By Will Carlin
In the fall of 1962, John McPhee got a phone call from his father.
McPhee was not yet the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer he would later become; in fact, he had not yet written his first book. McPhee’s father, on the other hand, was already retired from his career as a physician to college athletes, mostly at Princeton University. He knew athletic talent when he saw it.
When McPhee answered the phone, his father said, “There’s a freshman basketball player down here who is the best basketball player who has ever been near here and may be one of the best ever. You ought to come down and see him.”
In those days, freshmen were not allowed to play varsity sports, and freshmen games were not spectator affairs. When McPhee showed up for the game, though, the stands were filled and there was a large crowd outside the gym. They were all there to see the same freshman. His name was Bill Bradley.
Of course, we now know Bradley for his politics, but before that, he was a basketball player. Bradley set almost every significant Princeton and Ivy League basketball record (most of which still stand almost fifty years later), and he played in the 1964 Olympics while still an undergraduate.
He was recruited by the NBA while in college, not surprisingly, but he won the Rhodes Scholarship so he went to Oxford instead of going into the NBA. Afterwards, he signed with the New York Knicks and went on to a Hall-of-Fame career, helping the Knicks win their only two NBA Championships.
All of that was in the future when McPhee went to watch that freshman game. His father, who had saved a seat for him, didn’t tell him which player to watch or Bradley’s name, but it didn’t take McPhee long to figure out who had drawn the crowd. A year later, McPhee decided that Bradley would be the subject of his first book: A Sense of Where You Are.
One of the most famous sequences in the book occurs when McPhee accompanies Bradley to a pre-game shoot at a gym he was not familiar with. He started off by missing an inordinate number of shots— all in the same spot at the back of the rim. Bradley stopped for about a minute, then started swishing shot after shot.
Later, McPhee asked him about the misses. Bradley replied, “I think that basket is an inch lower than it should be.” McPhee at first dismissed the comment as youthful arrogance, but later, on a whim, decided to go back to gym, get a ladder and measure the height of the basket. It was almost exactly one inch too low.
I told that story in the locker room last weekend in response to a comment from one of the others in the room with me. He said, “Maybe the side line on your court was a little too low.”
He was referring to my just-completed quarterfinal match at the US Masters. I had been playing Brian Sheldon, and in the first game, the match was close.
I have always had a good lob serve, but over the past few years, it has become a real weapon. With enough ceiling room, I can hit it very high and get it to land in the back corner. If my opponent doesn’t volley it, I can gain a significant advantage at the start of the point.
In the first game against Brian, the serve worked well and it helped me win the game.
Now at 6-5 in the second game, it was time, I thought, to make my move. I hit the serve perfectly and I could see that he was going to have trouble with it. But it grazed the sideline and popped up. Fault.
I won the next point to go up again, 7-6. I hit the same spot with my serve. Another fault.
Another point later, I had the serve at 8-7. Same spot. Oh my god!
Now flustered, I lost the game.
At the start of the third game, I served another to the same spot at 2-2. When I finally won another point at 3-5, I decided to hard serve, and hit the service line on the front wall. I think Brian may have run out that game. That’s five faults so far, if you are keeping count.
Between the third and fourth game, I hit five practice serves that all hit side wall-floor-back wall. Perfect.
Perhaps that’s why (you can cringe now), as the fourth game began, I tried it one more time. Dear lord.
Later, after being down early, I was making a run and, now thinking more clearly (alas, not clearly enough), I did not hit another lob serve. I faulted again on the front wall. That makes seven and that stopped my run cold.
Brian won the match by playing better than I (and he gave defending champion Richard Millman all he could handle in the semifinals). I haven’t measured that side wall, but I suspect that it is just fine, thank you. (Hey wait, anyone have a ladder and a tape measure?)
But seriously : seven faults? Yup. Seven.
Millman teased me afterwards that I should learn to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. Forget the number seven. Just don’t use it any more.
The funny thing is that I wouldn’t have come close to trying it so many times if I didn’t have it so grooved. I was like Bill Bradley for that first sequence of misses. I was checking each thing off, and I couldn’t comprehend that they were actually going out.
But I am not Bill Bradley. He adjusted, while I still want to tell you just how close each fault was to being, you know, perfect.
A sense of where you are.
Working on it.
