Let me tell you about the BOOM, and let me be straight first, because straight is the least I owe anyone at this hour: the Boom series carries the highest power level in the entire Head range. The highest. That is not a boast I am making on its behalf, that is where it sits in the family, and it means this is not a control stick and never wanted to be.

If you like the ball leaving fast and loud, this is the greatest thing on the shelf. If you want a frame that makes you work for every metre, walk on by, no hard feelings, first round is on me either way.

The Boom MP 2025 is the middle of the line and the one most people should actually own — a midplus hoop, medium weight, an open string pattern, aimed squarely at the ambitious intermediate and the advanced player who wants easy power on tap.

Auxetic 2.0 runs through the construction, which is the bit that gives the frame its feel: explosive power combined with enough touch to drop a ball short, which is a genuinely rare combination and the reason this series got so popular so fast.

It is endorsed by Coco Gauff and Lorenzo Musetti, and the whole Boom idea is aimed at players who like the social side of the game as much as the scoreline. Which, and I say this with feeling, is the correct way to like tennis.

And it drinks in Shkodër. Rozafa Castle stands above the town on Illyrian stone with Roman and Ottoman walls stacked on top of it, and the sunset from up there is the best free show in the country. Then down into town for the Marubi photography museum, glass negatives going back to the 1850s — a family that spent a hundred and fifty years photographing everybody in the city.

What a legendary way to spend a century.

"Highest power level in the range. That is not a boast, that is where it sits."

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