches, and here is the deal of the trip: the walk up is free. The sanctuary stands on the Colle della Guardia, a 289-metre hill southwest of Bologna, guarding an icon of the Virgin and Child attributed by tradition to Saint Luke. The elliptical basilica by Carlo Francesco Dotti was completed in the mid-eighteenth century, but the approach is the real asset — the Portico di San Luca, built between 1674 and 1793, climbing unbroken from the Saragozza gate for nearly four kilometres, long described as the longest portico in the world and part of Bologna's UNESCO-listed portico ensemble. Each May the icon is carried down it into the city, a procession held since 1433. Roofed the whole way: free view, free shade, free exercise.
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.