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Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet and the flag of Djibouti combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The light blue and light green horizontal bicolour fills the frame in soft side-lit folds with the white triangle at the hoist and its red star catching the light, and the racquet is composed into the arrangement so the hoop sits inside the white triangle and the shaft runs along the line where the blue meets the green, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed at the Ras Bir Lighthouse near Obock, Djibouti. Low near ground level looking up the 50 metre concrete tower with its four buttresses and broad dark red band, the small square stone tower it replaced standing off to one side on the bare cape. Just after sunrise with the light coming in flat and pink off the water and the wind already up: a keeper walking the path to the base with a toolbox, two fishermen cutting across the cape toward their boat with a coiled net, a camel and its handler crossing the far edge of the frame, terns working the shallows below. The racquet leans against a worn stone step at the base of the old tower in the near foreground, touched by nobody.
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed at the old Obock harbour light on the waterfront in Djibouti. Eye level and straight on at the small round cast-iron tower painted in horizontal bands of blue, white and green, the pier and the gulf running away behind it. Hard midday sun with the light coming off the water in sheets and shadows pooled tight: the ferry unloading at the pier with a queue of passengers coming ashore under bundles, two porters shouldering a crate between them, a woman shading her face with a folded cloth, a fish seller setting out a tray on a bench. The racquet rests along the harbour railing in the middle distance, off to the right, and the crowd streams past it.
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed in the old French quarter of Obock, Djibouti. Elevated and wide from a rooftop so the whole grid of shuttered, sun-bleached colonial buildings, some of them roofless, sits small among newer breeze-block houses on the flat plateau above the sea. Golden hour with the light coming in sideways down the lanes and long shadows across the sand streets: a football game running the length of one lane with a crowd of children on both sides, women carrying water past a roofless facade, an old man on a chair in a doorway with a radio going, washing snapping on a line in the sea wind. The racquet lies far off and small on a bare parapet of one of the low walls at the left edge, alone.
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed on a fishing boat off the Iles des Sept Freres at the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb, Obock region, Djibouti. Close and intimate with shallow depth across the wet gunwale of an open boat, the bare rocky islands and the fast blue water going soft behind. Night under a heavy moon with a deck lamp burning and the sea running hard between the islands: two fishermen hauling a net over the side hand over hand with the catch coming up silver, a third steadying the tiller against the current, spray coming over the bow, the lights of a container ship crossing the strait in the far distance. The racquet is wedged along the wet boat rail in mid-frame, off centre, and neither man touches it.
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet and the flag of Djibouti combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The light blue and light green horizontal bicolour fills the frame in soft side-lit folds with the white triangle at the hoist and its red star catching the light, and the racquet is composed into the arrangement so the hoop sits inside the white triangle and the shaft runs along the line where the blue meets the green, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet

Obock, Djibouti  ·  Racquets > Adult

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet

This one is basalt, which is what the hills behind the town are. A rib of foam and HMT laid through it, so it never twists before you notice. 300 g, 100 in², 23.5 mm tapered, 69 RA. It must take you to Obock first, because you would not BELIEVE who lived there.

↓   Tour Obock, Djibouti

Four stops before the checkout

Obock, Djibouti
01
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed at the Ras Bir Lighthouse near Obock, Djibouti. Low near ground level looking up the 50 metre concrete tower with its four buttresses and broad dark red band, the small square stone tower it replaced standing off to one side on the bare cape. Just after sunrise with the light coming in flat and pink off the water and the wind already up: a keeper walking the path to the base with a toolbox, two fishermen cutting across the cape toward their boat with a coiled net, a camel and its handler crossing the far edge of the frame, terns working the shallows below. The racquet leans against a worn stone step at the base of the old tower in the near foreground, touched by nobody.
Stop one

The Governor's Residence

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet: OKAY. Stop one and it is already the GREATEST THING EVER. This was the first official building the French put up at Obock and the seat of their whole administration here. France acquired the anchorage from the local Afar sultans in 1862, making this its first foothold anywhere on this coast, and the settlement served as the capital of the Territory of Obock and its dependencies. THE CAPITAL. Look at it. One storey! Then Leonce Lagarde, appointed to govern the territory, moved the capital across the gulf to the new town of Djibouti at the start of the 1890s, because Obock lacked fresh water and a sheltered deep harbour, and the territories were merged into French Somaliland in 1896. No fresh water, he says. My friend, that is not a reason to leave, that is a reason to drink something else. This house is what remains of the days when Obock ran the whole show. There is a VERANDA. Somebody find me something cold and we hold the rest of the tour right here.

02
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed at the old Obock harbour light on the waterfront in Djibouti. Eye level and straight on at the small round cast-iron tower painted in horizontal bands of blue, white and green, the pier and the gulf running away behind it. Hard midday sun with the light coming off the water in sheets and shadows pooled tight: the ferry unloading at the pier with a queue of passengers coming ashore under bundles, two porters shouldering a crate between them, a woman shading her face with a folded cloth, a fish seller setting out a tray on a bench. The racquet rests along the harbour railing in the middle distance, off to the right, and the crowd streams past it.
Stop two

The ruins of the French fort above Obock

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet: Uphill, everybody, I promise it is worth it, WORTH IT. These are the remains of the fortified compound the French built when they first established themselves at Obock in the 1860s and 1880s, the military side of the settlement that the Governor's Residence down there was administering. Obock was the base from which French influence spread all round the Gulf of Tadjoura, and in the 1880s this was the port used by European traders working the Ethiopian trade, among them, WAIT. Wait. Arthur Rimbaud. THE Rimbaud. The poet. Here, running arms up-country from this coast in 1885 and 1886. One of the greatest poets France ever produced packed it in to sell guns out of a town with no drinking water. That is the single most committed night out in human history and it lasted two years. The site was abandoned once the administration cleared off to Djibouti. Now look at that view. LOOK at it. Somebody should open a bar up here and I am volunteering.

03
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed in the old French quarter of Obock, Djibouti. Elevated and wide from a rooftop so the whole grid of shuttered, sun-bleached colonial buildings, some of them roofless, sits small among newer breeze-block houses on the flat plateau above the sea. Golden hour with the light coming in sideways down the lanes and long shadows across the sand streets: a football game running the length of one lane with a crowd of children on both sides, women carrying water past a roofless facade, an old man on a chair in a doorway with a radio going, washing snapping on a line in the sea wind. The racquet lies far off and small on a bare parapet of one of the low walls at the left edge, alone.
Stop three

Ras Bir Lighthouse

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet: A LIGHTHOUSE. On an empty cape. With absolutely nobody around. This is my favourite building I have ever seen and I have known it for ninety seconds. It was built in 1889 on Ras Bir, the cape marking the northern side of the entrance to the Gulf of Tadjoura, to mark the approach for shipping using the strait. Then it ceased operating as a light in 1952 and just STOOD there. Out of work. For fifty years. RESPECT. And then, this is the comeback, this is the whole reason we came, in 2002 and 2003 French contractors helped Djibouti install radar on the old tower to monitor traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, one of the busiest and narrowest shipping passages in the world. So the structure returned to service in a different form. Back on the payroll. New job. Same tower. If a lighthouse can get a second act after a fifty-year break then frankly so can everyone on this tour, and I say we celebrate that immediately, somewhere with ice.

04
beginner cardiovascular tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet photographed on a fishing boat off the Iles des Sept Freres at the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb, Obock region, Djibouti. Close and intimate with shallow depth across the wet gunwale of an open boat, the bare rocky islands and the fast blue water going soft behind. Night under a heavy moon with a deck lamp burning and the sea running hard between the islands: two fishermen hauling a net over the side hand over hand with the catch coming up silver, a third steadying the tiller against the current, spray coming over the bow, the lights of a container ship crossing the strait in the far distance. The racquet is wedged along the wet boat rail in mid-frame, off centre, and neither man touches it.
Stop four

The Obock waterfront on the Gulf of Tadjoura

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet: LAST STOP AND IT IS A BEACH. Obock sits on the north shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura, and the anchorage is the entire reason there is a town here at all: this is the roadstead the French bought in 1862. And now the geology, which I am going to shout, because it has earned it. The gulf is a DROWNED ARM OF THE AFAR RIFT, where the African and Arabian plates are pulling apart from one another, which is exactly why the coast is volcanic and why those hills behind us are black basalt. Two continents breaking up with each other and we are standing in the gap with our shoes off. Small craft still cross the gulf from here, and the town is the administrative centre of the Obock Region. So: boats going out, sun going down, the planet itself splitting open in slow motion. I am not calling this the end of the tour. I am calling this the start of the evening.

The Obock, Djibouti track

Diadem FS 100 Series Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Obock is the town Djibouti was before Djibouti. France bought the port, roadstead and anchorage here in 1862, made it the first French colony in the region, and then moved the whole administration down to Djibouti City in 1894 because the anchorage there was better. Obock has spent every year since being the place the story started and then left.

It suits a racquet series built on the idea that the frame should do the stabilising for you.

The Nova FS 100 is the middle of the family and the one most people mean. Head size 100 square inches / 645 sq cm, length 27 inches, unstrung weight 300 grams, unstrung balance 320 mm at 7 points head light, a 23.5 mm tapered beam, a 16 x 19 pattern and 69 RA. Grips run 4 1/8 (L1) to 4 1/2 (L4).

The FS is the point: Diadem's Flex Stabilization System, a rib structure built into the frame that combines high density foam with HMT carbon, placed where the frame would otherwise twist. The intended result is a stable, powerful frame that still gives you feel rather than a dead board, and it is the reason a 300 gram racquet at 69 RA does not feel as flighty as those two numbers together would suggest.

The series runs three ways, so pick honestly. The Nova FS 100 Lite is 285 grams unstrung, 27 inches, balance 325 mm at 6 points head light, with grips from 4 0/8 (L0). The standard Nova FS 100 is 300 grams at 27 inches.

The Nova FS 100 Plus goes to 305 grams and 27.5 inches with a 335 mm balance at 5 points head light, and that half inch of extra length is real leverage on a serve. All three share the 100 inch head, the 23.5 mm tapered beam, the 16 x 19 pattern and 69 RA.

You will use it everywhere from a hard court in the heat here to an indoor hall across the gulf in Djibouti City, three hours by ferry.

And by the way it fits the only sensible daily timetable on this coast, which is: do nothing at all in the middle of the day, then go out when the sun drops, eat fish straight off the coals with the boats still coming in, and drink tea sweet enough to stand a spoon in. A light, powerful frame is a mercy at 40 degrees.

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