As hard as it is to root against Roger Federer, a player universally considered one of the greatest in tennis history, it happened to me during this year's French Open. As Federer’s opponent, Rafael Nadal, made quick work of him, hitting an endless series of torrid winners past him, my loyalties shifted. The cornerstone of Nadal’s game is a powerful forehand slathered with topspin that make his opponents look like beleaguered shortstops mishandling bad-hop missiles off A-Rod’s bat. Playing lefty (he [is ]naturally right-handed), many of Nadal’s shots are hit to his right-handed opponent’s backhand side, rendering them more lethal. If you then manage to return it, Rafael presses you further, perhaps putting the point away with the two-handed backhand that he can power like the rest of the world’s forehand. Watching his style of play at the French brought me back across many miles and years to the tennis approach of my distant teens: No matter what the circumstance or the opponent you face, you pursue always the Big Hit. In Big Hit tennis you push all-out to take the point. In my case, and often Nadal’s, it was by hitting the hardest possible return. Unlike Nadal, though, I had little ability to control it.

To call the tennis I played a career would be vastly overstating it, but it was marginally elevated by taking place in something of a tennis hamlet. Our small town of Chatham, NJ produced Peter Fleming, the lanky blonde whose own considerable talent was both enhanced and obscured by that of John McEnroe. Fleming and Mac won four doubles crowns at Wimbledon and three at the U.S. Open in the late 70’s and early 80’s. In all, they landed 57 doubles titles. Fleming, during his career, even scored isolated victories against Mac and other tennis greats such as Bjorn Borg and John Newcombe.

Around town there was a distinct Fleming-awareness that drifted down Main Street and diffused across the town’s plentiful tennis courts. In the younger players, Peter instilled a zeal for the put-away winner that bordered on manic. On the same courts that we now labored, Fleming, all 6’5” of him, had smashed his way to the upper tier of tennis’s elite. If he hit a drop shot en route, word of it never made it back home.

Tennis hamlet or not, we were in northern New Jersey and so our town was replete with sweltering humidity, the steady drone of cicadas, woeful traffic, and town courts laid bare by the relentless sun under hazy summer skies. With flat tennis balls, worn-out Stan Smiths, and the occasional Big Hitter’s groan we’d play match after endless match in the stifling heat.