On the opposite side of the court is Carla Perez. They call her the Baltimore Baseliner—and sportscasters have long talked about her forehand power. But they’ve never felt it like I’ve felt it today. It is devastating, the ball coming at me like a bullet shot from a gun.
She caught me off guard in the first set. But I came back to take the second, meeting her power and keeping my angles sharp. So now we are 5–5 in the third.
I settle in at the baseline. I bounce the ball in place, and then I look over the court to see Carla crouched, waiting.
The sun is behind me—I can feel it on my neck. Which means it’s in Carla’s eyes. I serve the ball high and fast, knowing Perez will have a hard time tracking it. She loses sight of it, and the ball lands at her feet. She scrambles backward to hit it on the rise. Her return is too wide.
I hold the game, which means I am now only one away from winning the set and the match.
The crowd begins to cheer. I’ve won many of them over. I can see it when I look up at the stands.
And here’s the thing about arena sports—it’s not just about how good you are at the game. It’s about how good you are at feeling the crowd when they are with you and ignoring the crowd when they aren’t.
It’s about how swept up you can get in the momentum when winning, but also how defiant you can be when the tide turns against you.
Back in the eighties, I was great when the crowd was with me. But I was also great when they weren’t. I did not need their love or their approval. I just needed the goddamn trophy.
Sadly for Carla, she does not have that single-mindedness. Not today.
I’m at break point within six serves.
Carla tosses the ball up into the air and then slams it across the net. It comes barreling toward me. I return it down the sideline, out of her reach.
Suddenly, my father is pumping his fist in the air.
Carla drops her racket onto the ground. I fall back onto the court in relief.
I’m through to the round of sixteen.
At breakfast the next morning, Bowe is sitting outside on the hotel patio, eating scrambled eggs and toast.
He has a placid look on his face that reminds me of the surface of the ocean—which is to say it looks tranquil, but you know there are sharks mauling baby seals underneath.
I toy with the idea of turning around so that Bowe can’t see me.
He lost to O’Hara yesterday. It was not just a defeat but a bloodbath. I saw the recap last night on the sports channels. Briggs Lakin said, “Someone come out here and put Bowe Huntley down.”
I can’t afford to sit here consoling him. I have a match to focus on. My father is meeting me in the lobby at eight to practice.
“You can at least not stare,” Bowe says suddenly, not even lifting his head up but clearly speaking directly to me.
“I wasn’t staring,” I say. “I was…trying to gauge whether you wanted company.”
Bowe laughs without a smile. “You were trying to figure out if you could ignore me because you’re afraid losing is contagious.”
I look at him. He looks handsome in his regular clothes—a pair of jeans and a black pocket T-shirt, his hair combed. It’s like seeing an entirely different person.
I pick up my smoothie and walk over to his table. “I’m sorry you lost.”
I grab a chair and sit.
“Thank you,” he says. “That’s kind of you, given that I wouldn’t do the same.”
“Is that true?”
“One time, after McEnroe lost a match to Borg, I wouldn’t even look at him for the rest of clay season, in case he was bad luck.”
“And did you win a lot? That clay season?”
He cocks his head. “No.”
“I don’t actually think luck has much to do with any of this,” I say.
Bowe rolls his eyes. “If it wasn’t bad luck that got my ass handed to me yesterday, then what was it?” He puts his finger out before I say a word. “Don’t answer that.”
“It’s you,” I say. “Luck didn’t lose. You lost. Because you didn’t break his first service game like I told you to.”
“Oh, like it was that fucking easy?”
I shrug. “Could have been. If you used the platform stance Javier told you to use. It had been working for you, and then I looked at the footage from last night and you’re using pinpoint again. Like a moron.”
Bowe shakes his head. “You’re lucky I’m on the first flight out of here. That way I can’t stick around to watch you get ripped to shreds by Cortez.”