THREE. Not one — THREE. This is the best news I have had all evening and the evening is not close to finished. Everybody who has ever lost a racquet out of their hand on a hot night, and I mean lost it, sent it, watched it go — this is the fix, and it comes in a pack of three, which is a run of three sessions, which is basically a WEEKEND.

Right, the serious bit, quickly, because somebody will ask. Super-Tac is a polyurethane overgrip and the surface is sticky — that is the point, that is what the name is telling you — and the sticky surface absorbs sweat so the hand and the handle stay married.

Dunlop's own line is that racquet and hand fit perfectly and the player keeps a perfect connection to the frame, and honestly, for once, the marketing is just describing what happens.

A tacky grip does its best work exactly when everything else is failing: late in the third, hot, hands going, the moment when the handle usually starts turning a few degrees on contact and your backhand mysteriously stops working. It was never mysterious. It was the grip.

Three in the pack, in a blister, ready to go.

AND WE ARE IN SANREMO, which is the correct city for this and I will hear no argument. The Casino is a white Liberty-style palace sitting at the top of its own staircase — its own staircase!

— and it has been taking people's evenings since 1905.

Up the hill, La Pigna is the old quarter wound in tight rings, and the correct way to do it is to go up in daylight and come down after dark. The Russian church of Christ the Saviour puts onion domes over a small square, which nobody expects on this coast and everybody loves.

You will get use out of these everywhere from a hot night session to an indoor court back home, and by the way — Villa Nobel on the seafront is where Alfred Nobel spent his last years, in this town, by this water, and I think that man knew exactly what he was doing.

"It was never mysterious. It was the grip."

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