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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardiovascular sessions — the Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of United Kingdom
cardiovascular sessions — The Monument to the Great Fire of London in City of London, Tall fluted stone Doric column topped with a gilded flaming urn, on Monument Street near London Bridge, with a spiral stair to a caged viewing platform
cardiovascular sessions — Leadenhall Market in City of London, Covered Victorian market arcade off Gracechurch Street in the City of London, with a painted cream, maroon and green ironwork roof and cobbled lanes
cardiovascular sessions — London Mithraeum in City of London, Reconstructed Roman temple of Mithras displayed in a dark basement chamber beneath the Bloomberg building on Walbrook in the City of London
cardiovascular sessions — Bank of England, Threadneedle Street in City of London, Windowless curtain wall of Portland stone around the Bank of England at Threadneedle Street and Bartholomew Lane, with a tall columned entrance front
cardiovascular sessions — the Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of United Kingdom

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet

City of London, United Kingdom  ·  Racquets > Adult

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet

This is the big one, and it carries its load at the tip: 115 in², 255 g, 27.8 in overall, a 16×17 pattern and a bridge designed to let the strings travel. Before anything comes down there is a survey, and yours is the City of London: a column that was almost a telescope, a market on a Roman forum.

↓   Tour City of London, United Kingdom

Four stops before the checkout

City of London, United Kingdom
01
cardiovascular sessions — The Monument to the Great Fire of London in City of London, Tall fluted stone Doric column topped with a gilded flaming urn, on Monument Street near London Bridge, with a spiral stair to a caged viewing platform
Stop one

The Monument to the Great Fire of London

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet: A stone candle. Two hundred and two feet of fluted Doric column with a gilded flame at the top that has been burning without consuming itself since Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke completed it in 1677, to mark the Great Fire of 1666. And the height is not a whim: two hundred and two feet is said to be exactly the distance from this spot to the bakery in Pudding Lane where the fire began. Lay the column down and its tip touches the wound. But Hooke wanted more than mourning — there is a hinged lid at the summit and a laboratory beneath, because he built it as a zenith telescope, a chimney for looking upward. It never worked. The traffic shook the stars loose. I have gone too far again. 1677. Wren and Hooke. Two hundred and two feet.

02
cardiovascular sessions — Leadenhall Market in City of London, Covered Victorian market arcade off Gracechurch Street in the City of London, with a painted cream, maroon and green ironwork roof and cobbled lanes
Stop two

Leadenhall Market

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet: Painted ironwork overhead in cream and maroon and green, arching like the ribs of something that swallowed a street and decided to keep it. Horace Jones drew this roof in 1881, though the market underneath is far older — medieval, and named for a manor house that wore a roof of lead. Then the floor gives way beneath the whole idea of age: dig here and you strike the Roman forum and basilica of Londinium, the largest complex of its kind north of the Alps. Two thousand years of people standing on one patch of ground having the same argument about money. A page written on, then turned over and written on again, then bound and sold as a wine bar. The facts, before I drift off entirely: 1881, Horace Jones, Roman forum underneath.

03
cardiovascular sessions — London Mithraeum in City of London, Reconstructed Roman temple of Mithras displayed in a dark basement chamber beneath the Bloomberg building on Walbrook in the City of London
Stop three

London Mithraeum

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet: Down we go, into the dark room the city keeps under its tongue. A temple of Mithras — a mystery cult that appealed to soldiers and merchants — uncovered in 1954 during the rebuilding after the war. Crowds queued to see it, the queueing turned into a public row, and the solution reads like a stanza copied out badly: the temple was dismantled and re-erected some distance away, on a raised terrace, and done rather poorly. Then in this century it was carried back and set at roughly its true depth. Lost, found, misplaced, refound. Some buildings are not monuments at all, they are nomads, and this one has been walking since 1954 and has only just sat down.

04
cardiovascular sessions — Bank of England, Threadneedle Street in City of London, Windowless curtain wall of Portland stone around the Bank of England at Threadneedle Street and Bartholomew Lane, with a tall columned entrance front
Stop four

Bank of England, Threadneedle Street

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet: A blank wall of Portland stone right the way round the block with no windows at street level — a face with no eyes, a book shut on its own thumb. That wall is Sir John Soane's, and it survived when everything behind it was rebuilt, so what you have is a modern heart wearing an old skin and saying nothing. Founded in 1694 to lend money to a government at war with France, standing on this site since 1734. And the name everyone actually uses, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, comes from a satirical cartoon of 1797. A whole nation's finances defended by masonry and a joke, and I could not honestly tell you which of the two has held up better.

The City of London, United Kingdom track

Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

You do not knock a building down. You remove the things holding it up, in the correct order, and gravity does the work. Everything I do is about where the load goes. So is this racquet.

The Volkl Vostra 1 Power Arm is unusual in a way worth explaining, because the name is not marketing. In the throat, where almost every racquet has a rigid bridge, this one has the Power Arm: a design that lets the string bed move more than a conventional throat allows, so the ball cups into the bed and you get smooth, controllable power instead of a hard jump off the face.

The rest of the specification is built for effortless depth. A 740 cm² / 115 in² oversize head, 255 g / 9.0 oz unstrung — 269 g / 9.5 oz strung — an extended 70.5 cm / 27.8 inch length, a 27-29 mm tapered beam, a 16×17 pattern and a head-heavy balance at 35.5 cm. Light, long, big and weighted at the tip: you swing gently and the ball still goes deep.

For beginners, seniors and anyone protecting an arm, it is very easy to like.

The City of London is one square mile of load paths and I could look at it all week. The Monument to the Great Fire of London went up under Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke and was finished in 1677, two hundred and two feet of fluted Doric stone, that height said to equal the distance to the Pudding Lane bakery where the fire of 1666 began.

Hooke built it as a scientific instrument too, with a hinged lid at the top and a laboratory beneath, so it could work as a zenith telescope. It proved too unsteady, because of traffic. Even a column that size is still standing in something.

The rest of the square mile keeps proving the same point. Leadenhall Market is Horace Jones's painted ironwork of 1881 over a medieval market named for a lead-roofed manor house, and directly beneath it lie the Roman forum and basilica of Londinium, the largest such complex north of the Alps. Two thousand years of people arguing about money on one footprint.

A frame this forgiving gets swung everywhere from a lunchtime hour on a rooftop court above Threadneedle Street to a summer evening in a park east of the Mithraeum, and it is also perfect for the City of London player who has an arm to protect and only forty minutes.

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