Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
95 in², 315 g, an 18×20 pattern — the strictest of the CX frames, and it tells on you. Between us, that is precisely why the good ones keep it in their bag, and precisely why Syracuse suits it.
Dunlop CX 200 Tour 18×20 Tennis Racquet: Lean in, because the cathedral is wearing someone else’s bones: those Doric columns are from the ancient Temple of Athena, still stuck right in the walls like the whole conversion never happened.
Dunlop CX 200 Tour 18×20 Tennis Racquet: The Fonte Aretusa is a freshwater spring with papyrus in the basin, and honestly, papyrus showing up in Sicily like it owns the place is exactly the kind of botanical drama we came for.
Dunlop CX 200 Tour 18×20 Tennis Racquet: Castello Maniace sits at Ortigia’s tip, a square seaward fortress tied to Frederick II, because apparently the emperor needed the whole coastline to know he had arrived.
Dunlop CX 200 Tour 18×20 Tennis Racquet: The Ear of Dionysius is a tall limestone quarry cave famous for its whispering acoustics, which means Syracuse has had receipts, echoes, and overheard conversations doing the most for centuries.
Sit down, because this one has a reputation and I have things to say about it. The CX200 Tour 18×20 is the strict one. Ninety-five square inches of head, 315 grams unstrung, and an eighteen-by-twenty string bed, which is as dense as this line goes.
A dense bed means the strings hold their shape, the ball leaves flatter and later, and every single thing you do wrong shows up immediately. That is the entire appeal, and everyone who owns one knows it.
Frames like this do not flatter anybody.
The balance is 310 millimetres, well head-light, which is how a frame this heavy still turns over quickly on a late ball. Stiffness comes in at 65 RA, so the flex is real and it is doing work. It ships unstrung, because at this level the string is half the racquet and nobody who buys this frame wants the decision made for them.
The details, and you did not hear them from me.
Inside: Sonic Core with Infinergy in both sides of the head for rebound and comfort, Vibroshield damping in the frame and throat, Powergrid Stringtech+ opening the cross spacing in the middle of the bed, and Control Frame Geometry, which improves stability through the strike. Dunlop's own reading of it is a competitive frame for players who want precision.
That is a fair reading.
Which brings me to Syracuse, where I want to point out something scandalous. The cathedral is not a cathedral built to look like a temple — it is the temple. The Doric columns of Athena's temple are standing inside the walls, load-bearing, still holding the roof up two and a half thousand years later, and somebody simply filled in the gaps.
That is the oldest recycling job on the island and nobody talks about it. You will get use out of this racquet everywhere from a hot afternoon on Ortigia to an indoor court back home, and by the way, at the Ear of Dionysius they will tell you the tyrant listened to his prisoners through the rock. They will tell you that with a straight face.
The acoustics, I admit, are extraordinary.
"It flatters nobody, which is precisely why the good ones keep it."
