Carrie Soto Is Back(91)

Jimmy Wallace: Well, there’s no story coming out of men’s tennis quite like that of Bowe Huntley.

Trumbull: He’s soaring.

Wallace: There was nobody—and I mean nobody—favoring Bowe Huntley as we came into this tournament.

Trumbull: This is his last, is it not?

Wallace: All of us were saying, “The guy’s retiring, he’s the oldest one on the court, his salad days are long behind him.”

Trumbull: And he had to pull out of Wimbledon with an injury.

Wallace: He tore the cartilage in his ribs back in May at the French. This was not a player anyone was betting on.

Trumbull: And yet.

Wallace: [laughs] And yet! Huntley comes out onto the court in the first round and just pummels Franco Gustavo. Takes him in straight sets. Still, we’re all thinking, “Okay, but it won’t happen again.”

Trumbull: And we were wrong.

Wallace: Dead wrong. He takes Ortega in the second round, again in straight sets. Then Bracher. Then Mailer.

Trumbull: And now he’s in the quarterfinals.

Wallace: He’s in the quarterfinals. At the age of forty! And let me tell you, the crowd is with him in these matches. I haven’t seen a crowd this energized in years. You know I’m a skeptic, Grant.

Trumbull: [laughs] You’re a believe-it-when-you-see-it kind of guy.

Wallace: But Huntley’s got me on the edge of my seat. He’s got me rooting for him. I don’t know how this ends, but I’ll tell you it’s a hell of a show.





Transcript


    SportsHour USA


    The Mark Hadley Show




Mark Hadley: I’m cleaning my glasses over here, disbelieving what I’m seeing. Bowe Huntley just beat Wimbledon champion Jadran Petrovich in the quarterfinals of the US Open?

Briggs Lakin: I wouldn’t just say he beat him. Huntley demolished him. It was embarrassing for Petrovich. He’s ranked two in the world, and Huntley took him down hard.

Gloria Jones: That last serve was simply stunning.

Hadley: Let’s get into Huntley’s serve—I want to talk about that. It wasn’t official, but there’s been talk over this past year that Bowe Huntley was being coached by the late Javier Soto. Have either of you heard anything about this?

Jones: I have, yes. We’ve been seeing Carrie Soto and Bowe Huntley together a lot these past few months. There’s an assumption that they are dating. Obviously, we don’t know.

Lakin: I mean, we know.

Jones: No one has confirmed anything.

Lakin: I don’t need anyone to confirm for me that two plus two equals four.

Jones: [laughs] There are many people who say Bowe Huntley and Javier Soto were working together before the French Open. So it stands to reason they may have still been working together when Javier Soto passed away just a few short weeks ago.

Hadley: So maybe Javier Soto is behind this turn in Bowe Huntley.

Jones: Maybe he was.

Hadley: He certainly did beautiful work with Carrie Soto, didn’t he?

Jones: That he did. And let’s take a moment, if we can. We all expect greatness from Carrie, but she’s just lost her father, she’s lost her coach. And now we are on the eve of the semifinals and she’s handily defeated every single opponent in front of her. That includes Odette Moretti, who she beat in the quarterfinals just a few hours ago today.

Lakin: She’s shown a lot of heart this tournament.

Jones: Javier Soto was a great coach, a coach for the ages. And I think we’re seeing that in this tournament. I think we are seeing, in Bowe Huntley and Carrie Soto, what Javier Soto was best at. The “beautiful fundamentals,” as he would say.

Lakin: Well said, Gloria. Absolutely.





HUNTLEY VS. MATSUDA


    1995 US Open


   Semifinals


Gwen and I are sitting in the players’ box. I am checking my watch because I need to leave soon for my own match. But I can’t quite tear myself away just yet.

It’s the fifth set, 3–5. Bowe is behind, but he can still get back in it if he holds this game and breaks Matsuda’s serve on the next one.

He looks at me and smiles.

This morning at breakfast, I was reading NowThis in an attempt to clear my mind. The front cover was about this pop star who left this rock star, and I wanted to know if it was true she’d been sleeping with this actor. But when I opened up the magazine, it was my face that was staring back at me.

There was a photo of Bowe and me on the court from the week before. They had caught us kissing.

I closed the magazine, almost reflexively. And then I opened it back up.

In the photo, we are both in shorts and T-shirts. He is wearing his navy blue hat. He has his arm around my lower back, pulling me toward him, and I have to look up to meet his lips.

I didn’t know the paparazzi were there. I wouldn’t have kissed him if I had. But instead of feeling horrified to have it printed in the magazine for all the world, all I could see was just how grotesquely happy I look in it.

Bowe walked by and glanced over my shoulder. From the look on his face, I could tell he’d already seen it.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I stared at the photo a moment longer. “We look happy,” I said, finally.