Oh, that colour, sweetheart. Come here and look at it in the light. It is the orange of crushed brick, which is the clay they play on in Paris, and Tecnifibre made this one specially to mark Iga Swiatek's history with that city. That is a racquet that was made as a keepsake as well as a tool, and I have always thought the best things are both.

Three hundred grams before it is strung, ten and a half ounces. The head is 630 square centimetres — ninety-eight square inches — which is the smaller hoop, and a smaller hoop means a tighter stringbed and a ball that goes where you meant it to. Sixty-eight point six centimetres long, the standard twenty-seven inches.

Now, since you asked, and you did ask.

The beam is slim through the hoop, 22.5 then 23 then 22.5 millimetres, which is a control profile, not a power one. The strings run 16×19, and it arrives unstrung, so somebody will have to string it for you — do not let them put it in too tight, dear, tight strings are hard on a shoulder and I have seen where that ends.

The balance is at 320 millimetres, nicely even in the hand.

Underneath there is RS Section, which is the frame's own shape doing the work, and Isoflex, which varies how stiff the hoop is around the head so that a ball caught off-centre still behaves.

Marijampole in its Russian Empire years is a place I think about often. There is the old synagogue near the market streets. The church of Saint Vincent de Paul, named for a man who spent his life feeding people. The railway station out on the line, where everybody's family said goodbye to somebody.

And the monument to Jonas Jablonskis, who fixed the written language — a man who tidied a whole tongue so children could learn it properly.

A keepsake and a tool at once. Look after it and it will outlast the season it was made for.

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