Read Online Everything on the Line by Bob Mitchell - Free Book Online

here’s that fifth sense kicking in big-time and to Tristan’s surprise and to the surprise of all 7,200 spectators, Ugo Bellezza executes the most delicious and premeditated forehand drop shot of all time, surpassing anything Beppe Merlo or Budge Patty or Manolo Santana or Björn Borg could have cooked up, first by keeping the ball on his racquet for what seems a mini-eternity and then slicing down on the ball—a maneuver as delicate as a mother placing her newborn back in the crib—and then sending it, with excruciating nonchalance, spinning felt head-over-felt heels barely over the net and three inches from the sideline and the ball hits the red clay surface and dies a glorious death and spins back against the net and collects itself there in a lump and Tristan Corbière is frozen stiff on the baseline and doesn’t even try for it and looks across the net at the audacious and brilliant perpetrator of the dastardly surprise ambush and shrugs his shoulders as if to hoist up a white flag.
    And now the Gallic lad himself is giving Ugo a round of applause and the crowd of 7,200 erupts in collective appreciation and shrieks out vamos and andiamo and allez as one and Ugo can’t hear anything but can feel it all and he looks over at Giglio sitting there not ten feet from the ball and his mentor’s mouth is open wide but when their eyes meet it enunciates four syllables to his protégé and Ugo lip-reads the syllables but doesn’t really need to because he already knows what they are.
    Sprez-za-tu-ra.
    And Giglio is thinking, Sì! È il motivo per cui mio figlio gioca!, Yes, this is the reason why my son is playing!, and pride fills his heart for the boy-man whom he has taught how to create le belle cose , and boy, this drop shot was sure a thing of beauty and gosh, he suddenly realizes, this is the first time I’ve ever called Ugo mio figlio .
    Ugo peers across the net at Tristan and gives him a look that needs no words to translate. It is not a mean, in-your-face, macho look, accompanied by yelp and fist pump, that is so endemic to today’s ultracompetitive game, but the same knowing Mona Lisa smile that his mother dispenses all the time. It is meant to express respect for his opponent, but in fact what it does is to break the spirit of his eighteen-year-old adversary because now he knows Ugo is in control and can execute this kind of shot at will.
    Corbière is up 6-0, 6-1, but now it is deuce and he is no longer in control despite the lopsided score, as a result of this one shot, this ridiculously artful and tactically brilliant single shot, which has officially announced: a. I am not giving in, even an inch, ever ! and b. This is the kind of tennis of which I am fully capable, and which from this point on I am fully intending to play.
    And Ugo begins to play with more confidence and way beyond his years and he breaks Tristan’s serve just after breaking his will and a few moments later, as he walks back to the service line after a successful foray to the net culminated by another wondrous and surprising drop shot, he thinks of Gaudí and of pushing the envelope and not licking it and of creativity and beauty and what Giglio had told him about the tennis court being finite but also infinite and about expanding the lines and playing like they are there but not there and that is precisely what Ugo is feeling like now and trying to accomplish.
    And early in this third set, at 2-1 Ugo’s, he discovers the key to making all this work. The resourceful Ugo figures out how to overcome Corbière’s disguising of his shots, in a way that is so simple and clean. Realizing that he is reacting too quickly to Tristan’s disguise and getting too early a jump without knowing precisely where the Frenchman is intending to guide the ball, he eliminates this confusion and flawed positioning simply by slowing down his split step just a speck, this split step that involves jumping off the ground slightly and landing on the balls of your