The Master Sniper

Benson was tall, thin, a ropy blond with calm gray eyes and marvelous form. He moved fast slowly, meaning that he had such effortless grace that he never seemed to lunge or lurch, rather glided about the court in his white flannels — for his eccentricity was to stick to the pleated flannel trousers of the Twenties and early Thirties, unlike the more stylish Rog, who’d been wearing shorts a la Riggs and Budge since he was a kid. Benson hit leapers, all that topspin, causing the ball to hiss and pop, even though the Cour Centrale was a porous clay-type composition, not quite en-tout-cas, but very, very slow. It was like playing on toast. The surface sucked the oomph from those slammed Western forehand drives, but to Roger, across from him, hitting in warm-up, the guy looked like seven skinny feet of white death, methodical, unflappable, unstoppable.

Still, Roger specialized in confidence, and his had not dropped a notch since his get-together with the Great Man this morning. He’d taken on big hitters before: it demanded patience, guile and plenty of nerve. Mainly you had to hold together on the big points, perform when the weight of the match squashed down on you. If you could run down their hottest stuff, these big hitters would blow up on you, get wilder and fiercer and crazier. He’d seen plenty like that, who fell apart, quit, hadn’t that hard, bitter kernel of self-righteousness inside that made victory usual.

The Cour Centrale at Roland Garros sat in the center of a steeply tiered cement amphitheater which was now jamming up with uniforms. A flower bed along one side of the court, under the boxes where Important Brass now gathered, showed bright and cheerful, new to spring — the orderly German officers who’d played here during the Occupation had kept them up. Lacoste had owned this place with its soft, gritty-brown surface, along with his equally merciless sidekicks Borotra and Cochet; they’d called them the Three Musketeers back during their heyday, and only Fielding, with his power and control and, most of all, his guts, had been able to stand up to them here. So Roger wasn’t just a player; he was a part of history, a part of tradition. He felt absorbed into it, taken with it, warmed by it, and now the ball seemed to crack cleanly off the center of strings. Was it his imagination or was even this audience of shot-up youngsters beginning to throb with enthusiasm? Pennants snapped in the wind. The shadows became distinct. The lines of the court were precise and beautiful. The balls were white and pure. Rog felt like a million bucks. This was where he belonged.

“Okay, fellows,” said Fielding, calling them in.

They sat down to towel off as Fielding, to a surge of applause that grew and grew, lifting swiftly in passion as he moved out to the center of the court, stood to face the crowd, a microphone in hand. He smiled sharkishly.

“Hi, guys,” he said, voice echoing back in amplification.

“Bill, Bill, Bill,” they called, though most were too young to have remembered with clarity the three years, ’27, ’28 and ’29, when he’d dominated tennis — and the larger world — like a god.

“Fellas,” Bill allowed, “I know all this is kinda new to some of ya,” a Midwestern accent, Kansas corn belt, flattened out the great man’s Princeton voice, “but let me tell ya the truth: tennis is a game of skill, guts and endurance; it’s like war … only tougher.”

The soldiers howled in glee. Roger sat mesmerized by their pulsating animation: one mass, seething, galvanized by the star’s charisma.

“Now today, we’re going to show you how the big boys play. You’ve seen DiMage and the Splendid Splinter? Well you’re going to see the DiMage and Ted Williams of tennis.”

Fielding spoke for about ten minutes, a polished little speech in which he explained the rules, showed them the strokes as demonstrated by the blankly flawless Frank Benson, worked in a few amusing anecdotes and continually compared tennis — flatteringly — to other sports, emphasizing its demands of stamina, strength and courage, the savagery of its competition, the psychological violence between its opponents.

And then he was done.

“And now fellows,” cheer-led Fielding, “the big boys: Captain Frank Benson, Stanford, ’41, currently of the Eighth Air Force, twenty-three trips over Germany; and Technical Sergeant Five Roger Evans, Harvard, ’46, now of the United States Army, attached to the Office of Strategic Services, veteran of several behind-the-lines missions —”

Yeah, our lines though. Good thing Leets wasn’t around to hear that little fib.

“—and now,” continued Fielding, mocking another game’s traditions, “play ball!”

They’d already spun, Benson winning and electing to serve, but still he came to net and sought out Roger’s eyes as Roger had guessed he would.

“Good luck, Sergeant,” he said to Roger.

“Same to you, Chief,” said Roger.

Roger was an excellent tennis player, definite national-ranking material, and though he’d not played hard and regularly in the year he’d been in the Army, he’d worked to maintain his edge, drilling when he couldn’t find a partner, staying in shape, pursuing excellence in the limited ways available to him. But in the first seconds he knew he was seriously overmatched: it was the difference between skill and genius. Benson hit out at everything, fiery and hard: the white ball dipped violently as it neared the baseline and its spin caught up to and overpowered its velocity, pulling it down, making it come crazily off the court at him, faster than sin. Benson’s forehand especially was a killer, white smoke, but when Roger, learning that lesson fast, tried to attack the backhand, deep, Benson rammed slices by him. He felt immediately that he couldn’t stand and hit with the bastard from the backcourt and so at 1–1, after squeaking out a lucky win on his serve, which the Californian hadn’t pressed seriously, he decided to angle dinks wide to the corner — now they are called approach shots but the terminology then was “forcing shots”—and come in behind them. Catastrophe followed thereupon: he didn’t have enough punch on the ball to hold it deep and as he dashed in to net, Benson, anticipating beautifully, seemed to catch each shot as it dropped and hit some dead-run beauties that eluded Roger’s lunge to volley by a hair.

Roger stood after fifteen minutes at 3–3, only because his own serve had finally loosened and was ticking and because the toasty composition scoured the balls, fluffing them up heavy and dull, letting Rog reach two shots on big points he never would have under normal conditions, American conditions, and he put both away insolently for winners, his two best strokes of the match.

But this equilibrium could not last and no one knew it better than Roger, who sensed his confidence begin to slide away. He felt a tide of self-pity start to rise through him.

On serve, with new balls, he fell behind fast on two backhand returns that Benson blew by him like rockets. He was looking at love-30, felt his heart thundering in his ribs.

He served a fault, just long, ball sliced wickedly but just off the back line.

He glanced about, a bad sign, for it meant his concentration was evaporating. The ranks of soldiers seemed to be glaring at him. A pretty nurse looked viciously unimpressed. Fielding, on a lawn chair just behind the umpire’s seat, had a blank expression.

Roger felt the vise screwing in on the sides of his body. He could hardly breathe.

He double-faulted, going to add out, and quickly double-faulted again, down one, serve lost.

He sat on the bench during the change, toweling off, feeling sick. Humiliation lay ahead. He felt sick out there, knowing he’d quit. Dog, pig, skunk, jerk. He deserved to lose. Self-loathing raced through him like a drug, knocking the world to whirl and blur. He almost wanted to cry. Exhaustion crowded in.

Someone was near him. Roger couldn’t care less. The unfairness of it all was overwhelming. The stands, the court, the net all shimmered in his rage. But through this rage, there came a voice, low and insistent. At first he thought it was his conscience, Jiminy Cricket-style, but …

“Kid,” the voice whispered, “you don’t belong out there. I’m carrying you.”

Benson, close by, seemingly tightening his laces, was talking in a low voice, face down and hidden from the crowd.

“It ought to be done now, at love.”

Roger didn’t say anything. He stared bleakly ahead, letting the man mock him. He felt the sweat peel down his body inside his shirt. He knew it was the truth.

“But Christmas comes early this year,” Benson said.

The oblique statement, it turned out, referred to a present: the match.

Roger ran the next three games for the set, Benson holding them close, but crapping out at key points. He could hit it an inch outside the line as well as an inch inside. Then Roger ran five more into the second set until