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Jackson Hyde, the nice, clean-cut young man yielding to his doppelgänger—a Tasmanian devil with an iron will and a hankering to create havoc.
    Mr. Hyde’s compact, muscular body was made for tennis. It possesses strength. It possesses flexibility. And now, it is just possessed.
    On the other side of the net, doing his stretches, is Ira Spade, former club champion. This oxymoron doesn’t seem even remotely possible, given Ira’s looks and physique. But tennis is a funny game, the ultimate proof of that aphorism about the book and the cover. Ira is one of those players—there is at least one member like this at every club on the planet—whose looks are exquisitely deceiving. On the outside, he resembles an accountant and a hack player, seems to have no form, no speed, no power, no stamina, no charisma. But scratch the surface, and he is savvy and wily and crazy like a fox and has all the shots in the book and knows how and when to use them and will employ every means possible to piss you off and to drive you out of your gourd and to beat you to a pulp and into the ground. Like the great American champion Bobby Riggs, Ira looks like a Nash Metropolitan but plays like a Mercedes.
    Jack stretches, too, and takes a few practice swings from both wings. He is that rare and dangerous commodity nowadays, especially for one at such a tender age: a lefty with power and finesse and killer groundies.
    Other hitting sessions between father and son have stressed the various fundamental facets of the game—stroke production, technique, and tactics—but this one will be devoted solely to focus, to concentrating on retrieving and winning points, whatever it takes. In short, to ugly survival tennis .
    For forty solid minutes, Bobby Riggs runs Jackson Hyde’s thirteen-year-old sorry ass ragged, mixing up drives, drop shots, lobs, half volleys, slices, and topspins, all struck from the backcourt with the masterful control of a puppeteer.
    But Ira’s marionette is retrieving nearly every single ball and is countering every wily shot with one of his own. In one punishing three-minute rally, Ira hits five consecutive drop shots, each one followed by a deep lob, and finishes it off with perfect drop shot number six, which Jack somehow returns before collapsing at the net in a heap.
    “Get up and get your butt back to the baseline, you sonuvabitch. I’m not quite finished with you!” Ira barks.
    Jackson Hyde refuels his little thirteen-year-old tank, trots dutifully to the baseline, and is ready for more punishment.
    “Ben Hogan once said, about why he was so good, ‘It’s in the—’” Ira shouts to him.
    “‘Dirt!’” Jack shouts back, filling in the blank.
    The doubles players on the surrounding courts give them sixteen dirty looks.
    But Hogan was right, and Jack gets it and spends the next ten minutes digging and scratching and clawing and scampering and refusing to give in.
    During the break, on the bench near the net, Ira has a little surprise for Jack, which he removes from his tennis bag. It is a pile of old action photos of past tennis champions, bound together with a rubber band. He removes the band and, one by one, shows the photos to Jack: Norman Brookes, Jaroslav Drobny, Rod Laver, Guillermo Vilas, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Rafa Nadal.
    “So, what do you notice about every one of these players?” Ira asks.
    “Hmmm, well, they’re all good-looking—”
    “No shit, Sherlock,” Ira says, “but what else ?”
    Jack is stumped.
    “I’ll tell you what else. First, they’re lefties, every last friggin’ one of ’em. Just like you. And don’t you ever forget it. You lefties are a special group, a rare breed. There’s nothing harder in this world than to beat a lefty champion at his peak. Mark my words, goddammit !” Ira warns, his left eye twitching something awful.
    “And look at those eyes !” he says, flipping through the photos again. “Cold-blooded killers, all of them! They were all great players