01
Stop one
Bangudae Petroglyphs
Wilson Sensation 17g Tennis String Set: Sorry — what time is it. Does not matter. Look across the water at that cliff. Hundreds of figures cut into the flat rock face, and among them whales, dozens of whales, some of them drawn with harpoon lines and a boat, which makes this among the earliest known depictions of whaling anywhere on earth, and it is thousands of years old. You can identify the species. Right whales. Humpbacks. A mother and a calf. Somebody carved a mother and a calf. Where was I — yes, the difficulty, and it is a water problem: a dam built in the 1960s means this panel is submerged for part of every year. Carvings that outlived the whalers, and the whales, and everyone who ever stood on this bank, and what finally gets them is a reservoir level. I have been awake a long time and that one keeps coming back round.
02
Stop two
Daewangam Park
Wilson Sensation 17g Tennis String Set: Pines. Pines first, the history can wait, I have lost the order of my notes anyway. Korean red pines, wind-pruned into those shapes by the weather coming straight off the East Sea, growing in almost no soil at all on a headland that takes the full brunt of it, and some of them have been doing that for a very long time. Then the rock offshore — split, dark, volcanic in origin, hammered into that outline by the sea, with the red footbridge running out to it. There is a legend attaching a Silla queen to that rock. Fine. Lovely. Genuinely. But I keep looking at the trees, because anything that stubborn deserves rather more attention than a monarch, and — sorry, was that a black-tailed gull? It was. Right. Where was I.
03
Stop three
Taehwagang National Garden
Wilson Sensation 17g Tennis String Set: Bamboo. Ten li of it along the river, the Simnidaebat, and every time I remember that bamboo is a grass I have to stop walking. It is a grass. That is a lawn with ambition. Anyway — the human part, quickly, because it does matter: this river ran badly polluted through the industrial boom of the twentieth century, essentially dead, and Ulsan spent years cleaning it up, and this grove was nearly cleared for development and was saved instead. And now, in the evenings, it fills with roosting birds, rooks and egrets in the season, thousands of them, all arriving at once at exactly the hour when I usually give up on sleeping. A river that people had written off, and the birds came back to it. I am not a sentimental piece of equipment. But I am out here at dusk anyway, so.
04
Stop four
Ganjeolgot Cape
Wilson Sensation 17g Tennis String Set: This is the easternmost point of the Korean mainland, near enough, so the sun comes up here first on the whole peninsula, which is why crowds stand on this headland every January the first. I would love that hour if I could reach it by sleeping rather than by never stopping. The lighthouse is early twentieth century, white, does its job. But look at the rock and feel the wind, because the real thing here is offshore: this coast sits on the edge of a warm current running north, which is why the water is milder than the latitude has any right to be and why the fishing has always been good. People come for a sunrise that happens everywhere. The reason anybody ever lived here is a current that nobody can photograph. Wait — that is the best sentence I have had all night. Please do not tell me it is not.
Now, they'll sell you a co-poly. Of course they will. Everybody's selling co-poly. Wilson Sensation has been quietly doing the opposite for decades and I think that's worth a look.
It's a multifilament. Highly elastic nylon fibres, bundled, which is where the power and the low vibration come from — and over the bundle, dual-wrap Xycro Micro fibres with a nylon composite coating, which is what holds the whole thing together and drops the vibration further still. That's not marketing; that's a construction you can see in cross-section.
This is the 17 gauge, 1.25mm, in natural. Thinner than the 16 means softer again and more spin potential, and — they don't put this on the front of the packet — a little less durability. Fair trade. The set is 40 ft / 12.2 m; it comes on a 660 ft reel too if you're stringing for a crowd. It'll do everywhere from a gentle rally in Taehwagang park to a full club match, without your elbow filing a complaint either way.
And its reputation? Long-standing, and it's for arms. Sensation is what gets recommended when somebody's elbow starts talking to them, and it has been for years, which is the sort of endorsement no advertising budget can buy. (Winks.) Ask yourself why the comfort string nobody hypes is still on every shelf.
Take it to Ulsan, a city that will show you its shipyards and its car plant and quietly keep the whale carvings and the ten li of bamboo out of the brochure. And by the way, it's also perfect for the sea wind off Daewangam, which comes through the old pines all afternoon and puts a bit of extra work on every ball you hit.
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