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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis classes for happiness — Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, the city itself in its characteristic light
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Nesbitt Castle in Bulawayo, A genuine stone castle folly standing in a Bulawayo suburb: rough dark grey-brown stonework, crenellated parapets and square neo-Gothic turrets, set in sixteen acres of mature lawns and trees. The silhouette is castellated and irregular, with arched windows and a tower rising above the roofline. The incongruity is the recognition point, a medieval-looking European keep standing in flat open African garden and bush with jacarandas and cut lawn around it, not on a hill or a cliff
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Bulawayo Railway Museum in Bulawayo, An open trackside yard beside Bulawayo railway station filled with full-size steam locomotives standing in the open on rails, black boilers and red-painted running gear, including Garratt articulated engines with their distinctive long double-ended frames. A relocated period country station building serves as the reception, and a large brick main hall was the station's former mechanical workshop. Gravel ballast, parallel rails and rows of unfenced heavy steam machinery under open sky are the recognition cues
cardio tennis classes for happiness — The Bulawayo Club in Bulawayo, An imposing three-storey cream-coloured building on a city-centre street corner, fronted by tall pillars with a broad second-floor balustraded balcony running across the facade. It stands at the corner of 8th Avenue and Fort Street in central Bulawayo, on the exceptionally wide, straight grid streets the city is known for, so it can be photographed head-on from across the road with clear open space in front of it
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Statue of Joshua Nkomo in Bulawayo, A large bronze standing figure of a heavy-set man in a suit, mounted on a stone pedestal in the middle of a city-centre intersection at the junction of Joshua Nkomo Street and 8th Avenue. Dark oxidised bronze against the pale colonial-era street frontages behind it, with Bulawayo's characteristically very wide roadway sweeping around it. It is a single free-standing figure at street level, not set in a park or enclosed by railings
cardio tennis classes for happiness — the Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of Zimbabwe

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe  ·  Racquets > Junior

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet

This one is bedrock under gravel, sir. The last junior frame before the grown-up ones: 25 inches, a 100 in² face, 230 g, sized by a child's height and not by his hope. Do come through. Four stops around Bulawayo first: castle, locomotives, the statue, and then I shall be showing you the club.

↓   Tour Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Four stops before the checkout

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
01
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Nesbitt Castle in Bulawayo, A genuine stone castle folly standing in a Bulawayo suburb: rough dark grey-brown stonework, crenellated parapets and square neo-Gothic turrets, set in sixteen acres of mature lawns and trees. The silhouette is castellated and irregular, with arched windows and a tower rising above the roofline. The incongruity is the recognition point, a medieval-looking European keep standing in flat open African garden and bush with jacarandas and cut lawn around it, not on a hill or a cliff
Stop one

Nesbitt Castle

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet: Theodore Holdengarde is my kind of man. He reached Southern Rhodesia somewhere between 1908 and 1910, bought a hundred acres outside Bulawayo, and then built a neo-Gothic castle through the 1920s on weekends, with a small team. Weekends. Do you know how much stone you must have on site before Saturday morning? I would have ordered triple and still worried. His son Paul, a Second World War pilot, attempted renovations after 1947 and sold up in 1988 to Digby Nesbitt, who restored it properly. A hotel since 1990, and a filming location for The Power of One in 1992. Water? I brought four.

02
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Bulawayo Railway Museum in Bulawayo, An open trackside yard beside Bulawayo railway station filled with full-size steam locomotives standing in the open on rails, black boilers and red-painted running gear, including Garratt articulated engines with their distinctive long double-ended frames. A relocated period country station building serves as the reception, and a large brick main hall was the station's former mechanical workshop. Gravel ballast, parallel rails and rows of unfenced heavy steam machinery under open sky are the recognition cues
Stop two

Bulawayo Railway Museum

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet: A railway is simply a supply chain that admits what it is, and Bulawayo sits at the middle of Zimbabwe's, which is why the National Railways headquarters and this 1972 museum are both here at the station. The oldest pieces date to 1897, Cecil Rhodes's personal coach among them. Seven categories: steam, diesel-electric, coaches and saloons, goods wagons, trolleys, cranes, and a miscellaneous group, which is frankly the category I live in. The Garratts, the 20th Class especially, are enormous. They relocated an entire station, Shamva, to serve as reception. That is preparedness. Have a biscuit.

03
cardio tennis classes for happiness — The Bulawayo Club in Bulawayo, An imposing three-storey cream-coloured building on a city-centre street corner, fronted by tall pillars with a broad second-floor balustraded balcony running across the facade. It stands at the corner of 8th Avenue and Fort Street in central Bulawayo, on the exceptionally wide, straight grid streets the city is known for, so it can be photographed head-on from across the road with clear open space in front of it
Stop three

The Bulawayo Club

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet: The first club, founded around 1895 by British emigrants, was destroyed during the First Chimurenga. The building you are looking at had its foundation stone laid on 28 March 1934 by Prince George, Duke of Kent. Inside are thousands of hunting trophies, paintings and pieces of military memorabilia, and somebody has to dust all of it, which is a supply problem nobody ever costs properly. It is one of the last well-preserved colonial-era buildings in Bulawayo, restored after a long decline and reopened in 2008-2009 as a fifteen-room boutique hotel with the club rooms still in use. Fifteen rooms. Pack light. I never manage it.

04
cardio tennis classes for happiness — Statue of Joshua Nkomo in Bulawayo, A large bronze standing figure of a heavy-set man in a suit, mounted on a stone pedestal in the middle of a city-centre intersection at the junction of Joshua Nkomo Street and 8th Avenue. Dark oxidised bronze against the pale colonial-era street frontages behind it, with Bulawayo's characteristically very wide roadway sweeping around it. It is a single free-standing figure at street level, not set in a park or enclosed by railings
Stop four

Statue of Joshua Nkomo

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet: This is what happens when the measurements are not checked twice. The bronze at Joshua Nkomo Street and 8th Avenue was made by the Mansudae Art Studio, a North Korean state art company. An earlier version went up in 2010 and came down again before it was ever officially presented, partly because Nkomo's family objected to the dimensions of the pedestal; giving the commission to a foreign studio rather than the Zimbabwean sculptor David Mutasa was contested too, and argued over in parliament. The re-made statue was unveiled on 22 December 2013, Unity Day, for the 1987 Unity Accord between Nkomo and Mugabe.

The Bulawayo, Zimbabwe track

Yonex Junior 25 2025 Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Forty-one years behind that bar, sir, and I have learned that the right glass matters more than the drink in it. Same with a racquet. The Yonex Junior 25 is specified for players of roughly 130 to 140 cm: a 25-inch frame with a 100 sq in head, weighing 230 g / 8.1 oz, with a 16×18 string pattern, prestrung and ready to play.

That is the last step before a full-size adult frame, and the combination is deliberate — a large, forgiving head so a nine-year-old can find the middle, and a light enough weight that the swing stays a swing.

Bulawayo, sir, is a city of institutions, and I run one of them. The Bulawayo Club was founded around 1895 as a gentlemen's club by British emigrants; the original building was destroyed during the First Chimurenga, and the foundation stone of the present one was laid on 28 March 1934 by Prince George, Duke of Kent.

The interior is worth the walk alone.

Nesbitt Castle was built in the 1920s by Theodore Holdengarde, a South African-born businessman who bought a hundred acres near the city and worked on it at weekends with a small team, in neo-Gothic.

The Railway Museum was established in 1972 at Bulawayo station, owned by the National Railways of Zimbabwe, whose headquarters are here — the oldest exhibits date to 1897 and include Cecil Rhodes's personal coach.

And at Joshua Nkomo Street and 8th Avenue stands the bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo, made by the Mansudae Art Studio; an earlier version went up in 2010 and was taken down before its official presentation.

At 230 g a boy carries it everywhere from the mature lawns at Nesbitt Castle to the gravel ballast beside the Garratts at the Bulawayo Railway Museum, and it is also perfect for an unhurried hour on 8th Avenue, sir, where the roadway is broad enough for two children to rally across it and still leave room for a delivery van to pass behind them.

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