01
Stop one
Al Alam Palace
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Case: Look at those colours, sweetheart — gold and blue, and beautifully kept. This is the ceremonial residence of the Sultan of Oman in old Muscat, built in 1972 for Sultan Qaboos bin Said, on a site where a royal residence has stood since the eighteenth century. That facade of flared columns is a modern design, and it has become one of the most recognisable images of the whole country — but nobody lives here, love. It is for receiving heads of state. It faces the harbour down a processional avenue with restored government buildings on either side, the walled old town behind, and the two Portuguese forts, Jalali and Mirani, up on the rocks. Now, have you had any water today?
02
Stop two
Al Jalali Fort
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Case: All those steps cut into the cliff, and in this heat — slowly, love, there's no prize. The Portuguese built it in the 1580s, after raids exposed how vulnerable Muscat harbour was, and it guards the eastern side of the bay. When the Omanis expelled the Portuguese in 1650 the fort passed into Omani hands and was strengthened again and again, serving as a garrison and then, for much of the twentieth century, as the country's principal political prison, holding opponents of Sultan Said bin Taimur. In the 1980s it was converted into a museum of Omani cultural history, used chiefly for state guests, so it is generally closed to visitors. Just as well, sweetheart. Those stairs.
03
Stop three
Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Case: Sit down a minute and let me tell you about the carpet, because it is my favourite thing in Oman. The sultan called for a national mosque in 1992, there was a design competition, and it was built between 1995 and 2001 out at Bawshar, holding about twenty thousand worshippers across its halls and courtyards. And in the main prayer hall lies one single hand-woven Persian carpet, made in Iran over four years by six hundred weavers, covering more than four thousand square metres — the largest in the world when it was installed. Six hundred pairs of hands, love. There is a Swarovski chandelier fourteen metres high as well, and Omani, Persian and Mughal traditions in Indian sandstone.
04
Stop four
Mutrah Souq
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Case: Hold on to your bag and stay where I can see you. They call it Al Dhalam, which means darkness, because the covered lanes are packed so tightly together — one of the oldest markets in the Arab world. It has served this port for centuries: frankincense from Dhofar, dates, textiles, silver, and whatever the dhows carried from India, Persia and East Africa, and you can still see that mixture in the Omani, Indian and Baluchi merchants and their wares. The timber-roofed alleys were restored in the twentieth century but they kept the old plan. Merchant houses with carved balconies behind, and Mutrah Fort above the bay. Eat something before we go in, sweetheart.
I deal in resin out of Dhofar and I have never once in my life sold a single piece of anything. You buy the sack. That is how trade has worked out of Muscat for two thousand years, and it is how you ought to be buying tennis balls: 24 tins, 72 balls, one decision, and then a very long stretch in which you never think about it again.
All-court felt, three to a tin, and a case is the honest unit for anyone who actually plays. Clubs know this. Coaches know this. The man buying one tin every Saturday morning has simply not done the arithmetic, and I say that with affection, because I meet him in the Mutrah Souq every week trying to buy one stick of frankincense.
Muscat has never confused ceremony with substance. Al Alam Palace does the gold and blue flared columns for visiting heads of state, while the actual business happens 15 minutes away in the dim covered lanes of Mutrah, whose Arabic name means darkness. The Portuguese put up Al Jalali Fort in the 1580s and the Omanis took it off them in 1650 and kept it.
This case will run everywhere from a coaching block on a hot morning to an entire winter of league nights, and by the way, 72 is also perfect for a ball machine hopper and a very quiet Sunday.
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