Come here, let me look at you. Have you eaten? You cannot swing anything on an empty stomach, I do not care what the specification says.
Right. This is the Wilson Burn 100S V5, and I will tell you what it is, plainly, because there is no sense being mysterious. It is 27 inches long. Unstrung it weighs 300 grams, 10.6 ounces, and once it is strung it comes out at 315 grams, 11.1 ounces, balanced four points head light with a swingweight of 316.
The head is 100 square inches, 645 square centimetres.
The beam runs 23, 25, 23 millimetres, the flex is 71, which is stiff, and the graphite construction is what gives it that snap. String it between 50 and 60 pounds.
The grip is Wilson's Sublime.
And the string pattern is 18 mains by 16 crosses, which is unusual and which is the whole point of the S. Fewer crosses means the mains can slide and snap back, and that is what puts the spin on.
This racquet is for somebody who stands on the baseline and hits the thing hard with a lot of shape on it — whippy forehands, heavy slices, the ball dipping down inside the line at the last moment. It is a stiff, punchy frame. It is not the gentle option, and I would not give it to anyone with a sore elbow, and you would tell me if your elbow was sore, wouldn't you.
Wouldn't you.
Now. Kirikkale, my love. This town exists because of an arsenal — the MKE works — and the MKE Weapons Industry Museum has the rifles and the machine tools laid out from the years the whole place was built around that one plant. It is more moving than you expect, because what you are looking at is not really weapons, it is the working lives of everybody's grandfathers.
The clock tower stands on the central square beside the Nur Mosque, which is where people meet, and where they have met for decades. Out of town, Cesnigir Bridge throws one single stone arch over the Kizilirmak — one arch, no supports in the water, which is a thing somebody's very clever great-uncle worked out with no computer at all.
And Kapulukaya Dam holds the same river back behind sixty-one metres of embankment. Take a jumper. It gets cold up there in the evening and I will not have you catching something.
"What you are looking at is not really machinery. It is everybody's grandfathers."
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