A Gentleman's Game for Reasonable Stakes

George Skidmore tosses the tennis ball too far back over his head, arches up awkwardly and serves, the ball just catching the top of his racket. But the ball wobbles over the net. "Geez, the damn thing went in," he says to himself.

His opponent, Harry Seibert, moves to the right and hits the ball with his big powerful forehand. The ball lifts high and lands a good five feet beyond the base line. Fifteen--love, George Skidmore. It is the first point of an important match. George and Harry are playing for George's wife, Helen.

Harry looks over at Helen, who is sitting on the four heavy planks that serve as stands at the Forest Meadow Tennis Club. She is wearing her long blonde hair wound high on top of her head. With her serene face and dark, deep-set eyes, she is, for Harry, a goddess of infinite beauty.

But, at 37, Helen has begun to notice the signs of age--the thickening of her legs that cannot be exercised away, the need for just a touch of toner to cover the first gray hairs. Soon, she has realized, men's heads will not involuntarily swivel with appreciation when she passes. But there are a few moments left, moments she would just as soon not spend with dull, indifferent old George, upon whom middle age already sits like a gargoyle weighting the corner of an ancient church. Thus, at that beautiful moment four months ago when Harry had the courage to show his feelings, taking her in his arms in the breezeway of her house, she had responded as any real woman would.

Now she smiles back at Harry and holds up her hand, making a ring with the forefinger and thumb. It is her signal to him that she knows he can whip the daylights out of George any time he feels like it. Harry grins at her, his mind staggering under the thought of bedding with her, a delight he has not yet tasted. So befuddled are his thoughts that George's next serve bounces lazily past him. Everyone around the Forest Meadow club knows that to take Harry in a match, it is only necessary to get him watching some chick.

A balding bachelor in his late 30s, Harry has an eye for women but, like his forehand, not much follow-through. He had not intended to kiss Helen Skidmore in the breezeway. He was simply on the way to get some cigarettes from his car. She had been getting ice out of the freezer. As he squeezed past her in the narrow passage, she misinterpreted their physical contact as a deliberate overture on his part. But Harry has some reputation to maintain in Forest Meadow. So when she pulled his face

down to hers and kissed him warmly on the lips, he kissed her warmly back and agreed to the rendezvous she suggested.

"Were you ready for that one?" George calls across the net. After years of playing with Harry, George knows that he is, on occasion, inclined to daydream. And George wants this match to have every appearance of being a fair contest. In truth, he plans to throw the match.

For George, looking back from the other side of 40, also sees his opportunities slipping rapidly away. All he has in common with Helen, he feels, is an immaculate split-level house and their children, Ralph and Sarah. The latter are thundering down upon adolescence, a prospect that frightens and bewilders him. Helen has surrounded herself with a thicket of committee and P. T. A. meetings. She can seldom find time to come to the club with him, and when they do play mixed doubles, her game is so rusty that he burns with a continuous rage at her sloppy play.

They still speak on most friendly terms, administer to the wants of their children, but have somewhere lost all real contact. When they occasionally make love, it is more out of habit than passion. They entertain their friends, but when George thinks back afterward, he realizes that throughout the evening they never exchanged a word or a glance.

So if Harry wants to take on Helen's weak serve and inadequate backhand, that is fine with George. There are plenty of available chicks around the club eager and willing to play tennis and other interesting sports. Of course, he will put on a good show for appearance' sake, perhaps winning a set. No sense in hurting Helen's feelings by seeming to give her away. But the whole business should be simplicity itself, as Harry takes George in singles four out of five times they play.

"Yeah, I was ready," Harry shouts in reply to George's question.

"Come on, Harry," he says to himself. "You gotta beat this guy. Put the old pressure-a-rooney on right from the start." Concentrating, he hammers George's next serve deep into the backhand corner. George has no chance to get near the ball.

With a semiprofessional motion of his hands, palms down, Paul Pursell, the linesman, indicates that the ball is in. The score is 30-15, George. Paul has been practicing tennis-linesman signs all week in front of his bathroom mirror with the door locked. Paul's wife, Laureen, has a very caustic tongue and was opposed to the whole idea of his officiating at what she considered an immoral ritual. But her feelings on the matter have not prevented her from coming to watch the match.

Paul looks up at the stands to see how his call sign went across. Helen smiles and waves at him and Paul grins back. Laureen makes a sharp sign to him with her forefinger. She has not practiced this signal beforehand, but its meaning is obvious. Paul is to tend to his line watching.

It was the idea of linesmen that finally convinced Helen that Harry and George were serious about playing a match for her. The whole business had come in a rush at a party at the Pursells', when George accused Harry of messing with his wife. It was a regular performance that George went through that normally only annoyed Helen. A few too many drinks put him into a state where he had to show his masculinity. Usually, this demonstration took the form of picking a friend at random and accusing him of playing around with Helen.

Unfortunately, this night he picked Harry. In the shocked silence that followed, Harry had summoned up his male ego and told George that it was all quite true and that he and Helen were in love. The other men managed to drag them apart before blows could be exchanged. "There's only one way to settle this," George shouted. "I'll play you for her next Saturday."

"Any time you name," said Harry. "I can take you."

Despite the pleas from the other couples, nothing would stop them. Like true gentlemen, they sat down and worked out the rules, and then asked for volunteers for linesmen.

George and Helen drove home in icy silence, save for one interchange.

"What about the children?" said Helen.

"What about them?" said George.

"What should we tell them?"

"Nothing until after the match," said George. "There is a faint possibility that I might win, you know."

George double-faults his next service but puts the next one in, a softy, just Harry's meat. He drives it solidly down the line past George. The score is 30--40.

Harry's game plan is simple. He will whip George as he knows he can when he really concentrates on his game. Whatever humiliation he can heap on him along the way, so much the better.

The next point is brief. Harry's return of service catches on his racket frame and becomes a little dribble that pops over the net. George's frantic rush is hopeless; he catches it on the second bounce and drives it into the net. Game, Harry Seibert.

As they walk around the end of the net, Harry smiles up at Helen and she grins back. George glowers. The game is not going quite according to plan. It would look better if the first set were more of a contest.

But Harry's serve is the one strength in an otherwise mediocre game. He aces George on his first service, driving the ball down the center line past George's flailing backhand.

Harry was an only child. In back of the big seedy house in Larchmont, New York, where he spent his youth, there was an overgrown vacant lot with the remnants of a tennis court. The court was too full of weeds to play on, but he could practice serving there, whacking the ball by the hour across a net made from a piece of rope and an old blanket.

He did not get along well with his father, a big florid man who ran a wholesale hardware business in New York City. Whenever the pressure between them got too great, Harry's mother, a thin woman full of compromises, would say to Harry, "Your father's tense. Why don't you go out and hit some tennis balls?"

So young Harry would drag his aggressions out to the weedy court and hammer away serves, seeing the fat, glaring features of his father on each tennis ball as it hung at the peak of its arc.

Another service, another ace. George stands and watches the ball whistle past. "The bastard must be thinking about his father," he says to himself.

In his junior year, Harry played on the Larchmont High School doubles team with an insolent youth with heavy horn-rimmed glasses by the name of Elston Gollach. Elston had, Harry figured, been weaned on a tennis ball and learned to stroke before he could walk. He hit every shot clean in the center of the racket, with his feet in just the position illustrated in tennis books.

Harry had two duties on the court; first, to drive in his service and, second, to try to return balls that were served to him. Otherwise, he had been ordered by Elston to keep well out of the way. When Elston served or returned service, Harry sat by the side of the court and watched Elston singlehandedly smash their opponents into submission. When Harry served, he followed through by sprinting for the side lines, giving Elston the full court.

They won every match they played and received the trophy for best show of teamwork. Elston kept the trophy and Harry did not go out for tennis in his senior year.

George gets his racket on Harry's third serve, but it plops weakly into the net. Another ace follows. Score 2--love, Harry.

George serves and Harry hits it deep to George's backhand. George, remembering he is to put on a good show, sprints for the ball and swings. Everything clicks, his feet are just right and the racket comes around perfectly. He drives the ball cross-court so that it just strikes beyond Harry's frantic reach.

"Son of a gun," George says to himself with a certain pride. "Sometimes those damn lessons really pay off."

George's father, Edward Skidmore, was devoted to the game of tennis. He had played it since early childhood, and the living room of his neat home in the Detroit suburb of Lake Glens was jammed with tennis trophies. They covered special shelves built along all available wall space and overflowed onto the side tables and the buffet. The family ate all their salads and desserts from the little pewter plates that some tournaments give for prizes.

George had his first tennis lesson at the age of six. It was the beginning of a long series of agonizing sessions with a series of unbelievably patient young men. It was inconceivable to Edward Skidmore that any child of his could not, with the proper training, become an enthusiastic tennis player. He was in error. Although these lessons gave George the fundamentals of the game, they also instilled a firm loathing for the sport. After nine years of watching him go sullenly through the motions of tennis, his father faced facts. On George's 15th birthday, he gave him the option of dropping the lessons. George instantly accepted. From that day until he met Helen, nine years later, he did not lay hand on a racket or a tennis ball.

He lofts the ball into the air and as he serves, realizes that he must win this set. There is no victory in letting Harry walk all over him. How much more ironic it will be if he, George, keeps control of the match to the very end and then, by deliberately blowing a couple of shots, hands Helen over to the poor bastard.

His serve comes straight at Harry, hard and true. It ricochets off the handle of his racket into the stands. "Those damn tennis lessons are coming back," Harry says to himself, and for the first time, a little tinge of worry grabs at him. George has been known on rare occasions to remember all that was taught him and whip the best that Forest Meadow can offer.

Harry cannot touch him now. George finishes him off quickly with two points, the last one a beautiful half-court volley that Harry watches catch the tape at the corner of the court.

George smiles at the little audience assembled in the stands. He even winks at Helen.

"Good grief," Helen thinks, "he's remembering his training. Of all the damn-fool times for him to put his game back in the groove." She remembers another time when George put it all together and won.

Helen spent most of her summers during high school and college hanging around the Lake Glens Tennis Club. She met George at a dance at the club in June following her graduation from the University of Michigan. She had been dancing with a boy who was busy describing why he had lost in the second round of the Detroit Hard Court Open when George cut in.

They exchanged names and then danced for several minutes in silence. Finally, she spoke. "You been playing much this summer?" It was a nice way of giving a strange young man a chance to talk about his current bag of trophies.

"I have not played tennis in nine years," said George. "I happen to loathe the game."

For some reason, she found such candidness most refreshing in a world where playing tennis was almost a moral obligation. They spent a very pleasant evening together. And when he called her the next day and suggested their playing a set or two, she knew that their relationship could become very serious.

At first, George played only as an excuse to be with her. But soon his long-forgotten game began to return and she started to engineer mixed-doubles matches for them. Before long, he was taking on some of the men in singles. Finally, on a hot afternoon late in August, he challenged and defeated his father. It must be admitted that his father had his leg heavily bandaged for a pulled muscle, but it was a victory for George, nevertheless. Edward Skidmore almost wept with joy as he pumped his son's hand in congratulation.

The victory gave George the surge of confidence he needed. That evening, when they were parked in their favorite spot out by Talbert's Falls, George proposed, and Helen quickly accepted.

Now Harry's serve begins to waver and George puts on the pressure. He recalls the voice of Wayne Lawson, his last tennis teacher. "Watch that damn ball, keep those knees bent and move your ass, Skidmore, move your ass."

Move his ass he does, returning every ball that Harry can put into his court. He is a perfect, well-oiled machine and Harry is mere flesh. Only by firing up a tremendous rage at his father is Harry (continued on page 202)gentleman's game(continued from page 102) able to win one more service. The set goes to George, 6-3.

George grins, radiating his pleasure to the stands as he comes around the end of the net. Gurson, the club pro, is standing at the end of the court. He gives George just a flick of a signal of recognition, raising his hand and moving it ever so slightly with his thumb and forefinger touching. Gurson could care less who gets Helen. As far as he can see, she will never be able to cure her backhand swing and is quite useless, even for mixed doubles. However, he does like to commend someone who is playing well over the ordinary level of his game.

George catches Gurson's signal and delight roars within him. Normally, Gurson simply ignores his existence.

As Harry passes the stands as they change courts, he looks up at Helen. She smiles grimly and gives him the circled-finger-and-thumb sign. Thus encouraged, he manages to hold his first service of the second set. But his strokes have degenerated into little blocking shots and desperate punches at the ball.

When Harry moved to an apartment in Forest Meadow six years before, he took a drive around the town to get familiar with his new surroundings. When he went past the grounds of the tennis club, with the big cool elms shading the courts and the trim white clubhouse, and saw the girls in their tennis whites on the well-groomed clay courts, he knew that he must become a member.

So he began to sharpen his game, much in neglect since high school. He took lessons with the pro at the country club in nearby Barton Village and spent an hour every pleasant evening banging balls against the backboard at the town courts. He carefully cultivated the friendship of Paul Pursell, who worked with him at the bank in the city, and was finally invited over for a few sets of doubles. He was gracious on the court, but with his big serve was able to help Paul to a solid victory over one of the tougher doubles teams at the club. They played together often after that and the next spring Harry was voted in as a member.

He had expected that the club would give him an opportunity to meet some attractive women. But aside from some spinstery girls in their late 30s who were pushed upon him, he met no one who raised his interest except Leanne Till-son. Leanne was a pert little divorcee who, on occasion, frequented the club. She was perfectly happy to play mixed doubles with him, but on the two occasions when he had asked her out for an evening at the theater, she had firmly refused. There were rumors aplenty about the wild life she led away from the courts. Harry supposed that his steady and unimaginative game had led her to believe that he could not show a girl a very exciting time off the court. How he longed to disprove this misconception.

But George has control of the game now. Harry cannot touch his serve and he breaks Harry's second service easily. Harry digs in and holds his next two services, but he is still down 4-3, with George serving.

George has forgotten the score. He is simply exulting in the joy that fills him as he hits one perfect shot after another. He is leading 30--love when he realizes that a silent tension has settled over the stands. "Geez," he says to himself, "I'm going to win the second set."

It is true that they are playing the best of five sets; Helen would have been insulted at anything less. But perhaps it would be best to slack off now. Letting Harry pull from behind to take this set would look a lot more realistic than if he had to hand him the last three sets.

George glances over at Gurson, who smiles and winks at him. The matter is decided. George holds his next two services and takes the set.

Two sets down, Harry is visibly shaken. "Come on, Harry," he says to himself. "You're not playing for peanuts. It's the woman you love who's at stake." He turns his eyes toward Helen, but she is looking at George. He double-faults the first point.

Harry dredges up memories of cruelties that his father has inflicted upon him and slams in the next serve. George hammers it back. Harry, with a desperate lunge, manages to put up a weak little lob. George wanders up to the net and insolently powders it for the point. The pressure is too much for Harry. He double-faults twice. It is 1--love, George.

There comes a point in a tennis match when one player may hold such an edge that it is virtually impossible for him to lose even if he wants to. George has almost reached that critical moment. If he wins this game, it will be most difficult for him to throw the match without its being obvious to the spectators.

So George must lose. The first point is simple. He serves two solid balls into the net. Love-15. But he cannot double-fault the entire set. He taps the next serve over the net, a sure setup for Harry's big forehand. Harry, expecting another smash serve, stands and watches the ball take three bounces up to his feet. Fifteen all.

There is a tight feeling in George's stomach. He may have gone too far. It may not be possible to throw the match at this point. The essential problem is Harry's self-confidence. He must do something to get Harry back to believing in his game.

George glances over at Helen. She should be giving Harry special encouraging hand signals, but she is not. In fact, she is scratching her ear and looking off into space, a sign, George knows, that indicates great inner indecision.

George must lose this one on his own. There's only one thing to do. Feigning overconfidence, he must blow enough shots so Harry can get a grip on himself. Time for another double fault. Unfortunately, he misjudges his second serve, aimed for the top of the net. It whistles over, catches the tape and aces Harry.

Pain stabs at Helen's heart as she watches George serve. "He really wants me," she says to herself. "How could I have misjudged him so?"

His play brings back the memories of the match George played against his father 16 years before. She watched the match with the same excitement she feels welling within her now. There was the same determination in George's motions, the same firm set to his mouth that she sees now.

How wrong she has been to judge him indifferent! Here is her husband doing battle for her and she has had the nerve to cheer his opponent. There is no mercy in the way he is hammering Harry into defeat. She watches as he serves the fourth point and takes a big forehand cut at Harry's return, a shot that slams past Harry's wild dive for the ball. Helen finds herself clapping with the rest of the spectators.

"Damn," George says to himself. He has decided to hit every shot absolutely as hard as he can. Knowing his coordination, such tactics should lose the set in no time. But there is still too much control left. He looks toward Helen. She is smiling at him.

"What the hell is that all about?" Panic pours through him and, unthinking, he puts his next serve into the outside corner of the service box, way out of Harry's reach. It is 2--love, George.

George looks over at his wife again. There is no mistake, she is smiling at him, her face radiant with a new devotion. She touches her finger tips to her lips and tosses him the kiss, a simple motion that he has not seen her make since the blissful early days of their marriage.

Harry, who has observed this betrayal, needs no memories of his father to fire his serve. He slams the first one in on George, who blocks it back ineffectually into the net.

George's head is spinning. Beautiful remembrances of their courtship and early days of marriage come flooding back. Harry's serves whistle past and he makes little stabs at them, occasionally popping them back over the net, where Harry, now a tower of rage, proceeds to cream them into far corners of the court. Harry takes his serve and it is 2--1, George.

As they come around the end of the net to change courts, George's eyes lock with Helen's. "Finish him off, my love." She speaks the words silently and he reads the meaning in her lips.

George serves, but his mind is far away. For the first five years they were married, George and Helen lived in a cottage on a little lane down behind the public courts in the town of Springdale. On summer weekends, the house was always full of their friends, sitting around in their tennis whites, wandering over to the courts for a set or two, then back to the cottage for drinks. Even when she was six months pregnant with Ralph, Helen would still play with them, laughing at the awkwardness that the weight of the child gave to her strokes.

In a haze of happy memories, George hands his opponent two setup serves that Harry, in a storm of anger, powders away.

But with the baby, the cottage became too crowded. George had just received a promotion and they bought their house in Forest Meadow, leaving all their young tennis friends behind. Of course, they joined the tennis club, but Helen was always too busy with Ralph and then with Sarah for them to indulge in much socializing.

Absently, George double-faults his next serve. He misses Harry's next return as he glances fondly over at Helen and Harry takes the game. There is no touching Harry's service. The score is even. Then, after another game, it is suddenly 3-2 in Harry's favor.

As George comes around the net to change courts, Helen is waiting for him. She looks up at him, her dark eyes full with her new love. "Pull yourself together, dearest," she says. "You've got to win for me."

In a flash, George sees their future bright before them. Ralph, grown by inches and greatly in tennis skills, putting away the last- point in the finals of the father-son club tournament and then running to shake his father's hand and punch him in the ribs. He and Helen spending the long soft days of their retirement playing quiet sets with the Pursells and then sitting by the courts watching their grandchildren skillfully volleying with rackets that are still too big for their little hands.

The future is clear and bright. There is just the simple matter of finishing off Harry. But George has not reckoned on an opponent who waits across the net with the cool murder of righteous anger burning in his heart.

George serves, straight and hard. Harry returns the shot, deep to George's backhand. George drives it down the line; Harry lobs, deep; George lets it bounce high and puts an overhead way out of Harry's reach. Both of them are hitting above their ordinary levels of play. The game goes to deuce point three times and then at ad in George slams in a serve that Harry cannot handle. The set is 3--3.

As the match progresses, it is obvious that George is tiring. The vision of what he shall have when he wins back Helen cannot keep his body from beginning to feel the strain, his muscles from tightening just enough to weaken his shots. There is no doubt that Harry is in better shape. If he takes this set, he can then finish off George by wearing him into the ground.

Then, with the score 6-5, Harry, Harry gets up on George's service. He drives back George's first two serves. George blunders the first return into the net. On the second point, Harry follows his return in to the net and smashes away George's feeble shot. It is love-30. George is in serious danger of losing the set.

At this moment, a voice rings clearly over the hushed court. "Kill him off, Harry!" In shocked disbelief at this total violation of club etiquette, players and spectators turn to look at Leanne Tillson, who signals to Harry with a defiant clenched fist. "You can do it, Harry, baby!"

Stunned, Harry stares at Leanne. Has her view of him suddenly changed? What kind of crazy business is this match, anyway? What is he supposed to do if he wins Helen? She is obviously crazy in love with George again. And Leanne, she is really more his type of woman....

"Pull yourself together, Harry," he says to himself. "You are out here to win, to drub that punk. To hell with what it all means."

But doubt cankers his will and blunts the edge of his game. He muffs an easy return of the next serve and does not move fast enough to put a racket on the smash into the outside corner that George next delivers. The tide of play has turned. George takes the next two points easily and the set is 6-6.

Harry's serve goes soft as he forgets his father and dreams of Leanne. George, firm with his resolve, seizes the opportunity. He drives Harry back and forth across the court, hitting the ball deep with the last bit of precision left in his tiring muscles. The game goes to 30 all, and then George slugs a deep shot that skips under Harry's racket and polishes off a short lob to break the service. The score is 7-6, George.

The rest is anticlimax. George's serve is too strong for Harry to handle. Suddenly, George has won the match and Harry is sullenly shaking his hand midst the applause from the stands. Then Helen is in George's arms. "You were just beautiful," she sobs. "My wonderful, wonderful George."

"You didn't think I'd give you up to that bum," George whispers in her ear. "We have too much to look forward to."

As Harry walks off the court, his anger at his defeat begins to lift. A feeling of freedom overwhelms him, as though he has made a perilous escape from a trap of infinite danger. And Leanne is waiting by the steps to the clubhouse. She smiles up at him. "How come you threw the match, Tiger?" she says.