My entire life’s work rests on the outcome of this match.
My father, Javier, and I sit front row center at Flushing Meadows, the sidelines just out of reach. The linesmen stand with their arms behind their backs on either side of the court. Straight in front of us, the umpire presides over the crowd high in his chair. The ball girls crouch low, ready to sprint at a moment’s notice.
This is the third set. Nicki Chan took the first, and Ingrid Cortez squeaked out the second. This last one will determine the winner.
My father and I watch—along with the twenty thousand others in the stadium—as Nicki Chan approaches the baseline. She bends her knees and steadies herself. Then she rises onto her toes, tosses the ball in the air, and with a snap of her wrist sends a blistering serve at 126 miles per hour toward Ingrid Cortez’s backhand.
Cortez returns it with startling power. It falls just inside the line. Nicki isn’t able to get to it. Point Cortez.
I let my eyes close and exhale.
“Cuidado. The cameras are watching our reactions,” my father says through gritted teeth. He’s wearing one of his many panama hats, his curly silver hair creeping out the back.
“Dad, everyone’s watching our reactions.”
Nicki Chan has won two Slam titles this year already—the Australian Open and the French Open. If she wins this match, she’ll tie my lifetime record of twenty Grand Slam singles titles. I set that record back in 1987, when I won Wimbledon for the ninth time and established myself as the greatest tennis player of all time.
Nicki’s particular style of play—brash and loud, played almost exclusively from the baseline, with incredible violence to her serves and groundstrokes—has enabled her to dominate women’s tennis over the past five years. But when she was starting out on the WTA tour back in the late eighties, I found her to be an unremarkable opponent. Good on a clay court, perhaps, but I could beat her handily on her home turf of London.
Things changed after I retired in 1989. Nicki began racking up Slams at an alarming rate. Now she’s at my heels.
My jaw tenses as I watch her.
the opening to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2022)
Humans worked out how much fun it is whack a thing with a bat like thing many, many years ago. Scenes of the joy of racquet sports such as tennis and badminton has been preserved in art.
Een leraar speelt badminton met zijn leerling, Bernard Picart, after Gerard de Lairesse, 1714Drie kinderen spelen badminton of pluimbal, Johannes Alexander Rudolf Best, 1807 – 1855190919091929The English Air cover artModern Priscilla Jul 1919 Magazine AdvertisementWoman’s Home Companion August 1912 cover artby Lucille Patterson MarshVogue Magazine July 15 1927 cover art by Meserole ‘Tea and Tennis.’ (1920) Eveline SymeTennis in Mornington Crescent Gardens (1909) by Spencer Gore (English, 1878-1914) The Carreras Cigarette Factory was built on this site in 1926.Better Homes & Gardens magazine June19381893, Willem Wenckebach c 1893Art – Goût – Beauté, Feuillets de l’ élégance féminine, Mai 1931, No. 129, 11e Année, p. 24, anonymous, 1931Judge magazine, May 14, 1927 well go ahead and serveVogue Magazine Cover – art by George Wolfe Plank – 1921Très Parisien, 1923, No 8 18.- PALLANZA. – Pour les derniers jours…, anonymous, 1923Telephone Review Magazine June 1937Lucky Strike cigarette advertisement from the May 16, 1949 issue of Life magazine1930 Don’t Overindulge, Smoke a Lucky. Fat-shaming as well as flat-out lying. Nice one, Don Draper.Blücher en Wellington spelen badminton met Napoleon, 1815, Johann Michael Voltz, 1815Journal des Demoiselles, septembre 1868, 36e année, No. 9, Paul Lacourière, after Emile Préval, 1868Le Moniteur de la Mode, 1885, No. 2224e, No. 39 Costumes d’Enfants (…), anonymous, 1885The Young Ladies’ Journal, 1 May 1868, No. 49, Anaïs Colin-Toudouze, 1868Journal des Demoiselles, 1 juillet 1903, No. 5307 Toilette de Mmes Forcillon Soeurs (…), anonymous, after Monogrammist BC, 1903Le Moniteur de la Mode, 1895, Nr. 3128e, No. 17 Garnitures et Passementeries (…), Guido Gonin, 1895 tennisRevue de la Mode, Gazette de la Famille, dimanche 26 juin 1887, 16e Année, No. 808 Etoffes de la M.on Le Houssel, P. Deferneville, 1887Ideal Book For Girls, 1945Ladies Home Journal Original Cover, June 1907 By Henry HuttThe Badminton Game David Inshaw, oil on canvas, 1972. The smooth shapes of this shrubbery are almost creepy. They put me in mind of a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg: The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.Cover art of Murder At The Vicarage by Agatha Christie, by Tom AdamsFrom ‘Furniture Age’ February 1948 tennisHorace Henry Cauty – The Tennis MatchBernie Fuchs tennis in Sports IllustratedCountry Home Magazine June 1933 Young boy badly stringing a tennis racketZittende vrouw met een tennisracket, Edgar Chahine, 1899Slaghout en pluimbal, Kikugawa Eishin, 1810 – 1819Slaghout en pluimbal, Kikugawa Eishin, 1810 – 1819Joseph Christian LeyendeckerLouis WainCat’s Tea Party Louis Wain (1860-1939) tennisAdolph K. Kronengold tennisJoseph Christian LeyendeckerMary Petty (1899-1976)Edward ArdizzoneLorenzo Mattotti New Yorker CoverJoseph Christian Leyendecker Girls with Golf Clubs and Tennis Racquet, ca. 1920St Nicholas Magazine for boys and girls 1923 MayThe Digest – Literary Digest – Magazine – September 4th – 1937
Header illustration: Tenniswedstrijd met toeschouwers bij kasteel Rochefoucauld, Israël Silvestre, 1656
