how?
That is the eighty-five million, three hundred-eighty-six thousand, three hundred-thirty-five lire question.
Toweling off, Ugo is thinking of all the practice hours he has put in to be performing on this stage, to be here in front of 7,200 cheering spectators. He can see them clapping rhythmically for him, for a comeback. He cannot hear them, but he can see them, and he can feel their spirit in his bones.
Ugo becomes focused when he sees in his mind’s eye his coach Virgilio Marotti urging him to take piccoli passi , those little steps, and he is thinking of that Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that’s what he must do now.
And here are Ugo Bellezza and Tristan Corbière back on the court for the third set and Tristan is serving and he wins the first three points and is ahead forty-love and this is where most players who are receiving serve would sort of tank and give it about 30 percent thinking they’re almost certainly not going to win the game and the prevailing wisdom is just to take a risk and go for broke and try for a long-shot winner first chance they get and see how it goes and they usually miss and there goes the game and they are content to have given it a shot and oh well.
Not Ugo Bellezza.
Ugo sets his jaw and focuses on the Frenchman’s service motion and even though he knows he is the underdog now, he and Giglio have discussed being down forty-love many times and how despite the long odds this is perhaps the most important point in any match simply because your opponent, who’s serving and in complete control, doesn’t expect to lose the game and more important doesn’t expect heavy resistance from you and should you put up this resistance, should you demonstrate to him that you are not willing to lose any point, not even this one with the odds heavily stacked against you, well then, you are making a powerful symbolic statement that you are not going away, not now and not ever, and if you do win this point, this forty-love point, then the server is a scintilla more worried and less confident on the subsequent forty-fifteen point and if he should lose that one, well, lookee here, he’s within one measly point of having the game go to deuce, this game that only moments ago he had basically wrapped with pretty paper and tied up with a cute little bow made of red ribbon.
And Ugo hangs in there and wins the forty-love point with persistence and grit, after an arduous twenty-eight-shot rally, with his penetrating groundies and his moving Corbière side to side until the Breton at long last dumps a backhand drive weakly into the middle of the net.
And this is the moment, the turning point Ugo has been waiting for and he can sense the momentum ooze from Corbière’s side of the net to his and he wins the next point after a similarly tactical and grueling twenty-four-shot rally with the same result and it is now forty-thirty and Ugo can feel Tristan feeling the tension upon seeing his seemingly insuperable lead transformed into a suddenly shaky one.
And at forty-thirty, the Frenchman spins in a safe serve and Ugo is ready and drives it deep into the backhand side of the court, right in the corner, and Tristan barely gets his racquet on it and returns it very shallow, not even to the service line, and Ugo sees blood and is all over it like a rash. And he can now go to either corner and deep and he will have his opponent right where he wants him and Corbière knows that this is the safe and sure route and is ready to scamper either to his left or to his right behind the baseline to retrieve the deep and dangerous drive but instead what Ugo pulls off at this moment is a shot of such brilliance and daring, especially after clawing his way back to forty-thirty and being so close to knotting the game so why would he go for any shot that wasn’t totally safe and sure?
But no, there he is at the center of the court and halfway in toward the net and
That is the eighty-five million, three hundred-eighty-six thousand, three hundred-thirty-five lire question.
Toweling off, Ugo is thinking of all the practice hours he has put in to be performing on this stage, to be here in front of 7,200 cheering spectators. He can see them clapping rhythmically for him, for a comeback. He cannot hear them, but he can see them, and he can feel their spirit in his bones.
Ugo becomes focused when he sees in his mind’s eye his coach Virgilio Marotti urging him to take piccoli passi , those little steps, and he is thinking of that Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that’s what he must do now.
And here are Ugo Bellezza and Tristan Corbière back on the court for the third set and Tristan is serving and he wins the first three points and is ahead forty-love and this is where most players who are receiving serve would sort of tank and give it about 30 percent thinking they’re almost certainly not going to win the game and the prevailing wisdom is just to take a risk and go for broke and try for a long-shot winner first chance they get and see how it goes and they usually miss and there goes the game and they are content to have given it a shot and oh well.
Not Ugo Bellezza.
Ugo sets his jaw and focuses on the Frenchman’s service motion and even though he knows he is the underdog now, he and Giglio have discussed being down forty-love many times and how despite the long odds this is perhaps the most important point in any match simply because your opponent, who’s serving and in complete control, doesn’t expect to lose the game and more important doesn’t expect heavy resistance from you and should you put up this resistance, should you demonstrate to him that you are not willing to lose any point, not even this one with the odds heavily stacked against you, well then, you are making a powerful symbolic statement that you are not going away, not now and not ever, and if you do win this point, this forty-love point, then the server is a scintilla more worried and less confident on the subsequent forty-fifteen point and if he should lose that one, well, lookee here, he’s within one measly point of having the game go to deuce, this game that only moments ago he had basically wrapped with pretty paper and tied up with a cute little bow made of red ribbon.
And Ugo hangs in there and wins the forty-love point with persistence and grit, after an arduous twenty-eight-shot rally, with his penetrating groundies and his moving Corbière side to side until the Breton at long last dumps a backhand drive weakly into the middle of the net.
And this is the moment, the turning point Ugo has been waiting for and he can sense the momentum ooze from Corbière’s side of the net to his and he wins the next point after a similarly tactical and grueling twenty-four-shot rally with the same result and it is now forty-thirty and Ugo can feel Tristan feeling the tension upon seeing his seemingly insuperable lead transformed into a suddenly shaky one.
And at forty-thirty, the Frenchman spins in a safe serve and Ugo is ready and drives it deep into the backhand side of the court, right in the corner, and Tristan barely gets his racquet on it and returns it very shallow, not even to the service line, and Ugo sees blood and is all over it like a rash. And he can now go to either corner and deep and he will have his opponent right where he wants him and Corbière knows that this is the safe and sure route and is ready to scamper either to his left or to his right behind the baseline to retrieve the deep and dangerous drive but instead what Ugo pulls off at this moment is a shot of such brilliance and daring, especially after clawing his way back to forty-thirty and being so close to knotting the game so why would he go for any shot that wasn’t totally safe and sure?
But no, there he is at the center of the court and halfway in toward the net and
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