Longing for real clay-courts

Just wanted to share my hunger to play on a real clay-court,, u know the red clay they use in all Europe except Sweden (well, Båstad have it, but that´s another story..)

Here we have a brown type of "clay" or dirt, gravel, earth or whatever you can call it. It´s harder to slide on, the bounces are worse, everything is slower on our type of clay-courts..

On those fantastic red clay courts u find in Europe it is so much easier to play good tennis. Sliding is a piece of cake and everything is so much more fun. Just take a look and see how much more fun it looks like when I play in Croatia by the beach or when i play on a windy court here in Sweden,,,,

Porec, Croatia;



Jönköping, Sweden;



At the moment I´m longing extremely much for the Croatian tennis-courts. Hopefully I will go down there week 35/36 to play the Croatian F8 ITF Future in Zagreb and then go to Makarska in Dalmatia for a week of hard work on the red dirt :)

A couple of new stringing-machines,

I have strung my rackets the last 8 months on a Pro´s Pro Pilot with a Wise Tension Head. It have been a very good solution, but i felt i wanted to try something new. So I ordered the new V888 from Pro´s Pro. A very technical machine with a cost 3 times as much as their previous most expensive model.

When I got it it it felt very solid and heavy (50 kg´s/110 lbs) and everything looked good. Only problem was some string-slippage in the linear string gripper so I´m waiting on a new linear gripper and will not make a review until then.

It looks like this BTW,, very similar to the Wilson-machines they used at the 2006 US Open. Maybe the same OEM??

I also found a 5 years old Prince/ Ektelon Neos 1000 machine, the GOAT of all manual machines. This machine was in amazing shape and this is a pic of it:

This machine is the fastest machine of them all. When I use my Babolat Pure Storm Tour I unfortunately brake strings pretty fast and it is nice when i can use this fast machine when I need to pull of a 12 minute string job.

What else is new?? Some new equipment is ordered and some of it have also arrived. I wanted to try the new Babolat Propulse 2 shoe and tried it indoors on Thursday. The shoe was very solid, but I was amazed on the lack of cushioning. The front part of the shoe felt like a claycourt shoe and for a heavy guy like me it was simply to little.
Therefor I orderd a Adidas Barricade V shoe in dark, dark blue color, looks like a black shoe almost and also a light blue Adidas crew.

Any oncourt action this week? Not so much,, Just played tennis indoor thursday (heavy rain outside) and outdoor on clay today Friday. I also did a 2 hour session in the gym. VERY needed!!
Next week is the Swedish Open ATP in Båstad week but i have to work so I will only see the final live in Båstad. Next week I hope to play tennis 2-3 times but I have to workout 3 times in the gym, those sessions are so important....

That´s all for now!

Another tournament victory

The taste of victory is sweet! Specially if you have lost a final in that very tournamnet 4 times in the past....

This year it was my turn to win the Smålands Wimbledon in Anneberg. It´s a tournament played on sandfilled synthetic grass or omnicourt as it is also called. I was no 1 seed and had the presure on me, but i played extremely well in the heat and only lost 5 games on 3 matches.

It was very very hot that weekend and the temperature on court was a sweaty 46 degree celsius during the final. I play better and better for every degree the temperature rise so it was not a problem for me ;-)

Now it will be resting a couple of days before the workout in the gym and on court kicks of again..