Everything on the Line Read Free Page A

allows him to retrieve each shot with nanoseconds to spare.
    I piedi! Move those feet! E…piccoli passi! Little steps!
    Giglio is barking these fundamental tenets, but the thirteen-year-old, to whom they are second nature, doesn’t need to hear them.
    Giglio continues the rallies uninterrupted for a good hour, working on footwork, strategy, and footwork.
    “Piccoli passi!” Giglio barks, and there are those gorgeous tiny steps of Ugo’s balleting toward the ball.
    “Preparazione!” and Ugo takes his racquet back instinctively as soon as Giglio’s makes contact.
    “Fuoco!” and Ugo, having been taught that the word can mean both fire and focus , oozes both qualities from his eyes.
    “Let’s take a blow,” Giglio says, and the two come together at the net for a moment’s rest. This is Ugo’s favorite part: watching tennis wisdom emanate from his mentor’s lips.
    “Well, that was a terrific first half of our practice,” Giglio begins. “Your footwork was perfect, your racquet was back, you attacked your ground strokes, and, most of all, you thought about placement and strategy and really used your coconut!”
    Giglio doinks the top of his head with the bent knuckle of his right hand’s middle finger and makes a loud clucking sound by releasing, violently, the vacuum formed between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.
    “Thanks,” Ugo responds, bending over in hysterics.
    “Now, let me ask you one thing,” Giglio says. “That easy backhand you missed about two minutes ago when you had me on the ropes? What did you think of that?”
    Ugo looks sheepish and apologizes.
    “ Ascolta , listen up: You never need to feel ashamed of making a mistake, whether it’s here on the court, or anywhere else. And do you know why?”
    Ugo does not.
    “Well,” Giglio says, “because we all make mistakes, and no one is perfect.”
    Ugo is relieved.
    “But do you know what is not good about missing a shot like that if it happened during a match?”
    Ugo thinks. “Because I would lose the point?”
    “Nope.”
    “Because it would look stupid?” Ugo opines, making the point by using his hands.
    “Wrong again, I’m afraid,” Giglio says, furling his right eyebrow, pursing his lips, placing hands on waist, and sticking out his right hip foppishly.
    Again, Ugo cracks up.
    “I’ll tell you why, ragazzo . It’s because when you play your very best and don’t make silly mistakes, you make your opponent play his very best, and that makes you play even better!”
    A lightbulb flashes on in the thought balloon above the boy’s head.
    Back to the workout, and Giglio and Ugo play a little cat-and-mouse game of tactics where the goal is to get to the ball more quickly than your opponent and to move the other guy closer and closer to the sidelines, then hit your winner into the open court. Giglio starts out as the cat, but this kid is pretty amazing, and after a few minutes, it is not that easy to determine precisely who’s the feline and who’s the rodent.
    Bursting with pride, the coach watches his young charge retrieve balls from deep in the corners of the court and return them with pace and grace and precision.
    And Giglio is now rallying with the younger, better version of himself and he sees his vita flash before his occhi and there he is, little Virgilio Marotti the thirteen-year-old prodigy from the town of Fermo, running down balls hit to him in the corners of a red clay court by his mentor, the great former champion Roberto Arpino, and the promise of a pro tennis career but then the cruel judgment from the cardiologo concerning his congenital bicuspid aortic valve with leakage, Non potrà mai giocare a livello professionale , you will never be able to play as a pro, and then the initial despair but the picking himself up and dusting himself off and starting all over again and throwing himself into his studies, then a career in advertising that was going nowhere and drifting about aimlessly until one day as he