Double Fault
Double Fault
By Keir Graff
Chicago Reader, December 23, 2005
(Illustration by Tomasz Walenta)
You won’t remember me unless you’re a trivia freak with a stack of Tennis back issues, but that’s cool. Hardly anybody, even in the industry, follows the game well enough to know anyone but the men’s and women’s winners at Wimbledon, plus a few other genuine American heroes. Right now it goes like this: Roger Federer, that Ukrainian chick, Serena and Venus, Agassi, Anna Kournikova, Sampras sort of, and McEnroe, because who can forget McEnroe if he won’t go away. A few more people know who Hingis is, and Graf, maybe Becker, and some people might remember Navratilova—she still plays some, pretty well for an old broad—or they might think she’s the girl who nailed her dismount in the Olympics with the broken ankle. But if they played before new wave or they had a funny accent, forget it. You say Laver, Ashe, King, Evert, Connors, and Borg, people think it’s a law firm. I mean, ask any high school player, “Who’s a tennis legend?” and they’ll say that punk Andy Roddick. And who watches the finals of any tournament when it’s a Dutchman versus a Dane—aren’t they from the same country anyway? We only remember the names of the foreigners for the duration of the match in which they play an American. And doubles? Name one great doubles team. See? But I’m getting away from my point, which is to say, you don’t remember me, which is cool. I’m not bitter about it.
In this part of the application for Riverhill Country Club tennis pro I’m supposed to explain my qualifications and say why I’m the best person for the position. Now, because I went to college—Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo (yes, it has a tennis team)—I understand that the best way to illustrate a point is to make use of specific examples. (I transferred to UC Davis after someone noticed I was better at the drop shot than at irregular logarithms and they made me take English.) So following are several points that . . . whatever. I’ll bet you’ve never had someone who was ranked in the top 400 apply before.
I never won anything important, but I won a lot when I was starting out. When you’re a kid it’s easy, if you’ve had a couple of lessons. You know enough to make the guy run back and forth, or you hit every shot to his backhand because he only has a forehand. Or you get lucky and the other kid throws up because he ate a banana split on the hottest day of the year. It’s not too tough in high school, either. There are a few power-stroking, crew-cut Nazis out there, but there are also a lot of undisciplined flakes who make truckloads of unforced errors. After all, they’re fucking teenagers.