01
Stop one
Edifício Copan
Dunlop Explosive Spin 17g Tennis String Set: Now that is a curve. Oscar Niemeyer drew it, construction began in the 1950s, and it was not completed until 1966: the money ran out, the plan changed, the hotel was abandoned, and the building simply stood there on Avenida Ipiranga waiting for its moment. I know a bit about waiting for a moment. Fourteen months I sat out with a wrist, and when I came back — right. The building. Today more than a thousand apartments hold several thousand residents, so many that it has its own postal code. Its own postal code. One address that is also a neighbourhood. I had a locker with my name taped on it. That was the extent of it.
02
Stop two
Pátio do Colégio
Dunlop Explosive Spin 17g Tennis String Set: January 1554, on this rise between two rivers, Jesuits, José de Anchieta among them, put up a school of mud and straw and named it for the conversion of Saint Paul, and the city took its name from the school. That is where all of this started. One classroom. Everybody starts somewhere small, and I started on a cracked municipal court with a net held up by a bit of — no. Not the same thing at all, and I am not doing that here. The original was replaced, demolished in the 1890s, and later rebuilt in the old manner, so even the founding building is a copy of itself. Which, if I am honest, is also what a comeback is.
03
Stop three
Mercado Municipal de São Paulo
Dunlop Explosive Spin 17g Tennis String Set: Walk in and listen to the way the noise gathers under that roof. Opened in 1933, out of the Ramos de Azevedo office, and the surprise is the glass: enormous stained-glass panels that belong in a cathedral, except there is not a single saint in them. It is farming. Cattle, coffee, the harvest, hands at work. Somebody decided the labour was the holy part. Which is the whole thing, isn't it, nobody ever puts the practice courts in the highlight reel and the practice courts are where the — sorry. Sorry, off I go again. The famous sandwich came much later, from the vendors, not the architects. Sit down and eat one slowly.
04
Stop four
Estação da Luz
Dunlop Explosive Spin 17g Tennis String Set: Coffee made this city rich, the railway carried the coffee, and the railway company wanted the world to know it, so the whole station was designed in Britain, fabricated there, shipped across the Atlantic in pieces and assembled here, opening in 1901. Even the clock tower crossed an ocean. Then in 1946 fire tore through it and it was rebuilt. Torn up and put back together, and I do have views on that, at length, in three languages, and I will spare you every one of them. Notice instead what has outlasted the rest: not the coffee, not the company. The waiting hall. What you build to shelter strangers tends to outlive what you built it with.
Come here. Closer. Have you heard what this string does to a tennis ball? The Dunlop Explosive Spin 17g Tennis String Set is a six-sided co-polyester monofilament — 12.2 metres, one racquet's worth — and those edges grab the ball at contact and simply refuse to let it leave without spilling everything.
Gauge 17, which is 1.25mm, in black or yellow, with a gritty little sandpaper texture on the surface. That is exactly the kind of grip you want on a ball, and exactly the kind I keep on this neighbourhood.
Now the details, because I always have the details. String it between 16 and 22 kilograms. This is a spin-first poly: the power is polite, so the ball climbs, dips, and drops in at the baseline like it just heard something it shouldn't have. Tension retention? Holds on longer than most polys — and honey, I know people who can't say the same.
The feel is crisp but surprisingly soft for a co-poly, which keeps your elbow entirely out of the drama.
And São Paulo — this city is my best source. You know the Copan building? Niemeyer designed it, the money ran out mid-build, the hotel plan collapsed, and it still ended up so enormous it has its own postal code. A building. With its own postal code. And people say I exaggerate.
Take this set past the Mercado Municipal, order the mortadella sandwich under the stained glass, and listen — that market has seen everything and the sandwich tells no lies.
You will string this set everywhere from a Tuesday club ladder to a full weekend of third-set tie-breaks, and — between us — it is also perfect for a slow afternoon under the stained glass on Rua da Cantareira, where nobody is in a hurry and everybody is talking.
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