The Good Boy – The One With The Tennis Game, & The Cheating

It was a calm morning. No wind at all. The Boy looked up to the sky and saw there were hardly any clouds around. “It’s going to be scorching hot in a few hours,” he said to himself. “Well at least it won’t rain. I hate to stop for the rain.” He continued stretching, he reached for his toes and made circling motions around it with his hands.

The Boy hardly slept last night. Too nervous and too excited. He promised himself that he was going to do it right this time. Last year, he completely blew it. It was his first game ever and he froze. All the training and the preparation was thrown out of the window. He was just too scared to play and he suffered a humiliating loss. But that was a year ago. Now, The Boy is the champion of his school. He surprised everyone when he beat C, the then number 1 player, in his school tournament earlier that year.

The Boy was never the most skillful. His basics and techniques left much room for improvement while his physical attributes were embarrassing. He was slow, lacked power in his shots and seriously lacked stamina. However he was smart. He loved tennis. He knew the game like no other and he could read his opponent’s play effortlessly. He thoroughly understood the cliché, ‘visualise the play, then execute it’. That was how The Boy became the number 1 player in his school.

But school differed from the district tournament. The Boy will be up against the players from the Chinese school who seemed to win the tournament every year. Also he will play against players from That Monkey School (TMS), the school that made weekend outings a nightmare for his fellow schoolmates. As students of a boarding school, they were seen as outsiders. They were harassed, mugged and beaten up, and most of the time TMS students were responsible for it. He was lucky enough not to ever been a victim but nonetheless he hated them. So this wasn’t just a tennis game, it was personal.

And behold, The Boy’s first match was going to be against a player from TMS! As a bonus, his opponent seemed to be the guy that the rest of them looked up to. He was loud, obnoxious and arrogant. He was no bigger than The Boy but acted like he owned the world.

“Well maybe he is the bitch to some ‘taiko’ at TMS, that’s why he is acting like an ass,” The Boy said to his friend.

A friend of The Boy was playing against one of them. In this tournament, they don’t have any umpire. The players will make the call. The score, the ins or outs, service faults or the opposites, all of that will be called by the players themselves. So when the TMS player made a doubtful called, The Boy and his friends naturally protested against it. A war of words started, and the player The Boy will play against said, “Oi bastards, if you guys don’t trust us, come here and be the line judge yourself!”

That was the last straw for The Boy. Because of what was said, The Boy decided to teach that arrogant guy a lesson. He wasn’t going to go to the guy and smacked him on the face. He told himself that he was classier than that (although deep down he knew it wasn’t about being classy, as much as he wanted to, The Boy just doesn’t have the nerve to smack that guy).

“Well he asked for it. I’m going to humiliate him later on the court. Just wait and see!”

The time came for The Boy to play. He took his place at one side of the court, waiting for his opponent to get ready for the warm up. During the warm up, both players were supposed to hit ‘friendly’ stroke to each other to get into the rhythm of the game. But The Boy had other plan, he will used the warm up to annoy the guy.

Instead of hitting easy strokes for the guy to hit back, The Boy deliberately hit the ball all over the place. He hit it hard, way to the back, to the side and even to the net. The guy ended up sweating by chasing the balls everywhere. And just to annoy him more, The Boy did all that with smiles on his face, saying ‘oh sorry too hard’ & ‘oops sorry didn’t mean that” and even laughing out loud at his own ‘miss hits’ stroke.

It worked very well. The guy’s face was red with anger and he looked like he was going to jump over the net and straggled The Boy at any moment.

The Boy’s coach knew what was happening and gave him the ‘what are you doing don’t try to be a smart ass’ warning look. The Boy just shrugged and ignored it.

“He is an ass so he doesn’t deserve my sportsmanship,” The Boy said to himself, trying to justify his action.

The warm up was over and the game started, and The Boy was flying! Everything went well for him. His strokes were killers and his serves were aces. The Boy raced to a 4-0 lead. He only needed to win another 4 games and the match will be over. (Instead of normal scoring system, they will only play 1 set with 8 games, so matches can be decided quicker).

“Sigh, this is too easy,” The Boy said in a low voice but loud enough for his opponent to hear.

The Boy got carried away with his plan. He showed no respect at all to his opponent and because of that he angered the whole TMS team, not only the players but also their coach. Every time he hits a winner he will say out loud things like ‘Whoah, that was sweeeet!’ or a simple ‘Hah!’. He deliberately yawned a few times during the game and whenever the guy managed to win a point The Boy will either laughed or shrugged his shoulders like it was nothing.

The score was 6-2 in favour of The Boy when he decided to do a really stupid thing. He felt that the guy wasn’t humiliated enough, he felt he needed to do more. So he let the guy win a few games and he made sure everyone there knew that he was letting the guy win. He hit the ball so hard that it flew way over the court, way outside the fence. With his serve, instead of tossing the ball high, he chose to do ‘under-serve’, like a normal stroke. And even then he deliberately hit his serves to the net.

When the score was 6-5, The Boy decided to quit fooling around and tried to finish the match quickly. However, it didn’t go to plan this time. His opponent gained confidence and gaining points. Now it was The Boy’s turned to sweat. His strokes suddenly just won’t go in and he hit double faults too many times. He has lost his composure.

His opponent started to hit baseline stroke a lot of times and The Boy struggled to deal with it. A few times The Boy called the guy’s baseline stroke as out when it was actually well in. The TMS coach walked over to The Boy’s side of the court in suspicion, and sure enough when The Boy called another baseline stroke as out, the TMS coach quickly overruled him.

“That bastard, he has been cheating all this while,” said the TMS team.

The Boy was panicking. He didn’t mean to cheat. Honestly he thought the strokes were out and that was because he has lost the sense of his positioning, his panicked movements made him feels like it was out. The tables were truly turned now, it was his turn to be embarrassed.

And before he knew it, that obnoxious ass of his opponent was on match point!

“This can’t be happening, I’m losing!”

And then it happened. The Boy’s opponent hit a winner on the match point, winning the match. His forehand stroke landed right on the line and The Boy can’t move quick enough to return the stroke. The Boy has lost!

He has lost in the first round!

“Out!” Suddenly a voice, forceful and so authoritative yelled. “The last stroke was out!”

Everyone turned to see who had said it. It was The Boy’s coach, standing confidently at the side of the court, looking straight at the TMS coach and daring him to challenge the call. It was obvious to everyone that the final ball had landed right on the line. It was so blatantly obvious that the ball was in.

However, no one said anything. No one dared to challenge the call. The Boy’s coach was the head of the tennis association of the district (or something like that) so no one had the nerve to overrule him.

Seeing no one said anything, The Boy’s coach nonchalantly said, “The match is not over. Continue!”

So they continued playing and in the end The Boy managed to win the match.

The Boy didn’t even so much raise his hands to celebrate the win. He just walked out of the court, head looking down, and he headed straight to the comfort of his teammates. All he wanted to do was to hide.

Then his coach walked over to him and told him to shake hands with his opponent. The Boy would rather eat dirt than to do that but his coach left him no choice. Feeling like there were bricks stuck to his feet, he walked over to the TMS camp and held his hand up, offering to shake hands. The guy just looked at him with venoms in his eyes.

“Shake his hand and get it over with,” the TMS coach told the guy. So he shook The Boy’s hand, reluctantly. The Boy knew everyone branded him a cheat. They didn’t say it out loud but they don’t have to. It was clear in their eyes. And they were right. The Boy had cheated his way to winning.

After that, The Boy’s coach took him to a corner and said these exact words to him, “You are an idiot. You don’t deserve to play the game but I’m going to let you continue playing in this tournament because you are a good player. If you ever again do what you did just now, I will cut you to pieces and fed you to the dog.”

The tongue-lashing lasted for about 5 minutes but it seemed like an eternity to The Boy. That day The Boy learned a lesson, an expensive and valuable lesson.

The Boy went on to win the tournament, beating the first seed from the Chinese school on the way. However the victory was tainted with the cheating in his first match.

And for weeks after that The Boy didn’t go out on weekends, afraid that he might bump into that obnoxious opponent of his. Thankfully he never did!