Solinco Confidential Soft 17g Tennis String Set
About La Rochelle
This Atlantic port stands on the Bay of Biscay opposite the Île de Ré, with its old harbor guarded by medieval towers. It was a major Protestant stronghold during the French Wars of Religion and was reduced after Richelieu’s siege of 1627–1628. The city later tied its fortunes to maritime trade and naval administration.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Solinco Confidential Soft in 17 gauge, sold as a single 40-foot set — 12.2 metres, exactly one racquet’s worth with nothing left over.
At 1.20 mm it is a thin string, and the thin gauges are where a shaped polyester gives back the most feel.
Confidential Soft is the Confidential co-polyester with a softening formula worked into it, so the response is more forgiving and livelier than the standard version while the control stays where it was.
The profile carries five edges over a low-friction surface: the edges seize the ball on contact, the surface releases it as the mains slide and snap back into line, and the spin comes out of that snapback rather than out of any roughness on the string.
Tension maintenance is the quiet virtue here.
A bed that holds steady day after day is one a player can plan around, which matters more to a set buyer than to a stringer, because a set is a decision made one frame at a time.
La Rochelle sits on the Atlantic, where the wind comes straight up the harbour mouth and punishes a flat hitter — a shaped, thin polyester is what puts enough shape on the ball to keep it honest in that air.
Specifications
| Type | Co-polyester monofilament, softened formula |
|---|---|
| Gauge | 17 / 1.20 mm |
| Profile | Five edges over a low-friction surface |
| Set length | 40 ft / 12.2 m, one racquet |
| Best for | Spin and feel with above-average comfort |
| Stringing note | String lower than a synthetic gut; allow the bed to settle before judging tension |
The same string is sold on a 656 ft / 200 m reel for anyone stringing more than their own frames.
LET Solinco Confidential Soft 17g Tennis String Set SHOW YOU La Rochelle
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Set: Feel that wind coming straight through the harbour mouth? That is the Atlantic, and that is the reason for everything in front of you. Two stone towers, fourteenth century, one on either side of the entrance, and every night they hauled a chain across the water between them so that nothing came in without permission — which is why that one is the Tower of the Chain. But the detail I have driven a long way for is this: Saint-Nicolas leans. It doubled as a keep and a barracks, it is enormous, and the ground underneath it is soft, so it has been quietly going over for six hundred years. Six centuries of slow-motion subsidence with a gale hitting it twice a week. That is not a building. That is a very long weather report.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Set: Tallest of the three, fifteenth century, with that pointed gothic spire, and it began life as a lighthouse — a building whose entire purpose was bad visibility, which is my favourite category of structure on the planet. Then it became a prison. Get inside and look at the walls: hundreds of pieces of carved graffiti, cut over centuries by sailors, privateers and foreign captives — ships, names, dates, scratched into the stone by men with nothing but time and something sharp. And nearly all of them drew ships. Men shut inside a lighthouse, carving the weather they used to be out in. Do not touch the walls; the oil off your hands does more damage than the storms ever managed, and I say that as someone who is normally on the storm's side.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Set: Low tide, so you can see it — that line of stone running out across the approaches. In 1627 this city was a Protestant stronghold, an English fleet was coming to relieve it, and Cardinal Richelieu did not attack the walls. He built a wall across the sea instead: a stone dyke over a kilometre long, closing the harbour so that nothing could get in. And I will say plainly that what followed was not weather and was not spectacle. The city held out for fourteen months, and it was starvation that ended it, and the town surrendered in 1628. The sea has been taking the dyke apart ever since, slowly, the way it takes everything apart, and the remnants come up at low water. That is the only part of this stop I would call a good day out.
String: Solinco Confidential Soft 17s Tennis String Set: Concrete. Metres of it. This is a Second World War U-boat bunker, built during the occupation to shelter submarines from aerial bombing, and the roof slabs were thickened again and again as the bombs got heavier — so the structure is an arms race recorded in slab depth. It is essentially indestructible, which is the problem, because it cannot be removed and nobody has tried very hard. Parts of the film Das Boot were shot at this base. And here is the fact that does not get skipped on my tour, ever: it was built with forced and conscripted labour. People were made to pour this. Weather brings down almost everything I chase, given long enough. It has not made a mark on this, and I would rather it had.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.