LACKING VIRTUES by Thomas Kirkwood Page A

was serving for the match. His first service was six inches wide and hit the net but neither a fault nor a let was called.
     
    At that point Steven walked to the net. Nicole thought he was going to blast the referee, and she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. But it was Philippe he wanted to talk to, and talk he did. He spoke in a booming voice she could easily hear above the warnings the ref shouted into the mike.
     
    “Okay, Philippe,” he said, “I was going to let you win this match as your going away present. I’ll still let you win if you have a chat with your buddies and get the remainder of the game officiated properly. Otherwise you’ll force me to play you left handed and embarrass you in front of all these people.”
     
    “This is an abomination,” Philippe complained to the chair. “This man has no tennis etiquette.”
     
    “Monsieur LeConte, you are penalized one point. The score is forty-love, which brings us to triple match point. Monsieur Denis du Péage, serve please.”
     
    “Look at that!” shouted Jules. “He’s switched hands. He is a lefty!”
     
    Impossible, thought Nicole. He was going to lose anyway so he was poking fun at these people who had rigged the match. Maybe he was carrying things a little too far.
     
    Philippe threw the ball high, arched his back in picture perfect form and hit his best serve of the match. He took two steps toward the net and watched open-mouthed as the left-handed return whistled by him, sank with ferocious top-spin, hit near the service line and ricocheted like a bullet toward the backdrop.
     
    Nicole ended up on her feet, jumping up and down with Jules and cheering so loudly she was embarrassed when she caught herself.
     
    “Quiet, please. Forty-fifteen. Double match point.”
     
    Philippe smiled, arched his back and hammered his service into the corner. Steven’s return, a sinker, came sizzling right at his body.
     
    Philippe spun to get out of the way, slapping at the ball with his racket and popping it up toward the stands.
     
    Nicole couldn’t believe what happened next. The American was taking no more chances on calls! He went after the ball though it was a good 20 feet out of play, climbing the bleacher steps and smashing a winner dead into the center of the court while he stood between two elderly women. The shower of chalk that went up from the service T dusted Philippe’s razor-cut hair.
     
    The American stopped at the chair on his way back to the court. “If you don’t call them out, I play them. Those are the international rules of tennis, aren’t they?”
     
    Steven had the crowd behind him now, and Philippe seemed to sense that if he didn’t win his third match point he would be in trouble. He took too big a swing and connected poorly.
     
    Nicole could see that Philippe expected a passing shot. He knew he had to gamble and lunged left. But the American must have known he would lunge to one side or the other, so he dinked a short soft return up the middle. The ball landed between the service courts. While Philippe watched helplessly, it made a leisurely bouncing journey across 15 feet of clay before it crossed the baseline.
     
    “How are they going to call that one out?” shouted Jules.
     
    “They can’t!” cried Luc, having come full circle in his change of allegiances.
     
    Now the left-handed slaughter began in earnest. It took Steven seventeen minutes to finish out the second set and a mere nineteen minutes to conclude the third and final set, during which he treated the crowd to a breathtaking display of smashes, topspin lobs, sinking backhands and scorching aces. By the end of the match, Jules, Luc and Nicole were hoarse.
     
    Nicole was glad to see what looked like grudging admiration for the American’s game from the linesmen and ref, and even from Monsieur Denis du Péage. When he presented the trophy he had no doubt planned to give his son, he patted the newcomer on the back, a rare display of humanity