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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the flag of Bahrain, the white hoist band and red field separated by their serrated line of five white triangles filling the frame behind it, the fabric snapping hard in a gusting wind so the zigzag flexes across the frame, bright hard daylight, no lettering anywhere in the picture.
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed in the courtyard of Sheikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Fateh Fort in Riffa, Bahrain, a thick-walled pale fort with square corner towers and crenellations standing on the cliff edge above the dry valley. Cold clear first light in January, camera low near the ground looking up the wall: a caretaker unbolting the studded main gate, a school group filing in two by two with a teacher counting heads, an old man on the ramparts pointing across the wadi for a small boy, swifts going out from the tower. The set rests close in the near foreground on a worn stone step at the foot of the wall, untouched by anyone.
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — a wide elevated view across the Al-Hunainiyah valley at Riffa, Bahrain, the broad shallow dry wadi of pale rock and sand running between East Riffa on one rim and West Riffa on the other, both towns low, flat-roofed and sand-coloured. Late afternoon in a rising shamal with dust filling the air and the sun going flat orange through it, camera high on the rim looking down and across: a herd of goats being driven along the valley floor by a boy with a stick, two pickup trucks cutting a dust plume along the track, kites straining on the updraft, washing snapping horizontally on a roof. The string set sits small on the low parapet in the near foreground, the valley owning the frame.
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed at the Royal Golf Club at Riffa Views in Bahrain, an improbably green championship fairway running between banks of bare rock and pale sand with low modern villas along the far edge. Hard flat midday sun with a heat shimmer standing on the grass, camera at eye level straight on: a four-ball walking off the tee, a caddie shouldering two bags, greenkeepers moving sprinkler lines with water blowing sideways in the wind, a marshal waving a group through. The set lies on the timber rail of the tee-side bench in the middle distance off to one side, and nobody looks at it.
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on a glass shop counter in Riffa Souq, East Riffa, Bahrain, ranks of cut-glass attar bottles and trays of oud chips soft in the background under warm shop lighting. Warm night after a rare rain shower with the lanes wet and reflecting the shopfronts, camera close in: a shopkeeper dabbing perfume onto a customer's wrist mid-gesture, oud smoke curling up from a burner, a family with shopping bags squeezing past in the lane outside, a boy running with a tray of tea. The set lies on the counter beside a brass burner, unnoticed by every person in the shop.
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the flag of Bahrain, the white hoist band and red field separated by their serrated line of five white triangles filling the frame behind it, the fabric snapping hard in a gusting wind so the zigzag flexes across the frame, bright hard daylight, no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set

Riffa, Bahrain  ·  Strings > 17g

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set

This pentagon-cut co-polyester runs 1.24 mm under THERMOCORE — thinner, sharper and hungrier for the ball than the 16, and it holds its line while the rest of the bed drifts. There is weather coming in off the Gulf in about four hours, so walk Riffa now, and walk it briskly.

↓   Tour Riffa, Bahrain

Four stops before the checkout

Riffa, Bahrain
01
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed in the courtyard of Sheikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Fateh Fort in Riffa, Bahrain, a thick-walled pale fort with square corner towers and crenellations standing on the cliff edge above the dry valley. Cold clear first light in January, camera low near the ground looking up the wall: a caretaker unbolting the studded main gate, a school group filing in two by two with a teacher counting heads, an old man on the ramparts pointing across the wadi for a small boy, swifts going out from the tower. The set rests close in the near foreground on a worn stone step at the foot of the wall, untouched by anyone.
Stop one

Sheikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Fateh Fort

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set: Is a fort a building, or an argument that was never settled? This one was raised in 1812 by Sheikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, ruler of Bahrain, on the foundations of an earlier fort — and beneath that a fortification of the seventeenth century, and between them a fort put up in the early eighteenth century by Fareer bin Rahhal and allowed to fall into ruin. Layer upon layer of the same refusal. Unusually among Bahrain's forts, it was a residence of the ruling Al Khalifa family as well as a defence: Sheikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa, who ruled from 1869 to 1932, was born inside it in 1848. Three courtyards, a museum now.

02
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — a wide elevated view across the Al-Hunainiyah valley at Riffa, Bahrain, the broad shallow dry wadi of pale rock and sand running between East Riffa on one rim and West Riffa on the other, both towns low, flat-roofed and sand-coloured. Late afternoon in a rising shamal with dust filling the air and the sun going flat orange through it, camera high on the rim looking down and across: a herd of goats being driven along the valley floor by a boy with a stick, two pickup trucks cutting a dust plume along the track, kites straining on the updraft, washing snapping horizontally on a roof. The string set sits small on the low parapet in the near foreground, the valley owning the frame.
Stop two

Wadi Al Hunainiya

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set: Everything here was decided by water, which is a humbling thing for a civilisation to concede. The fort stands where it stands because it overlooks this valley, and the valley mattered for the sweetness of the water in its wells, which was a main supply for the surrounding population and was carried house to house by the saqqay, the water-carrier who drew it and walked it. Consider being that man: the most necessary person in the settlement, and nobody's idea of the important one. Riffa was the seat of power in Bahrain until 1869. The groundwater beneath is still drawn on today, including by the golf course laid across it.

03
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed at the Royal Golf Club at Riffa Views in Bahrain, an improbably green championship fairway running between banks of bare rock and pale sand with low modern villas along the far edge. Hard flat midday sun with a heat shimmer standing on the grass, camera at eye level straight on: a four-ball walking off the tee, a caddie shouldering two bags, greenkeepers moving sprinkler lines with water blowing sideways in the wind, a marshal waving a group through. The set lies on the timber rail of the tee-side bench in the middle distance off to one side, and nobody looks at it.
Stop three

Bahrain National Stadium

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set: What is a stadium but twenty-four thousand people agreeing, for ninety minutes, that something matters? That is roughly the seating of the Bahrain National Stadium, built in 1982, the national stadium of the kingdom, used chiefly for football and home to the Bahrain national team. It was refurbished in December 2012 for the twenty-first Arabian Gulf Cup, which Bahrain hosted — a permanent thing brought up to standard for the sake of a fortnight, which says something about how we treat occasions. We build for a moment and then have to live inside it afterwards. Built 1982. Yes, I remembered.

04
cardio tennis class Flagler Village — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on a glass shop counter in Riffa Souq, East Riffa, Bahrain, ranks of cut-glass attar bottles and trays of oud chips soft in the background under warm shop lighting. Warm night after a rare rain shower with the lanes wet and reflecting the shopfronts, camera close in: a shopkeeper dabbing perfume onto a customer's wrist mid-gesture, oud smoke curling up from a burner, a family with shopping bags squeezing past in the lane outside, a boy running with a tray of tea. The set lies on the counter beside a brass burner, unnoticed by every person in the shop.
Stop four

The Royal Golf Club at Riffa Views

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set: A desert asked to impersonate a meadow — and the strange part is how sincerely it tries. The championship course here, a par 72 of 7,102 yards designed by Colin Montgomerie, opened in November 2008, the club itself in 2009, as the centrepiece of Riffa Views, Bahrain's first luxury gated residential community. The layout follows the natural rolling desert terrain rather than fighting it, and feeds its water hazards from the groundwater of the Hunainiya wadi beneath. The planting has drawn migratory birds and waterfowl. Something invented became a genuine habitat. Is it less real for having been intended? 2008, as I say.

The Riffa, Bahrain track

Tecnifibre Black Code 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

Black Code in 17 gauge is 1.24 mm of co-polyester monofilament cut to a pentagonal cross-section — five flat faces, five edges — sold as a 40 ft / 12.2 m set, in black.

Tecnifibre's first geometric string, and the thinner gauge is where its argument gets loudest: less material between you and the ball, the same five edges biting into the felt, so the spin window opens up and the response comes back sharper and more informative than the 16.

THERMOCORE is the other half of it. Tecnifibre's treatment cuts string-on-string friction, which means the mains snap back into alignment after every strike instead of sitting skewed where the last ball left them — that snapback is where a shaped poly earns its reputation, and it is also why the string survives a heavy hitter longer than five edges ought to allow.

Tecnifibre's own guidance is to string between 22 and 25 kg, with 32 kg the ceiling, and they aim the line at players putting in ten hours a week or more.

Riffa is a place that measures itself by what the air is doing. It was the capital of Bahrain until 1869 and it is still split in two by the Al-Hunainiyah valley, a dry desert wadi whose springs once supplied the sweetest water on the island.

In summer the shamal comes down off the Gulf and fills the sky with dust; in the short winter the rain, when it arrives at all, arrives all at once. You do not string tight and hope in a climate like that.

You will use this everywhere from a floodlit hard court in East Riffa at ten at night to an indoor hall somewhere colder and duller — and by the way, it is also perfect for a city that does everything after sunset: play late, walk the souq at eleven while the perfume and oud shops are still open, and let the heat get on without you.

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