"Twice. And Forest Hills twice. Before they'd let her in the front door of most clubs in this state." He caught the ball. "I hit with her once. Nineteen fifty-three, at Hampton Institute, in Virginia. I was twenty-nine and she was twenty-six and she beat me six-one, six-love, and the one game I won she was laughing at something somebody said in the stands." He smiled for the first time, a quick thing, there and gone. "Best day of my life. Now. Hit me some balls."
She hit him some balls. She hit them the way she hit at Washington Street and against the backboard, hard and flat and deep, and they died in the wet sand like something shot. He didn't run for most of them. He just watched where they went.
"Again," he said.
She hit again. Her feet slid. She hit off-balance and the ball went into the ocean.
"Again."
"I can't do anything out here," she said. "The ball won't bounce. I can't get my feet set."
"No," he said. "You can't. And you're trying to. That's your whole trouble." He walked up to the string that was standing in for a net. "Listen. You play like you're mad at the ball. Bang, bang, bang. That works on asphalt, against boys who quit. That boy won't quit. He'll take every ball you hit hard and he'll use your pace against you, because that racket of his is a cannon and all it wants is something to shoot. You hit him hard, you're just loading his gun."
"So what do I do?"
"You make him supply the power. You make him hit one more ball than he wants to. And then one more. And then one more." He bounced a ball in the soft sand. It barely came up. "On clay, slow is a weapon. High is a weapon. Soft is a weapon. That boy has never in his life had to hit seven, eight, nine balls in a rally, because nobody at that club has the patience to make him. You're going to make him. You're going to put that ball up high and deep to his backhand, where he's got to hit it up around his ear, and you're going to do it till he loses his mind. And when he comes to the net to get away from it, you're going to put it over his head."
Dee thought about the high looping shots she'd seen the old men hit at Washington Street on Sunday mornings, the ones the boys called moonballs and laughed at.
"That's how old people play," she said.
"That's how Chris Evert plays," he said. "And she's beaten Navratilova on clay more times than not." He cocked his head. "Not lately. But that's a different problem. Hit me something high."
She hit him something high. It came down in the sand and plopped.
"Higher," he said. "And put some spin on it. Brush up the back like you're polishing a car fender. There. Again."
They did it until the tide was a thin silver line and the first shrimp boats were moving off the bar. Then he gathered the balls into the bucket, one at a time, the way a man picks peas.