The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff by Joseph Epstein

Author:Joseph Epstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Fifty years ago, Jerry Mandel would have traded his life for Danny Montoya’s without a second’s hesitation. Danny was the number-one-ranked boys-fifteen-and-under tennis player in Chicago and its suburbs. The suburbs are important to mention, because tennis in those days was very much a suburban game, dominated by country club kids with names like Vandy Christie and Gaylord Messick. Nationally, most of the main figures in tennis had names like Gardnar Mulloy and Bill Talbert and Hamilton Richardson, though the two Panchos, Gonzales and Segura, were also on the scene. Like the Panchos, Danny Montoya, too, was everywhere taken for Mexican—or so at least Mandel thought before he first saw him. In fact, Danny’s mother was Irish and his father, who worked at the post office, was Filipino. He was a city kid—inner city, we would now say—and played most of his tennis on public courts. His coach was his father.

Danny was small and quick, graceful and savvy, knowing how to get the most out of his game. He had dazzling footwork and nearly flawless anticipation, so he always seemed in the right place, his Davis racquet perfectly positioned to slap home winners with an ease that encouraged a sense of hopelessness in his opponents, making them wonder if learning how to play tennis in the first place had been such a great idea. He made his half of the court seem no larger than a Ping-Pong table, his opponent’s side the size of a football field. He was always in complete control; he never beat himself.

This was in the days before carbon-fiber racquets and tank tops and baseball hats worn backward, and Danny, like everyone else then, wore all-white tennis clothes, which made his dark skin stand out all the more vividly. He had fine features, a winning smile, glistening black hair that he brushed straight back. Mandel remembered Danny standing at the baseline, awaiting service, how he would twist his racquet, sometimes giving it a double flip by slapping it at the grip, the way a cowboy might twirl his pistol before returning it to its holster. He’d shuffle his feet, seeming just a touch bored, and then take a high-bouncing serve and flick it crosscourt with his amazingly accurate backhand or slash it forehand down the line for another winner. Without breaking into a smile, he would do another double flip of his racquet and walk over to take the serve in the ad court.

Haughty didn’t describe Danny on the court so much as jaunty. He commanded the court, floating, gliding, seeming to dance—an intricate smooth Latin dance of his own devising—over to whack the ball precisely where he wished. He had textbook-perfect strokes and all the shots, including a drop shot of such delicate deceptiveness that his opponents often never saw it coming, and those who did weren’t able to get anywhere near it before it died after a spirit-deflating low bounce. His topspin lobs left opponents at the net feeling pure dejection as they watched the ball sail over their heads.

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