Everything on the Line by Bob Mitchell

and proportion and anatomy and physiology of the body, and the close relationship of the physical and spiritual realms (Ugo keeps a reproduction of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man in his tennis bag at all times). Most important, Giglio has taught him to understand how all this knowledge can be put to maximum use on a tennis court.
    Ugo is hitting serves on a side court, and Giglio is returning. But Ugo is not getting to hit any second serves for now. Because he has yet to miss a first serve. In forty-nine attempts. One devastatingly accurate serve after another. He is hitting corners, both in the deuce court and the ad court, wide and down the T .
    Just like Little Ugo Oakley and the Chianti Bottles.
    “Grandioso!” Giglio signs from across the net. “Now let’s do some running!”
    For the next twenty minutes, Giglio runs Ugo around the court with a series of drop shots, topspin lobs, and drives deep into the corners.
    “Remember that ‘distance’ quote from The Notebooks !” Giglio signs after one particularly intense rally that did not end particularly prettily.
    Ugo smiles and recalls vividly—it was last year—when Giglio had brought this quote from Leonardo’s compilation of thoughts to his attention. It expressed in brilliantly simple terms the fact that getting to a ball in the most efficient way has less to do with running more quickly than with covering more distance with those piccoli passi, those “little steps”:
    That movement is slower which covers less distance in the same time.
    And that movement is swifter which covers more distance in the same time.
    And from that moment on, every time he pursues a tennis ball, Ugo Bellezza has never forgotten this all-too-obvious but profound thought.
    During a short break, Giglio and Ugo discuss with their hands the tactical catechism of creating beautiful points—hitting every ball as early and cleanly as possible, moving your opponent around, planning ahead, not getting late to balls or being off-balance, footwork, focus, and footwork.
    The man and the boy-man are now back at work on the red stuff, crushing blistering baseline groundies. Ugo is making it all seem so effortless, but little does one know .
    It is impossible for a person who possesses the ability to hear to imagine what it would be like to be deaf and play tennis. And especially to play tennis at such a high level.
    Without being in that deaf person’s tennis shoes, little does one know what it is like not to hear the sound of ball on racquet, to be thus disoriented, not knowing how hard a ball is being hit or with (or without) what type and severity of spin. Little does one know what it is like to be playing points in a cocoon of utter soundlessness, with no echo of footsteps from the other side of the net, no way of knowing that your opponent is (or isn’t) charging the net when your back is toward him after you have chased down a lob. Little does one know what it is like not to hear umpire calls, or scores being announced if there’s no scoreboard (so you have to keep score yourself, adding to the mental stress), or applause, or jeering for that matter, or the aural ebb and flow between the point itself and then the crowd reaction and then the silence preceding the next point.
    Instead of possessing these hearing aids every other player enjoys and takes for granted, Ugo’s tennis universe is mute, mum, still, and silent.
    As a tomb.
    But life has this funny way of compensating, of allowing a person’s body to make up for an absence or a defect. Much like the saphenous vein is rent from a heart attack victim’s leg to bypass a blocked artery (and compelled to act, after a lifetime of being a vein carrying blood to the heart, as an artery transporting blood away from it), Ugo’s lack of hearing has been replaced by something just as powerful and maybe more wondrous. It is another, substitute fifth sense, in the place of hearing, a sense of creativity and high right-brain activity, an