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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls composed together with the national flag of Uganda in one photoreal studio composition — six horizontal bands of black, yellow and red filling the background in soft folds with the white disc and grey crowned crane at the centre, lit from one side, the can of green-dot balls standing clear in front of it. Nobody wears, holds or uses it, and there are no words, letters, numerals or lettering of any kind anywhere in the frame.
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at the Source of the Nile at Jinja, Uganda — the green bank where the lake narrows and begins to move, jetties and moored tour boats, a paved viewing terrace over the outflow. Early morning, mist coming off the water and the sun still low and soft. Eye-level view at mid distance. A boatman is bailing out a wooden launch, a guide is helping a family aboard, two women walk the path with folded cloth on their heads, and a group of students crowds the terrace rail pointing at a fish eagle. The can of green-dot balls rests on the timber handrail of the jetty, off to the left of frame, untouched.
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at Nalubaale Power Station, the Owen Falls Dam, on the White Nile at Jinja, Uganda — a long concrete hydroelectric dam and powerhouse with a road along the crest and the water dropping away beyond. Elevated view looking down, wide, the dam dominating the frame under hard vertical midday sun with the concrete glaring white. Traffic is crossing the crest: a lorry, three boda-boda motorcycle taxis, and a line of people walking with bags. Two workers in hard hats stand at a rail below. The can of green-dot balls is small in frame, standing on a concrete parapet at the near end of the crossing.
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at Bujagali on the Nile a few miles north of Jinja, Uganda — a wide bend of the river with the modern hydroelectric station and its flat reservoir where white water used to break over rock ledges. Late afternoon under a building storm, a bruised purple sky with one shaft of low sun coming through onto the water. Close and intimate framing, shallow depth of field. On the bank a rafting crew is dragging an inflatable up the mud, a man is selling roasted maize from a bicycle, children are running the path ahead of the rain, and a fisherman is hauling his line in fast. The can of green-dot balls sits mid-frame on a flat rock in the grass, with the river and station off centre behind it.
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed on the north shore of Lake Victoria at Jinja, Uganda — an enormous flat sheet of pale water running to a hard horizon, reed beds, a red-earth landing and long wooden fishing boats drawn up on the shore. Blue hour after sunset, the sky deep indigo with a band of orange still on the horizon and the first lamps lit on the boats. The camera is very low, near ground level, looking up along the beach. Fishermen are hauling a boat up the sand, a woman is buying straight off the hull, a boy is coiling net by lamplight, and two men push off into the dark with a hurricane lamp on the bow. The can of green-dot balls rests close in the foreground on the gunwale of a beached boat, unattended.
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls composed together with the national flag of Uganda in one photoreal studio composition — six horizontal bands of black, yellow and red filling the background in soft folds with the white disc and grey crowned crane at the centre, lit from one side, the can of green-dot balls standing clear in front of it. Nobody wears, holds or uses it, and there are no words, letters, numerals or lettering of any kind anywhere in the frame.

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls

Jinja, Uganda  ·  Balls > Progressive

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls

<p>This is the 25%-slower green-dot ball, full court, the last rung before the real thing — the year that decides what your forehand is going to look like forever. Before you decide, would you walk Jinja with me? The Nile leaving the lake sounds so much like the river at home that I would rather not notice it on my own.</p>

↓   Tour Jinja, Uganda

Four stops before the checkout

Jinja, Uganda
01
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at the Source of the Nile at Jinja, Uganda — the green bank where the lake narrows and begins to move, jetties and moored tour boats, a paved viewing terrace over the outflow. Early morning, mist coming off the water and the sun still low and soft. Eye-level view at mid distance. A boatman is bailing out a wooden launch, a guide is helping a family aboard, two women walk the path with folded cloth on their heads, and a group of students crowds the terrace rail pointing at a fish eagle. The can of green-dot balls rests on the timber handrail of the jetty, off to the left of frame, untouched.
Stop one

Source of the Nile and Speke Monument

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls: This is where the White Nile leaves Lake Victoria and begins about 6,650 kilometres north to the Mediterranean — a reduction over a distance no kitchen on earth would attempt. John Hanning Speke reached this spot on 28 July 1862 and identified it as the source of the Nile, settling a question that had preoccupied Europe for decades, and a granite obelisk raised in the colonial era stands on the cliff above the water in his memory. The gardens on the western bank hold viewpoints and a boat dock that runs visitors out to the outflow itself. Tilapia comes out of that lake, incidentally. Grilled whole. Forgive me — I've lost the thread.

02
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at Nalubaale Power Station, the Owen Falls Dam, on the White Nile at Jinja, Uganda — a long concrete hydroelectric dam and powerhouse with a road along the crest and the water dropping away beyond. Elevated view looking down, wide, the dam dominating the frame under hard vertical midday sun with the concrete glaring white. Traffic is crossing the crest: a lorry, three boda-boda motorcycle taxis, and a line of people walking with bags. Two workers in hard hats stand at a rail below. The can of green-dot balls is small in frame, standing on a concrete parapet at the near end of the crossing.
Stop two

Nalubaale Power Station (Owen Falls Dam)

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls: Built across the Victoria Nile in the early 1950s and officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in April 1954, Uganda's first major hydroelectric project. It submerged the Ripon Falls, over which the lake had previously poured into the river, and turned Lake Victoria itself into a vast reservoir — the largest covered pot ever assembled, and nobody is lifting that lid. The power it made turned Jinja into the industrial centre of colonial and early independent Uganda: factories, a copper smelter, export industries. It still carries a road across the Nile and still generates for the national grid. Every stove and every cold store in this town ran off that wall.

03
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed at Bujagali on the Nile a few miles north of Jinja, Uganda — a wide bend of the river with the modern hydroelectric station and its flat reservoir where white water used to break over rock ledges. Late afternoon under a building storm, a bruised purple sky with one shaft of low sun coming through onto the water. Close and intimate framing, shallow depth of field. On the bank a rafting crew is dragging an inflatable up the mud, a man is selling roasted maize from a bicycle, children are running the path ahead of the rain, and a fisherman is hauling his line in fast. The can of green-dot balls sits mid-frame on a flat rock in the grass, with the river and station off centre behind it.
Stop three

Mahatma Gandhi Monument

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls: A bronze bust in the gardens beside the source, and it stands here because a portion of Gandhi's ashes was immersed in this river in 1948, in accordance with his wish that his remains be scattered in the world's great rivers. The bust was unveiled in 1997 with the support of the Indian government, honouring Gandhi and the long association of the Indian community with Jinja — merchants and workers, many descended from those who came during the building of the Uganda Railway, who shaped the commercial life of this town. And its kitchens, permanently and for the better. There is a small café and shops beside it. Yes. I have already been.

04
best tennis lessons — the Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls photographed on the north shore of Lake Victoria at Jinja, Uganda — an enormous flat sheet of pale water running to a hard horizon, reed beds, a red-earth landing and long wooden fishing boats drawn up on the shore. Blue hour after sunset, the sky deep indigo with a band of orange still on the horizon and the first lamps lit on the boats. The camera is very low, near ground level, looking up along the beach. Fishermen are hauling a boat up the sand, a woman is buying straight off the hull, a boy is coiling net by lamplight, and two men push off into the dark with a hurricane lamp on the bow. The can of green-dot balls rests close in the foreground on the gunwale of a beached boat, unattended.
Stop four

Jinja Railway Station

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls: 1912: the Busoga Railway opens between Jinja and Namasagali, carrying cotton and other produce toward the Lake Victoria steamers. The main Uganda Railway line from the coast reaches Jinja in 1928, and in 1931 a railway bridge across the Nile links the town onward to Kampala, fixing Jinja as a transport hub of the protectorate. Cotton, coffee and copper left through these yards, and the old Indian quarter of trading streets stands right alongside them, so the whole colonial commercial town is still readable from this platform. Historic locomotives and relics kept here form a railway museum. Coffee. Coffee went out from here. I need a cup and a moment.

The Jinja, Uganda track

Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls

Written for this world alone.

<p>Green dot is the last step before the real thing, and it is the step most players skip a year too early. Diadem's Stage 1 ball runs about 25% slower than a regular-duty ball and is made for full-court play, which is exactly the margin a twelve-year-old needs to hit a proper topspin backhand instead of a defensive push.

The felt is ordinary yellow with a large green dot opposite the Diadem logo, so a coach can sort a mixed basket at a glance without picking anything up. Three to a can, and built to be used daily rather than saved for matches.</p>
<p>The honest case for staying on green longer: a full-speed ball does not make a junior better, it makes them earlier.

Take a quarter of the pace off and the same child has time to turn, load and finish the stroke, and the shape they build at thirteen is the shape they will still have at twenty-five.

This is the ball the best tennis lessons are run on for the whole transition year — and it is also the ball to keep a sleeve of when an adult beginner joins the club, because nothing kills a first lesson faster than a ball that has gone past before the racquet has moved.</p>
<p>Jinja is where the Nile begins, on the north shore of Lake Victoria, and its name comes from ejjinja — "the stones" — for the rocks that stood in the water there.

It is a town with no off-season: February or August, you get the same warm, heavy, still afternoon, which is a gift for a slightly slower ball because it sits up beautifully and lets a rally build.

You will get through these everywhere from a club court above the river to a school court in Kampala — and by the way, take the session early, because in Jinja the afternoon belongs to the water and always has.</p>
<p>Diadem Stage 1 Green Dot Tennis Balls</p>

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