Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis String Reel
About St Asaph
This small city in north Wales sits beside the River Elwy and is the seat of the Diocese of St Asaph. It has had a cathedral since the Middle Ages, but only received formal city status in 2012 as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Poly Tour Pro is the control polyester in Yonex’s string range and the most faithful string the brand makes: whatever the racquet does, the string carries it across without embellishment.
It is a round co-polyester monofilament, pre-stretched during manufacture. That pre-stretch is the reason its tension maintenance is exceptional.
An ordinary polyester continues to elongate under load after it is strung, which is why a fresh bed feels dead within a fortnight; taking most of that elongation out at the factory means the bed played on in week three is close to the bed that was strung.
Measured static stiffness sits around 0.9 kg/mm, firmer than Poly Tour Fire, and the character that follows is control-forward: a big swing is given depth control rather than launch.
St Asaph sits in the Vale of Clwyd, where the air is damp and cool for most of the year and much of the season is played under cover, and a string that holds its tension is worth more than one that starts lively and fades.
Specifications
| Gauge | 16, 1.30 mm |
|---|---|
| Construction | Round co-polyester monofilament |
| Process | Pre-stretched during manufacture |
| Static stiffness | Approximately 0.9 kg/mm |
| Reel length | 200 m |
| Characteristics | Control and tension maintenance ahead of power |
| Suited to | Players with fast, full swings who generate their own pace |
At 16 gauge this is the durable everyday build of the string, and the reel is the format for a stringer working through frames rather than a player buying one set at a time.
LET Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis String Reel SHOW YOU St Asaph
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis Strings Reel: Jackdaws in the tower. There are always jackdaws in a low battlemented tower, they prefer them to spires. The stone is local, grey-brown, and this ridge sits between two rivers, the Elwy and the Clwyd, which is genuinely why anything is here at all. Kentigern settled the ridge in the 6th century and went back to Scotland, leaving a follower named Asaph, whose name the church carries. Warwick's men burnt the Norman church in 1282, Glyndŵr's rising burnt it again in 1402. People. Begun about 1480, completed by 1770, smallest of Britain's ancient cathedrals, city status in 2012. Now. Sycamores.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis Strings Reel: Lichen. Look at the crust on that shaft, because it tells you the air here is clean and that nobody has scrubbed this stone in a century, which is the highest compliment I can pay a monument. It was unveiled in 1892 on public subscription, three hundred years after the Welsh Bible. William Morgan, later Bishop of St Asaph, was the first to translate the whole Bible into Welsh from the Greek and Hebrew, published in 1588, and the eight carved figures around it are the men who helped him. Eight men, eight directions, weathering at eight different rates.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis Strings Reel: Now this is the good one. A bridge with no river. Records place a bridge here from the 15th century, built by or for Bishop Dafydd, whose name it keeps, and the structure you are looking at dates from 1630. Then the Elwy moved out of its old channel and left the whole thing stranded over grass and dry ground. That is what rivers do. They are not loyal to masonry. Mosses have taken the joints, which is the correct outcome. The old bed is somewhere under that turf. Give it four hundred years and the water may come back for it.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 16g Tennis Strings Reel: Yews, damp ground, and the Elwy just down there. This is the wet end of the High Street, and the churchyard tells you so before any guidebook does. Tradition holds Kentigern founded a church here about 560 AD, with Asaph added to the dedication in the mid-12th century. It appears with the cathedral in the Norwich Taxation of 1254 and separately in the Lincoln Taxation of 1291. Rebuilt on the old foundations in 1524 with new windows and that hammerbeam roof raised, and the north aisle, hammerbeamed too, added later that century. Two naves. Oak, mostly. Listed 16 November 1962.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.