Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis String Reel
About Guayaquil
This port city stands on the Guayas River, a short distance upstream from the Gulf of Guayaquil. It became the country’s main Pacific outlet and a center of coastal commerce, and it declared independence from Spain in 1820 before joining the wider wars led by Bolívar and San Martín.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Poly Tour Pro is the tour-standard control polyester in Yonex’s range, and this is the 200 metre reel in 17 gauge, 1.20 mm.
The string is a round co-polyester monofilament, pre-stretched in manufacture.
That pre-stretch is why its tension maintenance is so good: most of the elongation that makes an ordinary polyester go dead has already been taken out before the string reaches the racquet, so the bed holds its level instead of sagging away from it.
Static stiffness measures around 0.9 kg/mm, which makes it firm and control-forward rather than powerful.
At 17 gauge the string is thinner than the 16, so it bites harder into the ball and produces more spin, and it lives a shorter life for the trouble.
That is the standing trade in gauge, and it is the reason thin polyester is usually bought on a reel rather than in sets.
Guayaquil sits on a river plain near the Pacific, hot and humid for most of the year, and humid air is where a string with strong tension maintenance separates itself from one without.
Specifications
| Gauge | 17, 1.20 mm |
|---|---|
| Construction | Round co-polyester monofilament |
| Process | Pre-stretched during manufacture |
| Static stiffness | Approximately 0.9 kg/mm |
| Reel length | 200 m |
| Characteristics | Firm, control-forward, strong tension maintenance |
| Trade-off | More bite and spin than the 16 gauge, shorter working life |
The reel is the same string at a stringer’s cost per job, which is why the thinner gauges sell in this format to clubs and coaches.
LET Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis String Reel SHOW YOU Guayaquil
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis Strings Reel: I was outside that door. July 1822, Simón and José were in there, Bolívar and San Martín if we are being formal, and they shut the door and nobody kept a full record of a single word of it. I offered to take notes. Nobody wanted notes. San Martín came out, gave up his command, and left public life for good; off to Europe, and that was that. Historians have been arguing about that room for two centuries and they will argue for two more. This white marble colonnade with the two of them in bronze shaking hands is much later, obviously. Handsome. Though the light coming off the river was better then.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis Strings Reel: Four hundred and forty-four steps, all numbered, which we did not have in my day; you simply climbed until you were sorry. This hill is where the Spanish anchored Guayaquil and where the fort stood, and the reason for both is thoroughly unglamorous: raiders kept coming up the river. Buccaneers arriving out of the Pacific sacked this city more than once in the seventeenth century, and I remember the second occasion rather more clearly than the first. A whole town arranged around a lookout because it had been robbed too often. The chapel and the blue-and-white lighthouse at the top are modern. The view is unchanged.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis Strings Reel: Nobody can tell you precisely how the iguanas got here, and before anyone asks, it was not me. This is a nineteenth-century square; I was here when the trees were considerably shorter. There is an equestrian statue of Bolívar in the middle, and dozens of large iguanas living wild in the centre of a city of millions, protected, fed, and entirely unbothered by any of it. Simón up on his horse, going nowhere for eternity, and a reptile on the path below him doing exactly the same at a fraction of the expense. He would have found that funny. Eventually. He needed a day or two with most jokes.
String: Yonex Polytour Pro 17g Tennis Strings Reel: A Moorish tower with horseshoe arches. On a river. In Ecuador. There has been a public clock tower on this waterfront since the eighteenth century, and it has burned or been rebuilt several times over, and I watched at least one of those fires from the far bank, and the current Moorish-styled version dates from the twentieth century. Ports rebuild their clocks because at a dock the hour is money and the shift ends when the tower says it ends. That has never once changed, in any century I have stood in. The earlier tower was smaller, and I will say it, better proportioned.
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.