Trophy Son(50)

At the end of the changeover I did a run with high knees to my baseline then did a set of short sprints along the baseline from side to side of the court. I never looked at Ben but knew he was watching and wondering what the hell I was doing.

The second set started on my serve and I knew if I could come out serving big it would feel to everyone that I had cast a spell, performed a freak incantation on the court. Turn the match around, magically.

The running around actually did loosen my muscles up. It also amused and distracted me. My best serve for an ace was power up the middle. I blasted two in a row to go up 30–love.

Ben smiled. It wasn’t a genuinely amused smile. It was a that-son-of-a-bitch smile.

The next two serves I sliced wide, both aces. Four swings and a love service game to me. I took the second set 6–2.

Steady Ben knew I wasn’t a magical creature and knew he was still in the match. He kept coming right at me, playing strong and smart. In the third and final set we were tied at 4 games each on Ben’s serve.

So much of winning a match is the result of the decisions before the ball is in play. Which way was he going with the serve. Especially with the power serves in the game, it helps to decide, play the odds like at a craps table. Players don’t guess on every serve but they do guess a lot and tournaments are won or lost depending on whether a guy bets the pass line.

These points are less about the shot-making. At our level we all made the shots most of the time.

I knew Ben’s game so well. He was a strong enough player that for him to play to his strength was not a stupid plan. He didn’t need to try to surprise people. At 4 all, deuce, in the deciding set, he’d play to his strength, and to the deuce court he liked to spin his serve out wide to take me off the court.

His toss went up and I slid a step over to the right. He started the whip of his racket up to the ball and I skipped twice farther to the right and began the rotation of my shoulders to be ready for a forehand. The serve came wide, right to where I was already waiting for it.

I caught the ball on the rise out of my service box and ripped a straight forehand up the line. Ben never moved for it. He turned to the ball boy behind him, got another ball and prepared to serve again. My ad.

He served into my body and I fought it off with a backhand return that floated high and deep to his backhand corner. Off the racket I knew it would drop in and with some cheap topspin so I closed into net behind it. Ben never saw me come in. He hit a backhand cross that was meant to be a deep, safe shot but it floated to the net high and soft like popcorn. I hit a smash that bounced up into the stands.

I had an easy hold of my serve to win the match. Tomorrow morning the world would wake up to a new number one tennis player.





PART III

Achievement marks the end of endeavor and the beginning of despair.

—AMBROSE BIERCE





CHAPTER

35

My older brother was getting married. The reception was in the ballroom of the Philadelphia Country Club, about ten minutes from where I grew up. There’s one week between the end of Queen’s Club and the start of Wimbledon so I made the flight home.

Panos was marrying a girl who had gone to school nearby at Baldwin but they didn’t really know each other until they were introduced in college and started dating. They’d been living together about six years, since graduation, so the wedding felt like a recognition of a commitment they’d already made.

I was best man for Panos. He and Kristie had to schedule the wedding for middle of the week in June so it wouldn’t interfere with my play on the tour. The first decision about the wedding was about me, and that dynamic continued. I didn’t spend much time with Dad in those days and he was thrilled to have an event to show off the world’s new number one tennis player to his friends and he would tell them that he had foreseen my current ranking at the time of my birth. He was an insufferable partner in wedding planning for Panos and Kristie. He wanted to make sure they didn’t hog the spotlight from me.

Panos took it with the same mix of relief and sadness he always did. It hurts not to be chosen by your own father, but to be chosen is worse. Panos preferred to be orphaned, which was a strong motivator to marry and have a life with Kristie. He wanted to start a family because ours wasn’t much of one for him. His relationship with our father had become more like nephew to uncle.

“A toast!” yelled Dad, drunk, smacking his water glass with a spoon like he always did.

Lots of clapping in anticipation of his words, mostly from older people Dad’s age, all his friends he’d crammed onto the guest list at the last moment. He was paying the tab for the party. Poor Kristie.

Dad raised a hand like calling for a pass and the clapping died out. Panos sat at a table for two with Kristie at the head of the room. I was next to him at a table for ten, stuffed with Dad’s friends, Dad and Mom. There were four hundred guests in all. He said, “I couldn’t be more proud of my boys!” He looked at Panos first, thank God, then over at me. “This has turned into a real celebrity wedding.”

The words made me think of Ana who I wished could have been with me. I told her only that there was a wedding, hoping she’d invite herself which was absurd because nobody invites themselves to weddings, and of course she didn’t. She had her own to plan.

Dad went on, “As we welcome this wonderful woman to our family,” he gestured at Kristie, “we also welcome the number one tennis player in the world to our family,” and he gestured at me. He was humiliating himself. Could anyone not find him appalling?