Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The semifinals. The final four. Leo is the only American man remaining, so all hope for someone to succeed Andy Roddick now rests with him.
Though, “rests” is a generous word, considering the obnoxious amount of a photographers outside his hotel, the gigantic photo of him clenching a fist in victory now splashed across a Nike ad in Times Square, and the indelicate questions from reporters after the quarterfinals, such as, “Do you feel ready to redeem yourself from your semifinals loss two years ago and go all the way this time?”
And he does. He does feel ready.
Under the blaring floodlights, the tension is already palpable, crackling like static around the court. After their warm-up, the ump struggles to get the fans to quiet down.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please,” he says. “Players are ready.”
When they finally settle—some stray cheers and whistles still wafting down from the upper levels—the ump continues.
“First set. Leo Chambers to serve,” he says. “Ready? Play.”
Leo continues to bounce his body to keep his blood flowing and wriggle through the nerves. Then, he bounces the ball five times. This is it. He lets his racing thoughts recede to the back of his mind. He tosses the ball up.
From the moment Leo’s racket touches the ball, the first set unfolds with blistering pace.
Both of them unleash thunderous serves and piercing forehands.
Leo’s precision and agility keep Jack on the defensive, but the Australian refuses to yield an inch.
Game after game, they battle fiercely, neither willing to concede ground.
The score seesaws back and forth, drawing gasps and cheers from the crowd with every stroke of their rackets.
“5–4,” the ump announces after Leo holds serve yet again. The fans’ volume increases. The home crowd is desperate for their player to win.
As the tension mounts, Leo digs deep, tapping into the variety Brian has helped him develop. With a series of blistering forehands and perfectly placed drop shots, he manages to seize the momentum—and he breaks Jack’s serve to take the first set.
“Game and first set: Chambers, 6–4,” the ump declares.
“Come on!” Leo yells, and the stadium meets his excitement with its own echoing roar, the fans on their feet, their cheers rocking the stadium.
Unfortunately for Leo, even though Jack has a stick-and-poke tattoo on his wrist that says fuck this, he’s proving to be anything but a quitter.
He fights back in the second set, throwing a barrage of powerful serves and punishing groundstrokes at Leo.
For a while, Leo is able to match him shot for shot, their duel remaining intense, their rallies defying the laws of physics as they push each other to the limit.
It’s a nail-biter of a second set, each of them refusing to break.
But as the clock ticks on and the pressure mounts, it’s Jack who manages to find that extra gear this time.
As Leo serves at 4–5, it’s like Jack is reading his mind.
Everywhere Leo sends the ball, Jack is there.
Leo can’t get a single ball past him. He’s like a brick wall.
He’s like Roger the Buff Kangaroo. Leo is struggling to find answers, feeling his body tighten with stress and, at 30–40, Jack breaks his serve, clinching the second set with a forehand winner down the line.
“Game and second set: Hughes, 6–4,” the ump says.
“Let’s go!” Jack screams to his box, though it sounds more like, “Let’s gaur!”
For now, he’s silenced the crowd.
Okay. Third set, reset. Leo needs to let the previous set go and focus up before Jack runs away with this match.
From the jump, there’s no letup. Like in the first two sets, the games in this one fly by in a dizzying blur of lightning-fast serves and gravity-defying volleys, each point a miniature epic in its own right.
Leo finds himself going to his towel box whenever possible just for some reprieve from the pace.
He looks to his box for encouragement, using their positivity to keep his tank full.
He lets the fans’ support wash over him.
As the set wears on, Leo finally finds himself with the edge—a break point at 6–5—his relentless aggression and pinpoint accuracy proving too much for Jack to handle.
With the crowd ready to burst, the tension reaching a fever pitch, Leo seals the deal with a stunning backhand crosscourt, securing the third set 7–5 and inching closer to his place in the final.
Leo knows he shouldn’t be thinking about the final yet, but there’s a voice in his head that desperately wants to. All you need is this set, it tells him. Just one more. Don’t get scared now. Don’t crash out in the semis again. And don’t fuck it up. Wait, RuPaul?
As the set marches on, Leo fights back against the voice in his head.
He fights back against Jack, too. They trade blows like heavyweight prizefighters in the ring.
Leo was hoping to see Jack’s level drop, but he knows his opponent wants this badly, too.
How could he not? Revenge against Leo for knocking him out of his home Slam—at Leo’s home Slam?
And to reach the final? What could be better?
But a New York crowd is a New York crowd. Leo can feel their energy charging him, allowing him to hit shots without fear. He harnesses the sound of their support to find an extra spark of brilliance, his forehands and backhands carving through the air like uppercuts.
Jack is serving at 5–6, 30–all. If Leo could push himself to win the next two points, the match would be his. There would be no tiebreak. He stops going to his towel box. He stops looking at his player box. He forces himself into tunnel vision. Hold your own, he thinks.
This is a pressure point, and there’s nowhere for Jack to hide.
All twenty-four thousand people in Arthur Ashe Stadium are willing him to make a mistake, willing him to flop.
And then, he does. Leo sees that his ball toss is off, an undeniable sign of nerves, and watches as Jack’s next two serves fly clumsily into the net.
It’s a double fault. Jack throws his racket to the ground in frustration.
“30–40,” the ump says. But what Leo and the crowd hear instead is, “Match point.”
As Leo crosses the back of the court to position himself for Jack’s next serve, he clenches his fist and pumps it, psyching himself up, muttering, “Come on. Come on. Come on.”
The crowd is practically untamable.
“Please,” the ump pleads. “Players are ready. Thank you.”
Leo summons every ounce of strength and determination left in his body for this one point.
He lets the fans refill his resolve. The stadium falls silent, holding its collective breath.
Wide and wild, his eyes home in on Jack’s next serve—the ball careening down the T—and he lunges to his right.
His first step proves quick enough. His timing is perfect.
He rockets a forehand to the back left corner.
It catches Jack off guard, soaring past his desperately outstretched racket, and landing square on the line.
He can just barely hear the ump announce it. “Game, set, and match: Chambers. 6–4, 4–6, 7–5, 7–5.”
Leo instantly drops his racket and buries his head in his hands in disbelief. He’s nearly shaking. He’s done it. For the first time in his career, he is into the US Open final.
He’s stunned into silence, but the home crowd is not. He can hear whistles at a pitch that must be waking up dogs across the city, applause that must be shaking the entire stadium.
When he finally removes his head from his hands, he looks over to his box, where his parents are hugging and Brian is gripping the railing as he lunges forward, ready to fling himself onto the court as he shouts, “Let’s go, LC! Let’s go!” He can’t help but wish Gabe were there.
Speechless, he picks up his racket, and the simplicity of this thing in his hand suddenly strikes him. Just some strings and a metal frame. But look what it’s unlocked for this crowd, for his family, for himself. He spins it in his hand. There are goosebumps up and down his arms.
During the on-court interview after the match, it’s the announcer’s turn to struggle to quiet the stadium down. It’s like a teacher trying to settle their class on the last day of school.
“Leo, I don’t know if you can hear me,” she says, “but I think this noise says it all. The New York crowd has been waiting for this moment for a long time. An American man in the finals of the US Open. And an American man we’ve been watching on these courts for over a decade now. Congratulations!”
“Thank you so much,” Leo says, still feeling stunned. “I’ve been dreaming of making this final since I was a little kid. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get here.”
“Let it sink in,” she says. “You made it. And what a way to kick off your thirties. You just celebrated the big 3–0 this summer, so this is a pretty sweet belated birthday gift, huh?”
“You have no idea,” he says.
“Let’s talk shop for just a second: What helped you get the win tonight in this tough match against Hughes? He’s a tricky opponent. The entire night felt with you two felt like, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better.’ ”
“I mean, you’re looking at it,” Leo says, and gestures around to the crowd, who sends the love right back to him, jumping up and down, spilling what’s left of their Honey Deuces.
After the interview, he steps up to the camera screen and takes the hot-pink marker. He writes “This one’s for you.” He winks.