Starting Out Or Ending Up

The next day Chip faced a young player from a local college who had entered the tournament as a lark. Early in the match the younger player made several suspect calls, but Chip didn't protest. He was playing well, and as the match progressed, his opponent came to realize the inevitability of the result.

Chip rolled through the first set, and his confidence was mounting. Then it happened. He ran for a ball he should have let pass and managed to get his racket on it, at the same time making a sharp stop and scrambling to get back into position. His bum knee reacted as if it had been kicked. It didn't collapse, but it felt as if it might, and now with a 4-2 lead in the second set, Chip knew that the throbbing would only get worse.

Even more disturbing was the certainty that if he lost this set, he could kiss off any chance of winning the next one because in about 40 minutes he was barely going to be able to walk. Indeed, Chip's opponent seemed to sense that something was wrong, and now he was jerking Chip around the court, hitting soft dinks and lobs, moving him up and back.

The only thing Chip could do was try to end each point as quickly as possible: using this strategy he won one of the next three games, making the score 5-4. Now his knee was really hurting. In fact, he couldn't disguise his slight limp when the players changed sides. The only thing he had going for him was that he was serving for the match.

Playing aggressively, Chip quickly knocked off the first two points with sharp volleys, but then he netted a low return and, on the next point, got involved in a baseline rally that he lost. He won the next point, and now he could wrap up the match. He breathed deeply as he prepared to serve and, taking his time, carefully hit the ball down the middle, hoping to nick the service line. He was wide. On his second serve, Chip was startled to see his opponent take a couple of steps forward and catch the ball early. The return, powerful and flat, headed for the corner of the deuce court. And Chip's opponent was following the shot to the net. All of this happened, of course, in a second, but later it seemed to Chip as if time had slowed almost to the point of stopping. He remembered moving to his right and realizing that he could get to the ball, but to do so would mean hitting it off the wrong leg, his right one, and then trying to scramble back to the middle of the court. He knew his knee wouldn't let him do it.

As he went for the ball, all sorts of things flashed through his mind. Or maybe they really didn't, maybe he had been thinking of this moment for a long time, because he had changed. The shot was close, right on the edge of the sideline, in fact, and Chip did the only thing he could, because he had been up this road before and back down, and now he was going up it for the last time. His father, and anyone else who played the game the way you had to play it, would understand. In a loud and clear voice, Chip yelled, "Out!"