New Yorker fiction piece dives deep on match-fixing

Nope, there are still no live matches for a while, but here's one way to get a dose of tennis drama in your life: The new fiction piece "Futures" by Han Ong, in the March 30 issue of The New Yorker, tells the story of a hopeless 18-year-old player named Toby and the pros his wealthy father hosts at their house during the Diamond Club Challenger.

In the story, Toby gets to know Pavel, a player from the Czech Republic who, en route to winning the Challenger, gives Toby lessons on the estate's private court. After one session, during a game of pool in the family's billiards room, a heated debate even breaks out over who's better, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.

"Federer is the greatest. Of all time," Pavel says. "If you say Nadal is greatest, I beat you with this stick."

"But Nadal owns Federer!" Toby retorts. "How can you be the greatest if someone has so many wins over you? And, besides, Nadal is the best competitor."

In the middle of the piece, it gets revealed that Toby's father, who owns a casino empire, was embroiled in match-fixing accusations for paying off a player he'd previously housed, the fictional Chilean Martin Lemebel, ranked No. 385.

The text invites the reader to empathize with Martin, who, "growing up on the wrong side of the Chilean economic divide," was extra susceptible to the temptation of match-fixing—as opposed to Pavel, whose father is well off in the pharmaceutical industry.

The story is about tennis, class-consciousness and family tension, but, ultimately, futures—in both the tennis sense and the abstract one: whether to give up, or to continue to have hope.