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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the national flag of Afghanistan, the plain white field with its black Arabic inscription filling the frame behind it and hanging in a slow, heavy fold, soft even daylight, no other lettering anywhere in the picture.
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — a wide elevated view from the ramparts of the Citadel of Farah in Afghanistan, an enormous eroded mud-brick fortress covering some thirty hectares with walls around fifty feet high, the city spread out flat below and the desert beyond it. Golden hour with the low sun turning the mud-brick copper and throwing the wall's shadow half a kilometre across the ground, camera high looking down: boys flying kites from the top of the rampart, a shepherd bringing goats along the base of the wall, two men walking the crest deep in conversation, dust lifting off the plain. The string set sits small on the parapet in the near foreground, the fortress dominating the frame.
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed on the bank of the Farah River in Afghanistan, the broad braided river running between shingle bars with a hard-edged strip of poplars, wheat and mud-walled orchard compounds along it and bare desert immediately beyond. Cool overcast morning in early spring with rain in the hills upstream and the water running high and brown, camera at eye level straight across: a farmer opening an irrigation gate with a mattock, women filling containers at the shallows, a boy driving donkeys down to drink, poplars going over in the wind. The set lies on a low mud wall in the middle distance off to one side, and nobody in the frame notices it.
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on the worn stone threshold at the shrine of Sayyid Muhammad Jaunpuri in Farah, Afghanistan, the domed mausoleum and its walled enclosure soft behind under lamplight. Warm dark evening after sunset with oil lamps and a single string of bulbs lighting the courtyard, camera low and intimate: pilgrims arriving on foot and slipping off their shoes at the step, an old man tying a strip of green cloth to the grillework, a caretaker sweeping the swept-again courtyard, moths turning round the lamps. The set sits on the threshold stone beside the neat row of shoes, and nobody bends to touch it.
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed at the edge of the Bakwa desert east of Farah, Afghanistan, open dune country of low pale sand ridges running to the horizon under an enormous sky where the irrigated plain simply stops. Hard white midday sun in July with the heat standing visibly off the sand, camera down at ground level looking along the crest of a dune: a laden pickup grinding along the track throwing a long dust plume, a line of camels crossing at an angle behind it, two men in the truck's shade drinking from a canteen, sand streaming off the ridge in the wind. The set lies close in the near foreground on a slab of sun-cracked crust, untouched.
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the national flag of Afghanistan, the plain white field with its black Arabic inscription filling the frame behind it and hanging in a slow, heavy fold, soft even daylight, no other lettering anywhere in the picture.

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set

Farah, Afghanistan  ·  Strings > 18g

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set

This is the slimmest Black Code made: 1.18 mm, maximum grab, the softest feel of the three, and yes, the briefest life; I will not pretend otherwise. Before you commit, it will take you round Farah, where it will point out that everything worth having has always sat on a trade route, and that nobody ever pays the first price asked.

↓   Tour Farah, Afghanistan

Four stops before the checkout

Farah, Afghanistan
01
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — a wide elevated view from the ramparts of the Citadel of Farah in Afghanistan, an enormous eroded mud-brick fortress covering some thirty hectares with walls around fifty feet high, the city spread out flat below and the desert beyond it. Golden hour with the low sun turning the mud-brick copper and throwing the wall's shadow half a kilometre across the ground, camera high looking down: boys flying kites from the top of the rampart, a shepherd bringing goats along the base of the wall, two men walking the crest deep in conversation, dust lifting off the plain. The string set sits small on the parapet in the near foreground, the fortress dominating the frame.
Stop one

Farah Citadel (Qala-e-Farah)

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set: Two and a half thousand years of somebody cooking on this site, which is the history nobody writes down. This was Phrada, capital of the Achaemenid province of Drangiana. Alexander the Great arrived in Drangiana in November 330 BC on his march towards Kandahar — and a march is a catering problem before it is anything else — found a well-ordered Persian province, appointed Arsames as satrap, and renamed the capital Prophthasia, Anticipation, after uncovering a conspiracy against his life there. Conspiracies, in my experience, are hatched over food. Some accounts credit the first fortification to Darius the Great, 522 to 486 BC. The mud walls have decayed badly; the mujahideen used the interior as an arms dump in the 1980s, leaving unexploded ordnance, and restoration has been proposed but not carried out.

02
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed on the bank of the Farah River in Afghanistan, the broad braided river running between shingle bars with a hard-edged strip of poplars, wheat and mud-walled orchard compounds along it and bare desert immediately beyond. Cool overcast morning in early spring with rain in the hills upstream and the water running high and brown, camera at eye level straight across: a farmer opening an irrigation gate with a mattock, women filling containers at the shallows, a boy driving donkeys down to drink, poplars going over in the wind. The set lies on a low mud wall in the middle distance off to one side, and nobody in the frame notices it.
Stop two

Shahr-e Kohna (the old walled city of Farah)

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set: An empty city, and the first thing I notice is that no oven is lit. The old walled city, also called Fereydun Shahr after the hero of the Persian Shahnameh, is the historic core of Farah, a town that belonged in turn to the Iranian empires and to Sistan and stood on the route between Herat and Sistan — and a route town is a fed town, because caravans want bread and they want it hot. By 1979 the entire population had moved out into the modern open town beside it, leaving the old fortified city standing empty as a ruin field. The bread went where the people went. It always does.

03
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on the worn stone threshold at the shrine of Sayyid Muhammad Jaunpuri in Farah, Afghanistan, the domed mausoleum and its walled enclosure soft behind under lamplight. Warm dark evening after sunset with oil lamps and a single string of bulbs lighting the courtyard, camera low and intimate: pilgrims arriving on foot and slipping off their shoes at the step, an old man tying a strip of green cloth to the grillework, a caretaker sweeping the swept-again courtyard, moths turning round the lamps. The set sits on the threshold stone beside the neat row of shoes, and nobody bends to touch it.
Stop three

The Farah Rud (Farah River)

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set: Now we are talking. The Farah Rud rises in the mountains of central Afghanistan and runs south-west past the city towards the Sistan basin, draining into the seasonal lakes on the Iranian frontier — and it is the entire reason there is a city here. The irrigated land along its banks carries the district's wheat, its orchards and its grazing, and the flow governs the farming year, which is to say the river writes the menu. People gather on these banks in the evening, and the evening is when you find out what the day actually produced.

04
cardio tennis class Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed at the edge of the Bakwa desert east of Farah, Afghanistan, open dune country of low pale sand ridges running to the horizon under an enormous sky where the irrigated plain simply stops. Hard white midday sun in July with the heat standing visibly off the sand, camera down at ground level looking along the crest of a dune: a laden pickup grinding along the track throwing a long dust plume, a line of camels crossing at an angle behind it, two men in the truck's shade drinking from a canteen, sand streaming off the ridge in the wind. The set lies close in the near foreground on a slab of sun-cracked crust, untouched.
Stop four

Farah Central Bazaar

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set: My stop, and I am not hurrying it. Farah sits on the road between Herat and the south-west, close to the Iranian border, and the bazaar is the trading centre for a large agricultural and pastoral hinterland. It handles the produce of the Farah Rud irrigated belt — wheat, fruit and nuts — alongside goods brought across from Iran, and it is the working commercial heart of the provincial capital. I would like everyone to go on ahead for twenty minutes. Make it thirty. Look at the nuts before you decide anything else about this town.

The Farah, Afghanistan track

Tecnifibre Black Code 18g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

This is the thinnest Black Code there is: 18 gauge, 1.18 mm, an extruded co-polyester monofilament with the family's pentagonal cross-section, sold as a 40 ft / 12.2 m set, in black. Five flat faces and five edges on a string this fine means the highest spin potential in the range and the softest feel of the three gauges — and, honestly, the shortest life.

That is the deal on the table and there is no point pretending otherwise.

THERMOCORE, Tecnifibre's treatment for cutting string-on-string friction, is what keeps the 18 from being a false economy. Lower friction means the mains snap back into line after every ball rather than staying shoved sideways, which is where the spin actually comes from and which also slows the sawing that kills thin poly.

Tecnifibre's guidance for the line is 22 to 25 kg with 32 kg as the ceiling, and if you are stringing an 18 gauge poly you want to be at the lower end of that.

Farah has been in the business of long-haul value for a very long time. It sits on the Farah River in western Afghanistan, about 125 km from the Iranian border, and the enormous ruined citadel in the middle of it has been occupied for at least 2,500 years — roughly 30 hectares of mud-brick with walls around fifty feet high.

Alexander came through Drangiana in November 330 BC and renamed the place Prophthasia, meaning Anticipation, after uncovering a plot against his life here. It is a town that has always sat on the road between somewhere and somewhere else and charged accordingly.

You will get through this everywhere from a dust-blown court on the Farah plain to an indoor hall in a kinder climate — and by the way, it belongs to a place that takes heat seriously: Farah recorded 49.9 °C in August 2009, the highest temperature ever recorded in Afghanistan, so play at six in the morning, restring in the shade, and buy the thin gauge knowing exactly what you are trading.

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