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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set composed together with the national flag of Japan in one photoreal studio composition — the white field and crimson sun disc filling the background in soft folds, lit from one side, the packet of string standing clear in front of it. Nobody wears, holds or uses it, and there are no words, letters, numerals or lettering of any kind anywhere in the frame.
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed beneath the Chiba Urban Monorail in Chiba, Japan — blue-and-white cars hanging beneath a single overhead box girder carried on slim columns directly above the street. Early evening in steady rain, the light gone blue, wet asphalt reflecting shop signs and traffic lights in long smears. The camera is low, near ground level, looking steeply up as a car passes overhead. Commuters cross beneath under umbrellas, a delivery rider waits with one foot down, and a woman shakes out a folded umbrella in a shop doorway. The packet of string sits close in the near foreground on a wet steel bollard, untouched.
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed outside Makuhari Messe in the Makuhari Bay district of Chiba, Japan — a huge convention complex with a long curved silver roof over the halls and a domed event hall alongside. Hard bright midday sun, the roof throwing white glare, sharp shadows on the plaza. Eye level, straight on. An event is opening: a long queue is being folded back and forth by staff with signboards, people are streaming across the plaza with lanyards and tote bags, a marshal is waving a bus into a bay, and two exhibitors wheel a flight case up a ramp. The packet of string rests in the middle distance on a stainless steel bench off to the left, ignored by all of them.
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed at Chiba Port Tower in Chiba Port Park, Japan — a slender 125-metre mirrored-glass tower on a rhomboid plan standing alone on the waterfront. Golden hour on a clear autumn evening, the mirrored curtain wall burning orange and reflecting the bay. A wide view from across the park with the tower dominating the frame. Families are picnicking on the grass, a couple is having wedding photographs taken on the path, a man is flying a kite badly, and a queue waits at the tower doors for the sunset viewing. The packet of string is small in frame, lying on a low concrete parapet in the foreground.
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed at Inage Seaside Park in Inage ward, Chiba, Japan — a waterfront park on reclaimed land with an artificial white sand beach, a long pier and a monument to Japan's early civil aviation. Dawn, cold blue light before sunrise, flat water and a pale band on the horizon. Close and intimate framing with shallow depth of field. Runners are going through along the promenade, an old man is doing slow exercises facing the water, a groundsman is raking the sand in long lines, and two crows work the tideline. The packet of string lies mid-frame on the weathered timber planking of the pier rail, the monument off centre behind it, untouched.
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set composed together with the national flag of Japan in one photoreal studio composition — the white field and crimson sun disc filling the background in soft folds, lit from one side, the packet of string standing clear in front of it. Nobody wears, holds or uses it, and there are no words, letters, numerals or lettering of any kind anywhere in the frame.

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set

Chiba, Japan  ·  Strings > 17g

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set

This is the 1.25 mm cut of the gut-and-poly hybrid: livelier at contact, softer, shorter-lived, and quietly the better of the two, which is not strictly mine to say. Your proper guide is off today, so you have me instead. I will show you round Chiba. I did read up on the monorail.

↓   Tour Chiba, Japan

Four stops before the checkout

Chiba, Japan
01
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed beneath the Chiba Urban Monorail in Chiba, Japan — blue-and-white cars hanging beneath a single overhead box girder carried on slim columns directly above the street. Early evening in steady rain, the light gone blue, wet asphalt reflecting shop signs and traffic lights in long smears. The camera is low, near ground level, looking steeply up as a car passes overhead. Commuters cross beneath under umbrellas, a delivery rider waits with one foot down, and a woman shakes out a folded umbrella in a shop doorway. The packet of string sits close in the near foreground on a wet steel bollard, untouched.
Stop one

Chiba Urban Monorail

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set: Hanging cars. Now that I understand. She swings beneath the beam instead of sitting on top of it, weight below the rail, same as a keel below a hull, and that is why she takes a curve without complaining: a top-heavy thing wants to go over and a bottom-heavy thing does not, and any man who has ever loaded a hold knows it in his hands. This is the longest suspended monorail in the world. The running gear rides up inside the box girder, out of the snow and the rain, dry as a locker. And she runs on one row of slim columns down a street that was already there, so no land had to be taken. Sensible. I have known captains with less sense.

02
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed outside Makuhari Messe in the Makuhari Bay district of Chiba, Japan — a huge convention complex with a long curved silver roof over the halls and a domed event hall alongside. Hard bright midday sun, the roof throwing white glare, sharp shadows on the plaza. Eye level, straight on. An event is opening: a long queue is being folded back and forth by staff with signboards, people are streaming across the plaza with lanyards and tote bags, a marshal is waving a bus into a bay, and two exhibitors wheel a flight case up a ramp. The packet of string rests in the middle distance on a stainless steel bench off to the left, ignored by all of them.
Stop two

Makuhari Messe

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set: All this was Tokyo Bay. Every bit of it. They took it back off the water and put a convention hall on it, opened in 1989, and Fumihiko Maki drew that long curved silver roof, and it is a fine roof, I will not say otherwise. But reclaimed seabed is soft, it compresses, and in a shake it can liquefy, turn to soup beneath you, which I have felt at sea and would not wish on a building. So before anybody drew a curve, somebody sat down with consolidation and pile depth and worked out how far you must go to find ground that will hold. The roof gets photographed. The piles did the voyage. Landsmen always thank the wrong end of a thing.

03
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed at Chiba Port Tower in Chiba Port Park, Japan — a slender 125-metre mirrored-glass tower on a rhomboid plan standing alone on the waterfront. Golden hour on a clear autumn evening, the mirrored curtain wall burning orange and reflecting the bay. A wide view from across the park with the tower dominating the frame. Families are picnicking on the grass, a couple is having wedding photographs taken on the path, a man is flying a kite badly, and a queue waits at the tower doors for the sunset viewing. The packet of string is small in frame, lying on a low concrete parapet in the foreground.
Stop three

Chiba Port Tower

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set: A hundred and twenty-five metres of her, finished in 1986 for the prefecture's centenary, standing alone on the waterfront with nothing to lean against. Look at the shape in plan: a rhombus, not a square. That is not vanity, that is the wind. A tower this slender in an open blow is a wind problem long before it is ever a view problem, and the plan geometry and the steel frame are what keep her from rolling. The mirrored skin has to take thermal movement in both directions every single day of its life, working and easing like rigging in the sun. Everyone else climbs up for the sunset over the bay. Fair enough. I go up to watch the water.

04
Beverly Heights cardio tennis class — the Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set photographed at Inage Seaside Park in Inage ward, Chiba, Japan — a waterfront park on reclaimed land with an artificial white sand beach, a long pier and a monument to Japan's early civil aviation. Dawn, cold blue light before sunrise, flat water and a pale band on the horizon. Close and intimate framing with shallow depth of field. Runners are going through along the promenade, an old man is doing slow exercises facing the water, a groundsman is raking the sand in long lines, and two crows work the tideline. The packet of string lies mid-frame on the weathered timber planking of the pier rail, the monument off centre behind it, untouched.
Stop four

Inage Seaside Park

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set: Here is a thing I thoroughly approve of. Around 1912 the flyers came down to this foreshore because the tidal sand is flat and hard and levels itself twice a day: a runway the sea builds for you, free of charge, and this park commemorates those earliest Japanese civil aviation experiments. Men who wanted the sky came down to the beach to get it, which tells you where everything begins. Then the whole shoreline was reclaimed, so the sea you are looking at has been pushed further out, and the white sand under your boots was placed there on purpose. Two kinds of engineering: one that used the water and one that argued with it. I know which lasts.

The Chiba, Japan track

Volkl V-Fuse 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

Same hybrid, thinner string. V-Fuse 17 pairs Volkl's ten-sided Cyclone co-polyester monofilament with V-Icon natural gut in one packet at 17 gauge — 1.25 mm — with a 22-foot (6.7 m) length and a 20-foot (6 m) length so a single packet strings a single frame with no waste. Black and yellow, so the two beds are obvious in the hand.

What the gauge actually changes: a thinner string deforms further under load and snaps back harder, so it grips and rotates the ball more and it feels considerably more alive at contact. It also notches sooner, because there is less of it. That is the whole trade. If you saw through a full polyester job in a month, take the 16.

If you play three or four times a week and would rather have feel than a fortnight's extra life, this is the one — and with natural gut in the mix you also get the tension maintenance that stops the string bed going board-like on you by day four.

Chiba is a good city to think about hybrids in, because it is a city of two materials doing different jobs in one structure.

Its urban monorail is recognised as the longest suspended monorail in the world: the cars hang below the beam while the running gear rides inside it, protected from snow and rain, with the centre of gravity below the rail so it behaves beautifully through curves. Two systems, one line, and a right-of-way problem solved with a hanging beam.

You will use this set everywhere from an indoor hard court near the bay to an evening cardio tennis class under the lights — and by the way, buy two: a 1.25 mm string and a long humid Chiba summer are a short and beautiful relationship.

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