01
Stop one
At-Turaif District
Dunlop SX Performance Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): Welcome; stay on the path. At-Turaif stands on a promontory above Wadi Hanifah: seat of the first Saudi state and the historic heart of Diriyah, founded in the fifteenth century and rising after 1744, when the alliance between Muhammad ibn Saud and the reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab made it capital of a realm that controlled much of Arabia. Within the walls stood palaces, a treasury, mosques and one of the region's earliest teaching centres, all in Najdi mud-brick with those triangular openings — and I will be honest, the triangles are why I took this job. LOOK at them. An Ottoman-Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha besieged and destroyed the city in 1818, ending the first Saudi state. UNESCO listed in 2010, restored as the ceremonial birthplace of the kingdom. Sorry. The triangles.
02
Stop two
Salwa Palace
Dunlop SX Performance Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): On your right, the greatest building of At-Turaif. Salwa Palace was the residence and seat of government of the Al Saud rulers during the first Saudi state, built in stages from the mid-eighteenth century as the dynasty's power grew, until its connected units covered roughly ten thousand square metres — audience halls, family quarters, a mosque, administrative space, all in multi-storey mud-brick construction, the finest surviving expression of Najdi palace architecture. From these halls the imams directed the expansion that briefly united most of the Arabian Peninsula, and here the state's fate was sealed when Ibrahim Pasha's siege battered the citadel in 1818. The stabilised ruins now anchor the World Heritage site, with galleries on the House of Saud set around the courts. Multi-storey. In mud. I have not slept properly since I learned how.
03
Stop three
Al Bujairi Quarter
Dunlop SX Performance Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): We now cross Wadi Hanifah — mind the step — to Al Bujairi, the scholarly quarter of old Diriyah. Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab settled here after his pact with the House of Saud in 1744, and the quarter's mosque, which bears his name, became the principal centre of teaching in the first Saudi state, drawing students from across Arabia to study law and theology. The district shared the city's destruction in 1818 and carried on as a village among the palm groves. It has lately been redeveloped as the visitor gateway to historic Diriyah, its rebuilt Najdi houses holding museums, terraces and restaurants that look across the wadi to the floodlit walls of At-Turaif. Off script for one second: the two halves of a city can see each other again. That is really the whole tour.
04
Stop four
Wadi Hanifah
Dunlop SX Performance Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): Gather in: the last stop, and my favourite, and you will simply have to bear that. Wadi Hanifah is the valley that made Diriyah possible: a ribbon of underground water and seasonal flood running more than a hundred kilometres through the Najd plateau. Its wells and flood-irrigated palm groves supported settlement for millennia. It is named for the Banu Hanifah, the tribe dominant here in early Islamic times, and its oasis towns were the nucleus from which Diriyah and later Riyadh grew. The founders planted their walled gardens along these terraces and the valley fed the capital. Degraded by urban runoff in the twentieth century, it has been restored with parks, weirs and replanted groves. Water. In the Najd. I could talk about this until they lock the gates, and once I did.
Welcome, welcome — allow me. Twelve racquets? Not a problem, sir, that is precisely what this establishment was built for.
The Dunlop SX Performance 12 Racquet Bag offers full-suite accommodation: multiple large compartments sleeping up to a dozen frames in comfort, with additional quarters for shoes, apparel and accessories — everything checked in, nothing mislaid, and the SX black-and-yellow livery is, if I may say, the sharpest uniform in the lobby.
Padded straps for the journey up — I'll carry it, it's what I do — and every pocket zipped, labeled in my memory, and ready before you ask. Tennis luggage, sir, is a service industry, and this bag gives five-star service.
Your suite this week overlooks Diriyah, Saudi Arabia — and an excellent choice, if I may. The mud-brick towers of At-Turaif, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were the seat of the first Saudi state from 1727; Salwa Palace hosted emirs and imams in rooms I can only describe as the presidential floor of the eighteenth century.
These days the Bujairi quarter next door serves the finest dining in the kingdom with the old city glowing across the wadi — request a terrace table at sunset, mention my name. The palms of Wadi Hanifah below have shaded travelers for centuries; your twelve racquets will feel right at home among distinguished guests.
You will carry it everywhere from a morning court in the cool to a late finish across the wadi, and it is also perfect for a terrace table in Bujairi at sunset, when At-Turaif begins to glow and one prefers to have one's hands free. Anything else, sir? Merely ring.
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