AND HERE WE GO — the Pro Backpack B comes out of the tunnel, and let me tell you, this is the version of the Pro bag for the player who does not need a wheeled trunk.

Multiple compartments — YKK zips throughout, every single one of them, and if you have ever had a zip fail on you at a tournament you know EXACTLY why that spec gets read out — and a clean, sleek shape that looks like nothing until you load it. Beautiful.

Dark green, sand beige, or black and silver.

What a backpack has to do is simple and almost nobody gets it right. It has to carry frames without the frames making the bag unwearable. It has to sit on two shoulders so your back does the work instead of one collarbone, and it has to survive being thrown into a car boot four times a week for three years.

It has to keep the wet things away from the dry things.

This one is built out of the Pro line, which is the tournament family, and the zips are the tell. Zips are what fail. Everything else on a bag can be repaired at a kitchen table; a broken zip on a main compartment ends the bag. YKK throughout is not a footnote, it is THE HEADLINE.

And we are taking it to Telsiai — and WHAT a place to end up. A lake right in the middle of the town, Lake Mastis, a late Baroque cathedral of 1794 up on the hill, and then the detail that I cannot get over: there are bears on the six bridges over the lake. Bronze bears.

The bear is the emblem this whole area has taken as its own, and instead of putting one on a flag and calling it a day, they put them on the bridges. Six bridges. UNBELIEVABLE scenes.

Every other spec on a bag can be survived. The zip is the one that ends it. YKK throughout — THAT is your headline.

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