01
Stop one
Surfers Paradise
Yonex Vcore 95 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Before we start — has everybody got water, a hat, and a second hat. Good. Now: this suburb takes its name from a hotel, the Surfers Paradise Hotel, and the locality was officially renamed in the 1930s. Property salesmanship, essentially, and it worked. But the meter maids are a supply story and therefore my favourite kind. In 1965 the local progress association put women in gold bikinis onto these streets to feed expired parking meters so that shoppers would not be fined. Think about the logistics for one second. Somebody had to carry the coins. Bags of them, all day, in that sun, in a bikini, with nowhere to put anything. I would have brought a satchel. I would have brought three satchels and a spare strap.
02
Stop two
Q1 Tower
Yonex Vcore 95 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: On completion in 2005 this was the world's tallest residential tower — that exact category, and it has since been overtaken, and there is the usual argument about whether one measures to the tip of the spire. The design was reportedly inspired by the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch, which is lovely. Here is what I cannot get past, though. There is an observation deck up there, and an external stair climb near the top. People go outside, at that height, on purpose. And do you know what you absolutely cannot do at that height? Go back down for the jumper you left in the car. Pack for the top of the building, never for the bottom of it. Take a snack. I have plenty. Take two.
03
Stop three
Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary
Yonex Vcore 95 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Alex Griffiths was a beekeeper and flower grower, and the rainbow lorikeets kept eating his blooms, so he began feeding them somewhere else to draw them off. That is a man solving a stock problem with a diversion, and it went so well that it turned into a tourist attraction, and in 1976 he handed the entire thing over to the National Trust. The feedings started back in the 1940s. Now, please, consider the daily supply run. Hundreds of birds. Every single day. Weekends, holidays, whatever the sky is doing. If I had begun that in the 1940s I would still be lying awake at night doing the ordering and checking it twice. The man is a hero of provisioning and nobody ever says so.
04
Stop four
Point Danger and Coolangatta
Yonex Vcore 95 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Coolangatta is named after a ship — the schooner Coolangatta, wrecked near here in 1846, which was itself named after an estate in New South Wales. And Point Danger was named by James Cook in 1770, after his ship very nearly came to grief on the reef out there. So both names on this one headland are records of things going badly wrong at sea. That is precisely my point and I want the group to hear it properly: everybody who ever arrived on this coast turned up under-prepared for it. Cook included. Cook especially. Sunscreen now, please, and then a second application in forty minutes, because the first one is only ever the rehearsal.
I have been feeding expired parking meters in a gold bikini since 1965, which was a publicity stunt aimed at council parking policy and somehow became a civic institution. So I know the difference between a gimmick and a specification. Ninety-five square inches of head, 310 grams unstrung, a 16×20 pattern, 27 inches long. Small face, dense grid, heavy frame. No gimmick anywhere on me.
This is the frame for a player who supplies their own power and wants somewhere precise to put it. It rewards you everywhere from a heavy first serve to a short angle you have to thread, and it punishes a lazy swing without hesitation. And while you are deciding whether you want that relationship, ask yourself honestly whether you finish your strokes on the Gold Coast in February heat. I need you to.
The Gold Coast is very good at being underestimated. The name came from a hotel, the meter maids came from a parking row, the tower was the world's tallest residential building on completion in 2005, and the wildlife sanctuary was started by a beekeeper trying to get lorikeets off his flowers. Everything here turns out to have a real story once you check. So does a 95.
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