The Road to Championship

Villa Sol in Orlando, Florida, is a gated community consisting of mostly Spanish Colonial Revival-style holiday rentals. You don’t really belong here unless your name is “Linda” or “Scott”–the sort of name belonging to someone who’s likely to have bought houses for $20,000 in the ‘70s with a job at a stationery company; someone who is now genuinely confused by young people’s political stances, professional frustrations, and financial struggles. But for a weekend in November, three bungalows here were occupied by a dozen Asians, most of whom originally from China, in their 40s and 50s. They were Meta Legend, the amateur tennis team representing USTA’s Southern California Section to compete for the USTA League 18+ Tri-Level National Championship.

We arrived at 3137 Riachuelo Lane, the designated team HQ, late Friday evening, where a team dinner (a pep rally in truth) was already underway. The cheerful sound of chatter in Mandarin, bursts of laughter, and clinking of glasses spilled out onto the street, drawing curious glances from a couple walking their dog.

There was a mixture of Asian and American food on the long, mahogany table. Three large Domino pizzas were stacked on top of each other, next to which were two take-out boxes of Fuqi Feipian (Sichuan-style spicy beef slices in chilli oil). A big bowl of Thai fried rice, already half empty, occupied the center of the table–someone put half a dozen or so McNuggets in the empty half, apparently to make room for the Vietnamese-style meatballs. There was more food on the kitchen counter. A myriad of colorful drinks were stashed in the corner of the living room–cases of bottled water (Evian), energy drinks (Gatorade), beer (Tsingtao), red and white wines of various brands, and, out of nowhere, three bottles of baijiu, a type of infamously fiesty Chinese liquor, in their traditional outlandish giftbox-style, gold-gilded packaging (a common sight at Chinese-style business banquets).

“It will help remove the humidity in your body, according to Chinese traditional medicine,” Jack Li, a 28-year-old entrepreneur, said in Mandarin Chinese. Li ran a Pilates studio chain in Orange County with his wife, Jessica Yang.

“It’s good for your game tomorrow,” Yang chimed in, raising her glass to make a toast, and everyone obliged with pleasure. Yang jerked her head back, downed the drink, and showed everyone the empty glass—the gesture Chinese drinking culture would expect drinkers to do as a way to show respect. She spilled a little on her Balenciaga blouse, but she didn’t seem to mind.

At that moment, Derek Gao, the captain, entered the room. Wearing full-body tennis gear—the baseball cap, the Nike polo shirt, the baggy shorts, and white tennis shoes with faint smudges of red clay on the rims—he called for everyone’s attention. “Tomorrow’s schedule is out. We will play Northwestern in the first match-up.”

“It should be easy peasy. The weather was too bad in Seattle. They don’t get to practice that much.” Li said cheerfully, downing his glass of baijiu. He quickly moved on to the next topic – Southern California housing investments.

***

TURNS OUT, Li was right! The team, made up of three mixed doubles pairs, breezed past the Seattle team with three straight wins, but not without losing one of the best players to a severe injury—Elton Lau, who came to the US from Taiwan when he was nine.

“I rolled my ankle when I was chasing a drop-shot, and then I fell over and crashed into the iron bench.” Back at the HQ, Eugene was recounting the incident to a concerned audience, awkwardly half-lying on a deckchair by the pool, ice packs strapped all over his body. “And the bench was screwed into the ground.”

In the living room, Todd Zhang, an artist in his late 40s from Beijing who was wearing a straw fedora and beach shorts, was trying to strike up a conversation with Nicky Tran, the deputy captain and former real estate agent from Vietnam. Zhang spoke in his broken English, with a heavy accent and the flamboyant flair often seen in artists. They would partner to play mixed doubles for the first time in the afternoon.

“I’m still single, you know. And I have always been.” Zhang, his face red from beer, put one arm on the back of Tran’s chair, while Doan leaned away from him. She let out an “uh-hum” reluctantly, out of politeness.

“I think of women as cities. There are a hundred great cities in the world. London, Paris, Los Angeles, Cairo. Yes, London is magnificent. But I don’t want to go to London every time I get a chance. I want to visit all of them!” Zhang said, arms flailing.

“That sounds a little misogynistic, don’t you think?” Tran jeered. But Zhang didn’t seem to understand the word “misogynistic.” “I think we should get going. We are playing Hawaii in the afternoon. I heard they are pretty good.” Doan stood up and said, raising her eyebrows at Zhang’s Hawaiian shirt.

“Don’t worry! I am excellent.” Zhang took another gulp.

***

THE MILD, late-autumn afternoon, with a lowering sun hanging in the air and soft winds that brought a subtle sweetness found only in the humid South, was perfect for tennis. But here on court 17, Jennifer Lin found it difficult to serve because of the sun shining directly into her eyes. She adjusted her toss, but still hit the ball into the net—a double fault.

Her partner, Greg Richardson, a businessman from Dana Point (the only non-Asian player on the team), ran back from the volley position in front of the net to offer Lin some encouragement. Lin, obviously annoyed by her own unforced error, shooed him away. “You, stay! I, okay!” Lin was from Nanjing, a city known for its distinct blunt-toned dialect. She spoke little English, but with the few words she knew, she said them in the same manner. The terse instruction was well received by Richardson.

It was the deciding third set, tied at four games apiece. Lin and Richardson, both in their 50s, had been on court for nearly two hours. Their opponents, from Hawaii, had more than 20 years of youth on their side and were what tennis players would call “pushers”—incredibly consistent, passive, patient players who win points by forcing opponents to make mistakes.

Here, Lin’s double fault gifted the opponent a major uphand—at 30:40 in the ninth game, Lin and Richardson now faced a break point. If they lost this point, their opponents would lead 5-4 with a service advantage in the next game, which could very well be the last game of the match.

Standing firm on the baseline, Lin adjusted her face-covering (she was wearing a thin face veil in addition to a long-sleeve shirt and leggings, not to keep warm, but to block the sun from sunburn and tanning, a common practice among East Asian women) and bounced the ball a few times in front of her. She tossed the ball some 12 feet from the ground—a high toss she learned from her mother, one of the first female professional tennis coaches in Communist China. She patiently waited for the ball to drop and leaned into it when it entered hitting range. On the other side of the net, the serve hit the ground and skidded straight towards the Hawaiian man, who deftly lobbed it back, over Richardson’s reach, to the other side. Lin had to move quickly sideways to cover the open court. Sensing the danger, Richardson turned around—something you are not supposed to do in a doubles match—and looked worriedly at Lin, as if he knew that she might not get there in time. His hunch proved to be right. Lin squealed and fell to the ground, holding her left thigh. Richardson dropped his racquet and rushed to Lin, who was grimacing in pain.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I… I…” Lin murmured, trying to find the right word. Richardson was understandably baffled. When she failed, she turned to the spectators outside the court and shouted, “chou-jin-le!”

“Cramps!” Someone screamed back from the audience. It was Christina Wang, a Taichi instructor from Beijing in her late 50s. With the match supervisor’s permission, she ran towards Lin to provide medical assistance. She lay Lin down on the ground and straightened and raised her left leg, pressing hard to flex the tension in her hamstring. Then, she bent it gently and moved it in circular motion, asking, in Chinese, “How does it feel now?”

On the other side of the net, the opponents were not happy. They called for the match supervisor and asked if such medical assistance was permitted. When the supervisor gave them an affirmative answer, one murmured in frustration, “At least speak some English.” No one on the Meta Legend seemed to mind.

In five minutes, Lin was back on her feet, still limping but looking ready to continue. She paced slowly at the baseline at first, then bounced side to side and adjusted her face veil one more time before nodding to Richardson and the concerned opponents. The match resumed.

“It was like a scene from a teenage sports anime,” Lin said, again in Chinese later that day, legs up by the pool at the HQ, beer and pizza in hand. They narrowly won the match, beating the Hawaiian team 7-5 in the third-set tiebreaker. “Except we’re not teenagers anymore.”

***

THE FINALS were on Sunday. SoCal vs. Mid-Atlantic. Two of the three matches finished with little surprises, with one victory for each side. Just as the third and final match was about to start, a sudden downpour wet all the outdoor courts and forced the game to move indoors. Due to limited spectator seating, only players and captains were allowed inside the facility. Everyone else, us included, huddled in small groups to watch the live stream on the USTA app.

“I can’t watch,” Tran said as she turned away from the screen. As if to deflect her nervousness, she said: “Captaining such a team is a stressful thing, with all the scouting, scheduling, and selecting. It’s basically a full-time job, but with no pay. Hell, you had to put a lot of money into it. Do you know Derek paid for all the rentals we stayed in? Probably over $20,000 for the whole week.”

We were surprised.

“I don’t know why he did it,” Doan continued. “He achieved everything in life. He founded a very successful business, made a lot of money, and now his daughter has gone off to college. I think he just can’t stop. I guess he needed this team, and this team needed him. But hey, we all needed it.”

Before we could ask Tran to elaborate on who she meant by “we” and what “it” was(although we had pretty good ideas), the crowd behind us erupted in cheers. Meta Legends won, making them the national champions.

“Is Derek crying?” Someone from the huddle asked.

“I think he is!” Another responded, with joy.