Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet

Dinslaken, Germany  ·  Racquets > Junior

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet

This is the bridge frame — 26 inches, 240 g, a generous 100 in² head, and the right thing to hold while a twelve-year-old grows. Reins up. Four stops around Dinslaken, and we finish at the tightest trotting oval in Germany.

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Four stops before the checkout

Dinslaken, Germany
01
cardio tennis classes for loneliness — Burg Dinslaken and the Burginsel in Dinslaken, A moated castle island in the middle of town, the surviving medieval stonework built into a modern town hall block, reached over bridges across the water-filled ditch and surrounded by lawn and trees
Stop one

Burg Dinslaken and the Burginsel

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet: Position. It is always position. This began as a motte — a mound, that is all it was — on a rise in the marshy country between the Rhine, the Rotbach, the Emscher and the Lippe, and from that scrap of high ground it grew into one of the most important regional strongholds of the Counts of Cleves. A family named after the castle is first documented in 1163. The settlement that grew up south of it was granted town rights in 1273 under Dietrich V of Cleves. Which reminds me of a final on a slow court where I picked one spot two steps behind the baseline and refused to be moved off it for four sets — sorry. Sorry. Nobody came here for that. The point is the mound. And it is still in service, by the way: the registry office, the town hall and the city archive are all housed in the castle complex today. Eight centuries and it has never once retired. Unlike some of us.

02
cardio tennis classes for loneliness — St. Vincentius-Kirche in Dinslaken, Early Gothic brick hall church with a squat square west tower, standing on the market square in Dinslaken's old centre, its brickwork visibly patched from post-war rebuilding
Stop two

St. Vincentius-Kirche

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet: Everybody starts small. In 1273 — the same year the town received its rights — this was only a chapel of ease, and it was not raised to full parish status until 1436. That is a very long spell in the qualifying draw. It is a hall church, meaning the nave and the aisles rise to the same height, and it is brick, because on the Lower Rhine building stone is scarce and you play with what you are given. I had a whole season on a surface I had not asked for and it made me a better — anyway. It was heavily damaged during the Second World War and rebuilt between 1951 and 1952, so the fabric now mixes medieval and mid-century work, and you can read the patching straight off the brickwork. It came back. That is all I want to say about this one.

03
cardio tennis classes for loneliness — Zeche Lohberg in Dinslaken, Two steel pithead winding towers rising above a compound of dark red brick industrial halls in the Lohberg district, with the four-legged 1950s frame of Shaft 2 the tallest structure on the skyline
Stop three

Zeche Lohberg

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet: Ninety-nine years in the game. The Lohberg colliery worked from 1906 until 2005, and the miners' settlement built around it gave Dinslaken an entire second town centre. Look up at Shaft 2: that four-legged frame was designed in 1955-56 by Fritz Schupp, the architect who with Martin Kremmer set the visual language of Ruhr coal architecture and who designed the Zollverein colliery over at Essen. The man had a signature you could recognise from a mile away, which I have always respected, because so did my back— no. Not now. Over there stands the Ledigenheim of 1914, a hostel that housed up to 542 unmarried miners across more than 6,400 square metres, the whole lot of them rising at the same hour. That is a squad. The pit closed and the site is a creative quarter now, studios and workshops. Everyone has to find the second career. Some of us take it better than others.

04
cardio tennis classes for loneliness — Trabrennbahn Dinslaken in Dinslaken, An oval sand harness-racing track with a covered grandstand and white running rails, set in flat open ground on the edge of the town
Stop four

Trabrennbahn Dinslaken

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet: Right, this one I refuse to apologise for, because it is a sports ground and I am entitled. The trotting track opened in 1954 and was for decades Germany's only half-mile harness racing circuit — a tighter oval than the standard course, which made for closer racing and faster racing, and anybody who has ever competed in a small arena knows exactly what that does to a crowd. Harness racing is drivers seated in two-wheeled sulkies behind trotting horses, and it had a serious following right across the industrial Ruhr; the meetings here drew people in from every mining town around. The last race was run on 31 December 2022, closing nearly seventy years of racing on this ground. I know what a last one feels like. You never know it is the last one until afterwards, and then you know it forever. Come on. Let us keep moving.

The Dinslaken, Germany track

Yonex Junior 26 2025 Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Sitting two feet off the ground behind a trotting horse teaches you one thing above all: balance beats brute force. So does this frame. The Yonex Junior 26 is the bridge to adult tennis — a 26-inch racquet with a 100 sq in head, weighing 240 g / 8.5 oz, specified by Yonex for players of roughly 135 to 145 cm, and supplied prestrung.

One inch short of full length and a good deal lighter than a full-size frame, which is precisely how a twelve-year-old keeps a clean swing path while they grow into the strength.

Dinslaken, meanwhile, has my racetrack. The Trabrennbahn opened in 1954 and was for decades Germany's only half-mile harness circuit — a tighter oval than the standard course, which makes for closer, faster racing and a great deal more shouting.

Burg Dinslaken began as a motte on a rise in the marshy country between the Rhine, the Rotbach, the Emscher and the Lippe, and became one of the most important strongholds of the Counts of Cleves; a family named after the castle appears in the record in 1163. The St.

Vincentius-Kirche was founded in 1273 — the same year the town got its rights — as a chapel of ease, raised to parish status in 1436, and built as a brick hall church in the Lower Rhine manner. And Zeche Lohberg worked from 1906 to 2005; the headframe over Shaft 2 was designed in 1955-56 by Fritz Schupp, the architect who set the visual language of Ruhr coal.

It goes everywhere from a summer court by the Rhine to a sports hall in a Ruhr February, and by the way, it is also perfect for an evening at the Trabrennbahn, where the oval is short, the corners arrive fast, and everybody is shouting.

It goes everywhere from a summer court by the Rhine to a sports hall in a Ruhr February, and by the way, it is also perfect for an evening at the Trabrennbahn, where the oval is short, the corners arrive fast, and everybody is shouting.

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