Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
A 9.0 oz adult stick with a 104in2 hitting area, sw 270, a 16×17 that forgives, plus a 50 to 59 lb window, good for an improver or a teenager moving up. Panama City first, where I have a story about a gold altar and a pirate.
Babolat Evo Drive Lite Gen 2 Tennis Racquet: Arrr, this stick’s berthed by the Iglesia de San Jose, where the Golden Altar was said to be hidden under mud to keep Henry Morgan’s greedy paws off it. That’s proper seamanship: camouflage the treasure and trust no pirate with a clean shirt.
Babolat Evo Drive Lite Gen 2 Tennis Racquet: Here she stands by Panama Viejo, where the cathedral tower was left standing after Morgan burned the city in 1671. A tower that survives a pirate’s temper has better sea legs than half the crews I’ve shipped with.
Babolat Evo Drive Lite Gen 2 Tennis Racquet: At Miraflores Locks, ships are lifted about 54 feet while landlubbers stare from the viewing deck like gulls eyeing a lunch pail. I distrust machinery on dry land, but I’ll admit this canal hauls ships uphill like a tide with a work ethic.
Babolat Evo Drive Lite Gen 2 Tennis Racquet: The Biomuseo sits on the Amador Causeway under Frank Gehry’s wild coloured metal roofs, looking like a fleet of signal flags got into a tavern fight. It tells how Panama’s rise joined continents and changed the seas, which is the sort of land business even an old sailor can respect.
Nine ounces unstrung. Two hundred and fifty-five grams. I have hauled rope heavier than this frame and I want you to understand what that buys you: speed through the swing, and the ability to get the head round in time when the ball comes at you faster than you expected — which, at a certain point in life, is most of them.
The measurements, since a light frame lives or dies on them. Head 104 square inches, 670 square centimetres — a big face, forgiving on the off-centre hits everyone pretends they do not make. Length 27 inches. Strung it comes in at 9.6 ounces, 272 grams. Swingweight 270, which is low and is the whole point.
Balance 3 points head light.
Flex 70, stiff, so the power comes back out of the frame rather than out of your shoulder. Graphite. String pattern 16 by 17, which is open, and an open pattern lets the strings shift and snap back — that is where spin comes from, whatever anybody tells you about head shape. Recommended tension 50 to 59 pounds.
Beam 23, 26, 23 millimetres.
Syntec Evo grip, and Air Handle Touch in the handle soaking up the shock. It suits a beginner or an improving player, and it suits a strong junior stepping up to a first adult frame, which is a real crossing and deserves a boat that floats.
Panama City, where every ship I ever served on wanted to be. Start at the Iglesia de San Jose in Casco Viejo, and hear this properly: when Henry Morgan came in 1671 the priests smeared the baroque altar of solid gold with mud and told him it had been stolen already. He believed them. It is still there.
Then Panama Viejo, the cathedral tower left standing from the city Morgan actually did burn — the same raid, two different outcomes, one good lie. The Miraflores Locks next: ships lifted fifty-four feet while you watch, fresh water doing the work, and I have gone up in that lock and it does not stop being extraordinary.
And the Biomuseo out on the Amador Causeway, Gehry's collision of coloured metal roofs, which looks like a shipwreck that decided to be cheerful about it.
“They covered the gold in mud and lied to a pirate's face. Best seamanship I ever heard of on dry land.”
Nine ounces, a big face, an open pattern. Light hands, long career.
