Nobody tells beginners this, so I will: the machine you want first is not the clever one. It is the one you will actually switch on. The Tennis Tutor Plus is the straightforward member of the family — no Player mode, no programmed drill sequences, no learning curve between you and the first ball. You set the speed, you set the spin, you set how often it feeds, and then you hit until your arm tells you to stop.
The hopper takes 150 balls, which at a moderate feed rate is a long session before you are picking up. Ball speed runs from 10 to 85 miles per hour, so it grows with you rather than being outgrown in a season.
The specification is real, though, and worth knowing.
The feed interval adjusts from one and a half seconds to twelve — the fast end is a fitness drill, the slow end is where a new player should live for the first month, because there is time to recover, set the feet and think. Spin is topspin and underspin from a single dial.
Trajectory runs from groundstroke to lob.
There is a built-in oscillator, so the ball moves you side to side instead of landing obediently in the same square. Battery life is a typical four to six hours. It weighs 46 pounds and measures 20 inches high by 19 and a half long by 20 wide, and an AC option is offered for a nominal charge.
Kirsehir is a good town to be a beginner in, because it is the town of the guilds. The tomb of Ahi Evran is here — the patron of the craft guilds, whose whole system was built on the idea that a person becomes a craftsman by being taught, slowly, by someone who already is one. The Cacabey madrasa, Seljuk stone with star-cut vaults, was a school.
The mausoleum of Asik Pasa holds a Sufi poet who died in 1332 and spent his life explaining difficult things in plain language. That is the tradition this machine belongs to.
Learn on the simple one. Ambition is cheap; repetition is not.
Buy on Amazon