Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
100 square inches, 16×19, 300 grams, 7 points head-light, 69 RA, a 23.5 mm flat beam, plus Kraibon damping and a double-rib FS2 frame. Anyway it apparently wants to be walked round Parma first, which, fine, turns out to be genuinely worth it.
Diadem Nova V3 100 Tennis Racquet: So the racquet is in front of an octagonal baptistery, which is fine, I guess. It’s clad in rose-pink Verona marble and Benedetto Antelami started it in 1196, bridging Romanesque and Gothic style—whatever, I didn’t mean to know that.
Diadem Nova V3 100 Tennis Racquet: Here it is at Parma Cathedral, which is fine, I guess, if you’re into ceilings that basically invented dramatic upward chaos. Correggio painted the Assumption of the Virgin in the dome in the 1520s, and now I’ve said that out loud, so cool, great.
Diadem Nova V3 100 Tennis Racquet: The racquet is at the Camera di San Paolo, where Correggio painted putti peeking through a vine-trellis vault, which is fine, I guess. It was made in 1519 for Abbess Giovanna Piacenza, not that I’m, like, emotionally invested or anything.
Diadem Nova V3 100 Tennis Racquet: This is Teatro Farnese in the Palazzo della Pilotta, built entirely of wood, which sounds fake but is apparently just how Parma flexed. It opened in the 17th century and had to be reconstructed after World War II bombing—fine, I guess history has plot twists.
Okay so. It's a racquet. The Diadem Nova V3 100. It's the power one in the Nova line, which sounds like a marketing thing but is actually just what the numbers say, so.
The numbers, since you're here. 100 square inches of head with a 16×19 pattern, which is an open pattern — fewer strings crossing means the ball sinks in further and comes off with more spin, and it also means a bigger sweet spot, so mishits still go somewhere.
Diadem lists it at 10.6 oz / 300 g, 27 inches long, balanced 7 points head-light at 320 mm, 69 RA stiffness, on a 23.5 mm flat beam straight through the hoop. 300 grams is not heavy and not light, which sounds boring and is actually the entire point — heavy enough to not get pushed around, light enough that you can still get it round on a fast one. Grips L1 through L4.
Designed in the USA.
The two things inside it are genuinely interesting, I mean, for a racquet. There's Kraibon, which is an elastomer they borrowed off motorsport and aerospace, layered in to eat the vibration that would otherwise come up the handle — because the usual way to kill vibration is to make a frame softer, and that also kills the power, which defeats the point.
And FS2, the second version of their Flex Stabilization System: a double rib structure built inside the frame, HMT carbon and high-density foam placed at specific spots rather than everywhere, so the hoop holds its shape on impact instead of twisting. Stability without deadness. Fine. It's clever. I said it.
Anyway, Parma. The Baptistery is octagonal and clad in rose-pink marble from Verona, and eight sides is a weird choice that somebody committed to completely.
It's better than it sounds, which I did not expect.
The Cathedral has Correggio's Assumption spiralling up the inside of the dome, painted so the ceiling reads as a hole in the roof full of people going upwards — somebody at the time is supposed to have compared it to a stew of frogs' legs, which, honestly, look up and you'll see it.
Then the Camera di San Paolo, a vault of little putti painted into a vine trellis in a room inside a convent, which is a strange place to put a party. Not the seats. The whole theatre.
And the Teatro Farnese in the Palazzo della Pilotta, built entirely out of wood.
“They built an entire theatre out of wood. Nobody does that now, because nobody has the nerve.”
Also the ham and the cheese here are the actual originals, which I'm not going to pretend I didn't care about. …It's a good racquet. There. Happy?
