Game, Set, Championship

Alexandra’s eyes did not pass over the trophy that stood imperiously upon an altar several rows into the crowd. Nor did her ears flinch at the unearthly din of the crowd that roared as she walked through the tunnel. Cameras flashed, but her eyes remained steadfast. To her, the trophy meant nothing. What was it that made it so hallowed in the eyes of others? Sterling silver, an oversized chalice fit for a giant, emblazoned with words merely ascribing it to a certain championship. Was it not all interchangeable? Had it not been for ceremony, for tradition, could this trophy not be replaced? The flowing elegance of the two rounded handles, which fitted the chalice as waves fit the seashore, the fine lines and rounded edges, the way it all glimmered in the light, none of it stirred her heart at all.

No, Alexandra Duplass was in the women’s final of the US Open strictly on business. Her stern, square jaw reflected this. Her muscles, pliable and ready for action, striated as she lowered her bag beside her bench and took a seat, fingering the tense strings of the racquet she held. Everything in Alexandra’s body had been prepared for tennis. Her legs had been stretched and warmed up, her abdomen felt tight and steady, ready to torque her upper body and deliver vicious hits. Her sharp blue eyes shone from the hard line of her eyebrow ridge, and blonde hair was pulled back into a precise, tight ponytail to prevent even a single strand from escaping and obscuring her vision. How stoic she looked sitting there waiting for her opponent, cheeks slightly hollowed from precise conditioning, prominent cheekbones, and lips taut from anticipation.

The crowd roared a second time as a commentator with a powerful voice shouted, “Please welcome, Stephanie… Kraft!”

In came Stephanie, whose eyes immediately snapped to the box in which sat the American president, some sour old man, but it was not to him that she looked. There stood the trophy upon a red altar. She paused on the way to her bench, reflecting for a moment about her journey. The reporter in the tunnel had asked her how it felt to come from a place in which the barking of dogs, the hollering of drunk men, and the occasional gunshot had to be filtered out in order to get to sleep. Unranked in the tournament, her first tournament, the reporter had asked how it felt to come against Alexandra Duplass, the reigning champion, the teenage prodigy turned global phenom who had already won two titles in the US Open itself.

Stephanie had stared at the reporter, whose eyes shone to reflect admiration but held a sparkle that conveyed the desperate hunger that Stephanie would slip and create a viral moment to catapult this reporter to fame.

Stephanie had answered, “It means a lot. I’m so proud of myself for getting to this moment, to get to face such a tough competitor. I’ve pictured myself holding that trophy every night for the last week, and I just hope I can get out there and be the player I know I am and play my best.”

The cunning sparkle was gone from the reporter’s eyes, but the helpless admiration stayed, borne out of some dream long-since lost into the curdled stew of her unconscious. After a brief, “Good luck,” Stephanie was on her own.

She smiled at Alexandra as she made her way to her own bench, but Alexandra gave her only cold dismissal in return. To the world, it might have looked like Alexandra was disrespecting Stephanie by failing to even meet her gaze for more than a second, but Stephanie thought she saw something else in her; a grim, restless weariness.

Yes… Alexandra was weary. She was just a couple years older than Stephanie, 24 to her 22, but already there had been three lifetimes worth of life for her. Growing up in France, her family had always been wealthy, even before her father secured his position near the peak of some biotechnology company. Her earliest memories were of shopping for dresses that cost more than the cars most French citizens drove. When her father started that fancy position, Alexandra was five. She stopped seeing him. He would travel almost every week, and when he came back he would be so exhausted that any questions, any feeble attempts at juvenile conversation, and, perhaps most hurtfully, any affection was disregarded in an instant. Even now, she could hear his voice in her head, in French, of course.

“Alex, don’t trouble me. I have a headache and I need to rest before I fly to Singapore on Monday.” His voice was tenor-heavy and grating, though Alexandra did not think that when she was in her youth.

“But daddy, I want to tell you about my dream!”

“Later, Alex, later,” said Edward Duplass. He did not ever tousel her hair, pinch her cheek, or take her up in his arms. The only time he had condescended to do so, in Alexandra’s memory, was when she had been about to jump in an enticing puddle, and even then he’d said, “Alex, don’t be silly. You’ll get my shoes dirty.”

In the finals of her fifth US Open, Alexandra could not help but look up and notice the empty seat where her father should have been sitting. He hadn’t called. Alexandra hadn’t expected an explanation. The only tournament in which he’d deigned to grace the crowd with his presence had been the French Open, and even then it just was only one year, a year in which his business arrangements did not conflict with the date of the final. Alexandra had not won that finals game, and her father afterward had looked at her with a slightly bemused expression on his face, as though he was thinking, so this is the prodigy?

The two competitors began hitting the ball back and forth, warming up. Stephanie noticed with what grace and strictness Alexandra made her strokes. Every movement was calculated, not stiff, exactly, but when you watched her play, you understood that every shot she hit could not possibly have been hit in any other way. Stephanie, meanwhile, played unpredictably. Even in warmups, she sliced where it might have been better to power through the shot, she used a drop shot where one might think it would be better to try and hit the back line. If this worried Alexandra at all, or if she even remotely admired Stephanie’s style of play, she did not show it. As the warmups came to their conclusion, Stephanie markedly lost the doe-like look in her eye and the dimpled smile she’d had since walking onto the court. A sense of focus stilled her jittering heart, though the exhilaration of the moment couldn’t keep itself out of her every bodily movement: every one was performed with zeal.

Her own journey began not far from Arthur Ashe stadium. She’d grown up in Queens, to a mother and father who worked two, sometimes three, jobs each to pay the rent and the bills for their little apartment. She remembered how tired her father had been, how his dark skin had become wrinkled and aged so early in life, and how her mother fretted over every penny. Amidst all of this, they never ceased showing love to their son and their daughter. Christmases were spent without presents, for the most part. Her brother, seeing the strife of his family, sought to increase their means by procuring work on the street. Such work led to the worst night of Stephanie’s life, which had occurred when she was ten.

She came out of her room, having recently been tucked in, to find her mother and father on the couch, the former’s face stricken and ashen with grief, the latter weeping uncontrollably. Two police officers stood soberly before them. She did not hear any of their words except, “We’re so sorry for your loss.”

Her father would not be assuaged that evening. He shut himself in the bedroom and wailed for his boy. Her mother, using what was clearly the last of her battered resolve, took Stephanie’s shoulders and said, “Steph, dear… There’s something I need to tell you about your brother. He… he died tonight. Can you understand that?”

“Died? When is he coming back?”

Stephanie could see her mother’s heart break at her words. “Dear, he’s not coming back. When you die, you leave the world… forever.”

“Like… you go to Heaven?”

Angela Kraft choked back tears. “Yes, dear. You go to heaven.”

“So Andre’s… gone?”

And Angela couldn’t take it anymore; she went into the room with her husband, leaving Stephanie on the couch to listen to her parents cry.

It had been that year that she found a tennis racquet at school. It had been that year that she’d fallen in love with the game. In high school, she’d make the JV tennis team her first year. Her parents would scrape together enough money to buy her a great racquet for Christmas. In sophomore year, she’d make varsity. By the time she was ready to graduate high school, multiple colleges were giving her scholarships to play, and at twenty she joined international tennis.

Now, in her first US Open, there sat her parents, tears in their eyes. Her mother carried with her a picture of Andre, a school picture taken with scruffy hair, but one in which he was grinning ear to ear. Stephanie saw that picture as she went up to the net for the coin toss. This was the closest she’d been to Alexandra, whose blue eyes met Stephanie’s brown, whose pulled back blond hair was in such contrast to the mass of coiled hair barely tied back on Stephanie’s head, whose slender figure with zero body mass wasted, with everything dedicated to tennis, contrasted so starkly with Stephanie’s robust, powerful, and large frame. They shook hands after Stephanie won the toss. She said, “Good luck.”

Alexandra answered with pursed lips and a quiet, “Bonne chance.”

So where had Alexandra’s mother been? Now, she sat in the crowd, dignified and with an eternal frown on her lips. Ever with the whip in her hand, Alexandra’s mother had forced the young girl into tennis from the age of five, the moment she got executive control over her daughter. Alexandra learned with great rapidity, but it was never enough for Julie Duplass, who herself had played international tennis and had maintained an edge in her character ever since losing in the semifinals in one of her only three French Open appearances. Surrounded by the best of everything, was it any wonder that Alexandra Duplass had been molded into the perfect tennis player? Was it any wonder that she’d won Wimbledon at age 19, kicking off an already illustrious career?

And given such character, was it any wonder that none of this satisfied Julie Duplass?

The match began with fury. Stephanie served as though her racquet was infused with ethereal power. While this had stunned previous opponents, Alexandra was calm. Yes, she was at the disadvantage here, but she knew that all she needed to do was keep the match close. Every game, every set that they played, Stephanie would grow more tired, and therein lay Alexandra’s great advantage: stamina.

The crowd cried out at every dramatic volley, they cheered heavily for Stephanie when she won, and a little less heavily for Alexandra. The first set ended four points to six in Stephanie’s favor. Yet Alexandra was unbothered. She knew that even after being down a set, she could win. In fact, the only wry smile she allowed on her face came from a random thought that pierced through her calculation: someone’s gonna lose a lot of money on sports betting from this.

They began their second set with a similar fury as the first. Yet as it went on, Alexandra began to play with such precision that Stephanie was sent reeling in the last two points. She battled it out, but it was as though she was facing a machine–relentless, accurate, and pitiless. The second set ended in extraordinary fashion as Stephanie stretched out, diving to return a ruthless forehand. The tip of her racquet connected with the ball, but it wasn’t enough. She felt the court burn into her exposed arms and side as she slid against its harsh surface.

Alexandra did not spare her a glance; she did not check to see if her opponent was injured. She merely walked over to her bench and began to hydrate. Stephanie scrambled to her feet and rolled her shoulder around. She was okay. More than that, despite losing the set, Stephanie felt affirmed in her earlier notion: Alexandra was weary.

Alexandra knew why: tennis had been the only thing she’d known for almost twenty years. There were even scars on her back from a time her mother had exploded in her wrath following a brutal loss and had struck her own daughter with a racquet. What more was there for her to do in life? How many more trophies could she add to the room in her mansion already dedicated to displaying the loot of countless conquests?

The third set began, both players having the opportunity to win the tournament right there in that very set. Stephanie played with passion, her body dripping with sweat and her eyes shining. Alexandra’s eyes were sharp yet glassy, as though she was playing through a routine.

Yet there was no denying that the competition was taking a serious turn, for the prediction she’d had about Stephanie growing tired after the first two sets turned out wrong. Here, in the third, there was just as much power, as much creativity in her hits. Alexandra found herself growling in frustration after Stephanie returned a ball hit into the very back corner of her side with so much pace that Alexandra could only watch as it bounced in the court and then off her back wall. Before they knew it, it was 6-6. Tiebreak.

Stephanie began serving, but she faltered, letting her nerves show through for the first time, and Alexandra won two games. Yet Stephanie was not going down easy. The third game went to her after a beautiful slice sent Alexandra hurtling towards the net. She was just able to flick it back over to her opponent’s side, where Stephanie waited and slammed a shot so hard into Alexandra’s back court that she was sure the earth had shaken. Then Stephanie won a game on an unforced error, causing Alexandra to glower. She made the fewest unforced errors of any female tennis player in the world.

Both players won one more game each. Deuce Stephanie yelling out in frustration after what was Championship point for her ended in her own unforced error. Why–or rather, how did Alexandra play so fluidly, so precisely? Alexandra was asking herself how Stephanie played with such reckless abandon.

Second Deuce. Then third. The crowd was simmering, ready to boil. Both players were covered in sweat, their clothes sticking to their tense bodies. Alexandra could feel her mother grimacing somewhere over her left shoulder. Stephanie even saw her mother clutching the picture of Andre tightly, holding onto her father’s hand. Gus Kraft looked at the court with wide, unblinking eyes, his face shining.

Deuce number five came, each player having now had the advantage twice. Stephanie felt a gnawing hunger in her stomach growing deeper with every heavy beat of her heart. Her hands shook slightly from the nerves. Alexandra put her head down and recentered her focus.

Stephanie yelled as she sent a savage forehand towards Alexandra, who could only lamely get the ball on her racquet. The crowd burst into clamor. Advantage Kraft, again. This was it. One game away from the championship, from five million dollars, from everything she had dreamed of since she first fell in love with tennis. Alexandra sent a rocketing forehand which was handled by a backhand. The players volleyed, each running to every corner of the court, each now shouting as they hit the ball out of exhaustion and effort.

It seemed like another stalemate, but then… Stephanie saw an opening. She sent Alexendra hard to the right, and when Alexandra returned with a strong backhand, Stephanie ripped a forehand all the way across the court, praying it landed inbounds. Alexandra ran to the other end and dove for it herself, but it was useless. The ball bounced on the back line, in by less than an inch, and it hit the back wall as the crowd erupted into a frenzy.

Alexandra squatted down, catching her breath, leaning on her racquet. Stephanie was jumping up and down, her face an expression of pure jubilation. Then she took a knee and began crying in earnest. It was here, and only here, that Alexandra allowed herself a pure smile.

Stephanie rushed to see her family, they wept for her and embraced her. Alexandra felt the cold embrace with her own mother could wait; something else was stirring in her heart.

Stephanie’s world had changed forever. She dedicated her win to her family, to her brother, to every kid with a dream who wanted to be great but didn’t have the means; she vowed to spend her life trying to make it better for these kids. Alexandra said some dry stuff. Had this been any other year, she would have immediately moved on to preparing for the next tournament. Instead, she took an opportunity in the post-match press conference to say, with a pure conscience and a genuine smile, that she was retiring from the world of professional tennis. In her own words, “It has run its course.”

Both Alexandra Duplass and Stephanie Kraft would go to sleep that night feeling happier than they had ever been in their lives.