Yonex Vcore 100+ 8th Gen Tennis Racquet
About Giza
This city stands on the west bank of the Nile opposite Cairo, now absorbed into the capital’s wider urban area. Its name is tied to the Giza Plateau, where the pyramids and the Sphinx sit on desert ground just beyond the edge of the modern city.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
The VCORE 100+ is the extended-length frame in the eighth generation of Yonex’s VCORE line, the spin family in the range. It runs 27.5 inches rather than the standard 27, with a 100 square inch head, 300 grams unstrung and a 16 x 19 string pattern.
The extra half inch is the whole product.
Length is leverage: a longer frame raises the contact point on the serve, which increases the angle available into the service box, and it adds reach on a wide ball and on a defensive stretch.
It also increases swingweight slightly, so the frame feels marginally heavier through the swing than the same weight in a standard length, which is the trade being made.
The 16 x 19 pattern is the standard VCORE spin arrangement, with the mains spaced to move under a brushing swing and snap back into line, which is where the shape on the ball comes from.
Extended-length frames are a small category because half an inch changes how a racquet is timed, and a player who switches has to accept a fractionally earlier preparation on the return.
In exchange the serve gains height and the stretch volley gains reach.
Giza plays on the desert edge, where evenings turn still and long after the wind of the afternoon drops, and rallies stretch out in air that has stopped moving.
Specifications
| Head size | 100 square inches |
|---|---|
| Weight | 300 g unstrung |
| Length | 27.5 inches |
| String pattern | 16 x 19 |
| Line | VCORE, 8th generation |
| Intended level | Intermediate to advanced |
Leverage is not strength, it is geometry, which is the entire case for an extended-length frame over its standard-length sibling.
LET Yonex Vcore 100+ 8th Gen Tennis Racquet SHOW YOU Giza
Racquet: Let us open the books. Capital project for Khufu, delivered roughly four and a half thousand years ago, and it remained the tallest structure human beings had ever built for something in the region of four thousand years afterwards. Four thousand years of service life. I have never seen an asset depreciate that slowly and I expect I never shall. Now the payroll, which is the line everybody gets wrong: the workers were not slaves. There was a village down there, they were issued beef - beef, as a staple, on a construction site - and the crews inside left graffiti naming their own gangs, one of which called itself the Friends of Khufu. Fed labour, organised into named units, with morale. That is a costed workforce, not a whip, and it shows in the only place it can. It is still standing.
Racquet: A lion's body and a human head carved out of a single lump of bedrock, sitting beside its own ruined temple, and for most of recorded history it was buried in sand up to the neck. Which brings me to my favourite settled account in Egypt. Between the paws there is a stone tablet, placed there by Thutmose IV, stating that the Sphinx appeared to him in a dream while he napped in the shade and offered him the throne in exchange for clearing away the sand. He cleared the sand. He received the throne. One excavation contract, settled in kingdoms. I have costed a great many things in my time and I have never seen a better return on the removal of a driveway. Also the nose was long gone before Napoleon ever arrived, so we may close that file.
Racquet: In 1954 an archaeologist named Kamal el-Mallakh was clearing rubble along the south face of the Great Pyramid and found a sealed pit. Inside it was a ship. A complete cedar vessel, over forty metres long, dismantled into more than a thousand pieces and stacked flat, sealed away for four and a half thousand years. Consider the entry as it would appear in any ledger: imported cedar, a full ship's worth, commissioned, built, taken apart, buried, and never permitted to earn a single voyage. As expenditure it is indefensible. As an asset it survived four and a half millennia intact, and el-Mallakh said he could still smell the cedar when the pit was opened. They put it back together. Written off on the day, priceless by the century. I have made my peace with this line item.
Racquet: See that great vertical gash down the north face? That is a project that came in over budget. In the late twelfth century a young ruler decided he would take the pyramids down and, reasoning sensibly enough, began with the smallest. A crew worked at it for months. Months of labour, tools, provisions and supervision, and the total output was that scar. The stone they managed to prise away cost more to remove than the stone was worth, so the works were abandoned - the only cancelled contract in recorded history that I wholeheartedly endorse. Note the granite casing blocks still sitting round the base. The pyramid did nothing whatsoever, incurred no costs, and won on price.
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.