oregon tennis story

Changeover: A Tennis Tale (Part 3)

Fiction, NSP Meditations, Sports , , , , , , ,

In the spirit of Wimbledon, which began this week, I present a short story I wrote a decade ago, but have recently updated. Enjoy. And get out there and play tennis this summer.

Love-6, love-5. Changeover. Chet had won one point in the two games, a double fault when his opponent went for and missed a second serve ace by an eighth of an inch. As they switched ends, Chet’s opponent went directly to the fence and started laughing with his harem, an assemblage now swelled in numbers and attractiveness. He kissed one of the girls and another let him listen to a special song on her phone.

Chet sat down. It was over. His high school tennis career was over and he was finishing it losing love and love, totally alone, in a humiliating public arena. He reached into his bag looking for a solid candy bar and instead found Tricia’s unopened card. He pulled it out and tore open the envelope. Tricia had painted a watercolor tennis scene on the cover. Inside, she wrote, “Good luck at district. I wish I could be there.” Chet put the card back into the envelope. He went back into the bag for the candy bar. Instead, he pulled out a hardback book, The Inner Game of Tennis. Chet had skimmed it recently for his history project for Mr. Love’s American Civilization class, which entailed researching some lost aspect of American popular culture, collecting its artifacts, writing a ten-page paper, and making a presentation to the class utilizing the artifacts. The working title for Chet’s project was “The Rise and Fall of Tennis in America” and it was a historical study of tennis’ meteoric rise in popularity in the 1970s, the Studio 54 days of golden rivalries between Connors, McEnroe and Borg, the sexy placid domination by Chris Evert, the feminist landmark when Billie Jean King routed Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes on prime time television while Howard Cosell provided color commentary, when the Rolling Stones played, when Virginia Slims cigarettes sponsored the women’s pro tour, when the New Yorker routinely ran long fact pieces on tennis.

Mr. Love had suggested the topic to Chet and Chet was enthusiastic about it, but unsure what constituted tennis artifacts, or where he would find them. To this, Mr. Love said, “Go to thrift stores and notice patterns.” He also told Chet to discover the identity of the last male or female tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles event using a wooden tennis racket. This information might prove interesting to include in the paper, perhaps in the form of a trivia question in the opening paragraph.

Several weeks ago, Chet and Tricia had driven to Portland in her brown Pinto and hit ten thrift stores and it had been the best fun time of his life. After three stops, patterns emerged: the stores were full of wooden tennis rackets, many screwed in their presses, and also full of tennis instruction books, many never opened. Further patterns emerged: one racket model dominated—the Jack Kramer Autograph; one instruction book dominated—The Inner Game of Tennis. Jack bought a Kramer in mint condition for $5 and a heavily annotated The Inner Game of Tennis for $1.

Chet barely cracked the book and was certain the it would not end up in his paper’s bibliography. But now, The Inner Game of Tennis rested in Chet’s hands during a changeover with Chet behind love-6, love-5. He opened it at random and read one of the underlined passages, “Observe how you feel if you fail.” He turned to another page, “Only when the mind is still is one’s peak performance reached.” Then another, “It is a painful process to fight one’s way out of a deep mental groove.” And finally, “Let the flower grow.”

Chet observed his failure: there was no one who cared for him watching his last match as a high school tennis player. Chet stilled his mind: he heard nothing but the distant sound of a crow upset at something. Chet considered his pain: his reclusive groove was Crater Lake in depth, totally unknown in origin to him, and about ready to ruin his adulthood. He thought about a flower growing: could one actually burst forth from underneath the court he was now losing everything on? Chet thumbed the book’s pages again and came across a double starred passage: “Habits are statements about the past, and the past is gone.”

And just like that, Chet knew he must let go of everything he was as a solitary, yet successful young man, and pedestrian, yet successful tennis player. He did not care so much about the tennis but he did care about his family and Tricia and he was tired of being alone most of the time, a habit he orchestrated with superb clandestine skill all throughout high school.

Yes, it was time to let all of that go. It had never served any useful purpose. It certainly did not attract friends or dates, except Tricia, who had asked him out during journalism class in the winter, and later told him she did so because he had some mysterious loner quality that attracted her and it was the antithesis of the football jock she had recently broken up with. She was on the swim team and Chet loved sitting by himself in the bleachers while watching her freestyle in the humid Fir City Swim Center. She made it to state that winter, in three events, but Chet did not drive the hundred miles to see her compete.

Tricia as girlfriend had been a fluke winner, he was a perpetual mishit, and he knew now, at the moment of his competitive disintegration, that he must entirely reinvent himself as a human being. He had approximately a minute to do it because how he faced his greatest opponent in the last game of the last set of the last match of his high school career was the beginning of it all.

Changeover: A Tennis Tale (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

In the spirit of Wimbledon, which began this week, I present a short story I wrote a decade ago, but have recently updated. Enjoy. And get out there and play tennis this summer.

Chet never saw the passing shot. He should have. He had crouched in textbook volleying form in perfect position at the net, covering the line where his opponent, running way wide to his right, must return a short sliced approach shot, must, because conventional wisdom at every level of tennis dictated it. It was irrefutable geometry. That is, unless the opponent mishit the ball and won the point on a fluke winner.

The return never came up the line; there was no mishit; Chet never saw the ball. His opponent ran down the approach shot with ease and then took a vicious forehand swing more appropriate to a decapitation than a tennis stroke. Chet saw these two developments fine—the rundown, the swing—and prepared to volley. What he never saw, although he whiplashed around to see something, was a yellow missile rocket past his temple with such ferocious topspin that had Chet actually touched it with his racket, he might have sprained his wrist.

The missile landed precisely where the up line and the service line intersected. Geometry refuted. Chet turned around and saw the ball stuck inside the chain link fence, something the fence’s manufacturer guaranteed could not happen. He then heard clapping and exclamations of wonder from the spectators after they all grasped the impossibility of this crosscourt forehand winner. The noise grew and resounded through the sprawling recreational complex, and Chet was on the other receiving end of the adulation because his opponent had just executed the shot of the tournament.

Chet walked to the fence, wrested the ball free and held it up for inspection. The shot of the tournament had won the game at love and Chet now trailed love-3 in the second set of a quarterfinal match for the Timber Valley League boys’ singles title. He had lost the first set love-6 and not won more than one point in any game. He had been aced a dozen times, including two serves that propelled balls through the fence. At the net, he had taken two forehands off the chest, knocking the wind out of him, denting his body with black welts, quite possibly the unlikeliest injury a player could sustain in a high school tennis match. But this wasn’t so much a match as tennis by enfilade.

Love-6, love-3, an odd game of a match, and thus time for the changeover, the ninety seconds allowed when players switch sides of the court and can rest, talk to one another, say nothing, take refreshment, run off to use the restroom, confer with a coach, or walk over to the other side and wait for the other player to resume play. It is strictly up to each player how he spends his ninety seconds and most players develop a distinct changeover ritual depending whether they are winning or losing. Chet did not have a ritual for the unprecedented beating he was absorbing and he needed to invent one in ninety seconds if he was to salvage any shred of dignity.

Chet trudged off the court and sat, then slouched on a plastic bench. He did not feel physically tired. Rather, he felt the crushing mental fatigue, disillusion really, associated with getting your ass utterly kicked by an opponent in a publicly viewed competitive sport. His opponent did not share the bench. Instead, he took a seat in a gleaming portable chair specifically designed for rest during tennis changeovers. Chet looked left. His opponent, who, once comfortably seated, and having checked his smartphone, began alternately consuming organic fruit juice and trail mix as he listened to music through an ear piece whose cord ran into a neon bag stuffed full of $350 rackets and assorted other tennis accouterments. Attached to the bag’s strap were a half dozen tennis club ID badges. Behind Chet, the chain link fence rattled. He turned around and saw a harem of five girls in tight black tennis dresses, with slender waists and apricot midriffs, shaking the fence trying to attract the attention of his opponent, who was momentarily oblivious to their presence, but then stood up and went over to chat with them. Chet caught most of the conversation and it had nothing to do with tennis. Chet half unwrapped a melted candy bar and half-peeled, spotted banana. He took a bite of each and washed it down with lukewarm tap water from a plastic milk jug. Chet toweled off and looked at his opponent. Not one drop of perspiration tainted any part of his body or discolored his tailored shirt made from some new shiny synthetic material. His hair was perfect. He was furiously text messaging his other distant harem.