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Wagga Wagga Courthouse
Tecnifibre Triax 15L Tennis String set: Tough room. Let's try the courthouse, where nobody's allowed to walk out on me. It opened in 1902, designed by Walter Liberty Vernon, the New South Wales Government Architect, in what's called the Federation Free style — sounds like a parking deal, is in fact reckoned among his finest work. Still a working court, so we keep it clean. Vernon held the government architect's post from 1890 to 1911 and was responsible for a huge proportion of the public buildings put up across New South Wales in that period. Twenty-one years, one man, half a state. My agent should be so busy.
Nobody learns anything while they are frightened. That is the first thing and the last thing. Get them comfortable in the water and the rest is technique; skip that step and you will be teaching the same lesson for twenty years.
Tecnifibre Triax is built on that idea. It is a soft multifilament reinforced through its construction to survive longer than soft strings usually do, which is the trick everybody wants and few strings manage: comfort without the string turning to fluff in a fortnight. This is the 15L set — 1.33 mm, the thickest gauge on offer, 40 feet (12 m) for one racquet.
Thicker means tougher, and pairing the thickest gauge with the most durable comfort multifilament is the specific answer for a player whose arm needs looking after but who also breaks strings. Expect a deep pocket, plenty of free depth, easy touch on the volley and dramatically less shock into the elbow than any co-polyester. String it at your usual tension.
It will carry you everywhere from a gentle social hit to a full club match without ever once punishing the elbow for a late ball.
Wagga Wagga is a town that teaches people to swim in a river, which I regard as the correct order of things.
Wagga Beach is a natural sand bank on a bend of the Murrumbidgee, first named in print in the local Daily Advertiser in 1915, and it has been the city's swimming place ever since — an inland river beach in a country town, with very large river red gums standing over the grass behind it.
This string is also perfect for a Riverina summer, when the courts get to forty degrees and everything else in the bag gives up before you do.
Around it the town is unusually handsome. The Historic Council Chambers went up in 1881 as the town hall and served until 1999, when they became the second site of the Museum of the Riverina. The courthouse opened in 1902 to a design by the NSW Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon in Federation Free style.
And the railway arrived in 1879, which required a timber rail bridge some 2,500 metres long across the flood plain.
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