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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — the Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can combined with the national flag of Armenia
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Sev Berd (the Black Fortress) in Gyumri, Circular fortress of dark basalt with narrow gun slits, on a low rise at the western edge of Gyumri toward the Turkish border
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Church of the Holy Saviour (Amenaprkich) in Gyumri, Large black-and-orange tufa domed church on Vartanants Square, central Gyumri, modelled on the cathedral of the ruined city of Ani
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Vartanants Square and the Dzitoghtsyan House Museum in Gyumri, Main square of Gyumri ringed with black tufa 19th-century buildings; the museum is a grand carved merchant's mansion in the old Kumayri quarter nearby
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Mother Armenia monument, Victory Park in Gyumri, Tall statue of a woman holding a sword on a stepped pedestal, on the hill in Gyumri's Victory Park overlooking the city
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — the Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can combined with the national flag of Armenia

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can

Gyumri, Armenia  ·  Balls > High Altitude

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can

This glacial little can of altitude balls. Low-pressurised, ITF-approved, an adapted core so the bounce comes out sane where the air has thinned. Lean in, though: nobody opens it until we have done Gyumri properly — black fortress, rebuilt dome, carved merchants' square, a woman with a sword.

↓   Tour Gyumri, Armenia

Four stops before the checkout

Gyumri, Armenia
01
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Sev Berd (the Black Fortress) in Gyumri, Circular fortress of dark basalt with narrow gun slits, on a low rise at the western edge of Gyumri toward the Turkish border
Stop one

Sev Berd (the Black Fortress)

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can: Hands up if you have ever built something purely because you did not trust the person on the other side of the fence. Everybody? Good. The Russians threw this black ring up in the 1830s, right after the war with the Ottomans, and they built it out of black basalt because the entire city is made of the stuff — you use what is under your feet, write that down. Now here is the lesson I actually want you carrying down the hill. Sev Berd, the Black Fortress, all that suspicion set in stone with the gun slits still in it, is a concert venue today. People come up here to listen to music inside a building designed to keep people out. So ask yourself honestly: what are you still guarding that could be hosting something instead? I am a can of high altitude balls. I know exactly what pressure does. Let some of it out and see what plays.

02
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Church of the Holy Saviour (Amenaprkich) in Gyumri, Large black-and-orange tufa domed church on Vartanants Square, central Gyumri, modelled on the cathedral of the ruined city of Ani
Stop two

Church of the Holy Saviour (Amenaprkich)

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can: Quiet for this one, please, because this is the best thing I will show you all day. In the 1800s the people here built this church as a deliberate copy of the cathedral of Ani — the great abandoned Armenian capital sitting just over the border, a city they could no longer reach. They could not go home, so they built home's face here instead, in black and orange tufa, on this square. That is not nostalgia. That is refusing to let a closed door be the end of the sentence. Then in December 1988 the earthquake brought the dome down. Down. And they went out into the rubble, picked the stones back up, numbered every single one of them, and put it together again. Numbered them. When did you last go back for your own scattered pieces one at a time and label them so they would fit? Amenaprkich. Say the name.

03
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Vartanants Square and the Dzitoghtsyan House Museum in Gyumri, Main square of Gyumri ringed with black tufa 19th-century buildings; the museum is a grand carved merchant's mansion in the old Kumayri quarter nearby
Stop three

Vartanants Square and the Dzitoghtsyan House Museum

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can: Right — names. Sit with this. This city has been Gyumri, then Alexandropol after a tsar's wife, then Leninakan, then Kumayri, then Gyumri again. Count them: four changes, and the people living here kept calling it what they had always called it. So who is actually running your identity — the sign on the square, or the person saying the word? Think about that while you look at Vartanants Square. These black tufa houses, and that carved merchant's mansion up in the old Kumayri quarter that is now the Dzitoghtsyan House Museum, went up because families here got rich off the garrison trade — soldiers need everything, constantly, and somebody in this town decided to be the one who supplied it. They did not wait for a better market. They looked at what was parked outside the door. What is parked outside yours?

04
cardio tennis to help with mindfulness — Mother Armenia monument, Victory Park in Gyumri, Tall statue of a woman holding a sword on a stepped pedestal, on the hill in Gyumri's Victory Park overlooking the city
Stop four

Mother Armenia monument, Victory Park

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can: Up the hill into Victory Park, and I want you to look at what she is holding. Not a torch. Not a book. A sword. Mother Armenia stands on her stepped pedestal above a city that lost so much in 1988 that the entire world sent aid — and people here will tell you plainly, at length and at volume, how long some of that aid took to become actual housing. I am not going to make that lighter than it is. Here is what I will say to you instead. Standing on a hill with a clear view of everything that was taken from you, and staying on your feet anyway, is the hardest repetition there is, and this city has done it every single day since. She is not asking you to feel sorry for her. She is asking whether you would still be standing. I have thought all morning that you would.

The Gyumri, Armenia track

Babolat Gold High Altitude Tennis Ball Can

Written for this world alone.

Hold the rods loosely. Now — do you feel that? That is a ball that knows exactly where the air has gone, and Gyumri, sitting up around 1,550 metres on the Shirak plateau, is precisely where it finds out.

The Babolat Gold High Altitude is a low-pressurised, ITF-approved ball in a can of three, built so that the reduced internal pressure meets the reduced air pressure of altitude and the bounce comes out sane instead of rocketing over the baseline. Different core, different pressure, same Gold-tier felt and durability.

I mention the elevation because nobody in Gyumri ever does, and they absolutely should.

Now. Out at the western edge of Gyumri, on a low rise looking toward the Turkish border, sits Sev Berd, the Black Fortress — a circular ring of dark basalt with narrow gun slits, thrown up by the Russians in the 1830s right after the war with the Ottomans. Which means they did not trust that border one bit and wanted everybody to see the distrust.

And here is the part people whisper: the thing ended up a concert venue. All that suspicion, all that stonework, and now it hosts music.

Down on Vartanants Square in central Gyumri stands the Church of the Holy Saviour, Amenaprkich, black-and-orange tufa under its dome, built in the 1800s deliberately copying the cathedral of Ani — the great abandoned Armenian capital just over a border they could no longer cross.

The earthquake of December 1988 brought the dome down, and they picked the stones back up, numbered them, and put it together again. The square itself is ringed with black tufa nineteenth-century houses raised on garrison-trade fortunes, and the Dzitoghtsyan House Museum, over in the old Kumayri quarter, is the grandest carved merchant's mansion of the lot.

Up on the hill in Victory Park, Mother Armenia holds a sword — not a torch, not a book, a sword — over a city that lost so much in 1988 that the entire world sent aid, and how long some of that aid took to become housing is a subject discussed here at volume.

You will open this can everywhere from a court on the Shirak plateau to an indoor hall down in Yerevan, and by the way, it is also perfect for a slow lap of Victory Park afterwards, where the air is exactly as sparse as this ball was engineered for and nobody will believe you when you say so.

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