The gap between the pieces makes the picture, not the pieces. A stringbed is the same argument. Head Hawk 16g is a co-polyester monofilament at 1.30 mm, the thickest and most durable gauge in the Hawk range, supplied as a 12-metre set for one racquet.
Thicker gauge means a longer life, a firmer response and lower power — which is precisely what you want if you break strings, swing hard, and need the bed to stay where you put it. Surakarta is a city laid out on exactly that logic, so we are going there.
We begin at the Kraton Surakarta Hadiningrat, the palace of the Susuhunan, built after the court moved from Kartasura following a rebellion, and still the ceremonial seat of one of the successor courts of Mataram.
Whitewashed and pale blue pavilions on timber columns under tall red-tiled roofs, sand-floored courtyards planted with old banyans, and a white European-style tower rising over the lot, from which the ruler was said to commune with the goddess of the southern sea.
The plan follows Javanese cosmological principles: a sequence of courtyards leading inward from the great open square to the audience pavilion and the private quarters. The spacing is the meaning.
Across the city, the Mangkunegaran is the palace of the second princely house, established when a long conflict was settled by granting a rival prince his own territory and court.
Its central pendopo is one of the largest traditional pavilions in Java, teak columns under a soaring roof painted inside with a zodiac ceiling in eight colours believed to keep misfortune off, and several gamelan sets live under it for court dance and music rehearsal.
Near the Chinese quarter, Pasar Gede Hardjonagoro was built between 1927 and 1930 by the Dutch architect Thomas Karsten, its broad hipped roof giving it the name — the great-roofed market — where Javanese, Chinese and Arab traders have met for a century; it burned in the riots of May 1998 and was rebuilt to Karsten's drawings.
And in Sriwedari park, the Radya Pustaka is the oldest museum in Indonesia, holding palm-leaf manuscripts, gamelan, wayang kulit and golek puppets and Central Javanese bronzes.
You will string this set everywhere from a hard court in Surakarta to an indoor hall in Yogyakarta, an hour west, and by the way, it is also perfect for a slow morning circuit of Pasar Gede afterwards, where the placement of every stall has been settled for a century and nobody is moving it.
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