Babolat Court M x6 Tennis Bag
About Aksum
This highland town in northern Ethiopia was the center of the Aksumite kingdom, which controlled trade between the Red Sea and the interior from roughly the first to the seventh century. Its standing stones, royal tombs, and old church sites mark what was once one of the major powers of late antiquity.
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Also available in Black.
The Court M is the mid-size bag in Babolat’s Court line, rated to carry six racquets. The x6 designation describes capacity rather than compartments — six frames fit across the main compartments, which in practice means three or four racquets plus everything else a player brings to a match.
The body is a structured polyester with a flat base, so the bag stands upright on its own rather than slumping.
Twin carry handles meet in the middle with a wrap, and a detachable padded shoulder strap is included; the Court M is not a backpack and has no dual straps.
Inside, a full-length main compartment takes the racquets, with a separate zipped end pocket for shoes and a smaller accessory pocket for grips, strings and keys.
Keeping shoes in their own compartment is the reason bags in this class are sized as they are — clay and hard court dust stays away from the frames.
Aksum sits on the northern Ethiopian highlands at over two thousand metres, where the ancient stelae field stands at the edge of the modern town and the air is thin and dry.
Specifications
| Line | Babolat Court |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 6 racquets |
| Material | Structured polyester |
| Main compartment | Full length |
| Separate pockets | Shoe compartment, accessory pocket |
| Carry | Twin handles and a detachable shoulder strap |
| Base | Flat, stands upright |
A six-racquet bag is the common club size: large enough for a full match kit, small enough to carry on one shoulder without the bulk of a twelve-racquet tour bag.
LET Babolat Court M x6 Tennis Bag SHOW YOU Aksum
Bag: Babolat Court M Tennis Bag (6 Racquet): I have not slept, and this may be the worst place for that. These are grave markers — carved granite monoliths raised for Aksumite royalty in roughly the third and fourth centuries AD. The largest is down and broken; standing, it would have reached about thirty-three metres and weighed some five hundred tonnes, the single largest block of stone humans are known to have attempted to erect. Attempted. The ones still up are carved to imitate multi-storey towers, beam ends, false windows, a door at the base — a stone building pretending to be a building. Where was I. Right: one stele was taken to Rome by Mussolini's forces in 1937, displayed near the Circus Maximus, and finally returned and re-erected here in 2008. Seventy-one years. I have been awake two days and it feels comparable.
Bag: Babolat Court M Tennis Bag (6 Racquet): This is the holiest site of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, believed to stand on ground first consecrated in the fourth century under King Ezana, who made Aksum one of the earliest Christian states anywhere. Destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly; the present old church is seventeenth century, under Fasilides, with a large modern cathedral added under Haile Selassie in the 1960s. Beside them stands the Chapel of the Tablet, which the Ethiopian Church holds to contain the Ark of the Covenant, brought from Jerusalem by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. One appointed guardian monk may enter, and he never leaves the precinct. Never leaves. I lost my thread completely thinking about that, and I do not expect to find it again today.
Bag: Babolat Court M Tennis Bag (6 Racquet): Two rock-built tomb complexes on the low hill north of town, traditionally attributed to King Kaleb, who ruled in the early sixth century, and his son Gebre Meskel. Kaleb is properly attested: around 525 he launched a naval expedition across the Red Sea to overthrow the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas, an intervention recorded in Byzantine, Arabic and Ethiopian sources — three separate civilisations wrote it down, which is more corroboration than I could produce for yesterday afternoon. Stairways descend into chambers of enormous dressed granite blocks, the joints among the finest masonry in ancient Africa. The sarcophagi are empty. Foundations of associated structures survive above ground, and the site is part of the Aksum World Heritage inscription of 1980. Empty sarcophagi. At four in the morning that would finish me. It is fine now. It is fine.
Bag: Babolat Court M Tennis Bag (6 Racquet): Everyone calls it the Palace of the Queen of Sheba and it is absolutely not, which at this hour I find oddly comforting. Archaeologists date it to roughly the sixth or seventh century AD, far too late for any historical Sheba, and a French team excavated it in the 1950s. What the plan shows: a large central pavilion on a stepped podium with a monumental staircase, some fifty rooms around it — kitchens, storerooms with grinding stones, drainage channels — all inside an outer wall. It is the clearest surviving picture of domestic architecture in the Aksumite kingdom, whose rulers converted to Christianity in the fourth century and whose trade reached India, Egypt and Byzantium. Drainage channels. Somebody thought hard about water. I think about water constantly now, at night, instead of sleeping.
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.