Monday morning finds Luca and Julian around the breakfast table neatly laid out on Luca’s deck. They are hunched over an Excel spreadsheet, and Luca is already swearing and clutching his temples. 

“I hate maths,” he complains. 

“Hang in there, old man, we’re nearly done,” Julian soothes, trying to hide his smirk. This is far from the truth, but the strong espresso instils Julian with a childish sense of hope. They’re putting a budget together for the rest of this season, and an estimate for the next. Julian insisted on a purely symbolic salary and no percentage of any prize money for now. 

“We can renegotiate once we’re out of the challenger limbo,” he has suggested, and Luca accepted reluctantly. Now they are trying to figure out how many challengers to aim for for the rest of the season, how much to spend on travel and accommodation, and maybe it would be a good idea to get Fabio some new gear to get started with. 

“Let’s think big picture. What do you think he can achieve in the long term, realistically?” Luca asks, which Julian recognises as a ploy to have a chat and ignore the spreadsheet for a while. 

“Well, what’s his ranking now?” 

Luca types into the browser and pulls up the page. Fabio doesn’t even have a photo in the ATP database. 

“Two hundred and fifty-five,” Luca reads off. “He barely broke three hundred at the beginning of the summer.” 

“Good.” Julian thinks for a minute. God, it’s a long way; but he started out once somewhere too, didn’t he? “I can take him to top five. Not next year, or the year after. But in five years, easy.”

“Easy?” 

“Well, not easy. You know what I mean. It depends on a lot of things. Injuries, what the new scene will be like now with Ivanov out and Navarro bound to retire eventually. So I can’t guarantee world number one. But he’ll get close. He’s got what it takes.” 

“My man,” Luca laughs and claps him on the back. 

“Now give me that,” Julian says, reaching for the laptop. “Let’s sign him up for all the challengers that won’t break the bank. And we’ll need to send his headshot to the ATP.”

On Tuesday, Fabio presents for his new job at 8 sharp. Well, almost. He does his time on the treadmill and his usual stretches, and then he joins Julian on the court. Julian decides to just hit with him today, to get a feel for his serves, the power of his shots. Fabio gears up to serve, Luca standing behind him like an overgrown ball boy. 

“Go easy on me,” Julian warns playfully. “My knee is fucked.” 

Fabio laughs and smashes in a rocket of a serve. Julian laughs along. 

“Out, I’m afraid.” 

His second serve goes in smoothly, and they hit the ball back and forth for a bit, the thwacks drumming out a meditative rhythm, stirring up the red dust. 

“Show me your forehand,” Julian instructs. “Really let it rip.” 

The forehand is powerful, but, as Julian had noticed on Sunday, unstable. It lands out of bounds way too often. Fabio screws up his nose and wipes his forehead with his wristband. They sit down on the bench for a break, and Fabio drinks from his water bottle greedily. 

“Do you want to talk about the match?” Julian asks. Fabio wipes his mouth and nods. 

“What do you think happened?” Julian pries gently as if trying not to alarm a skittish horse. 

“I don’t know,” Fabio says and then stops to think about it. “In the first set, I was almost getting to all the shots. Then in the second set, I tried hitting it to his backhand because I thought it felt weak. But it wasn’t enough and he kept me in one place and I couldn’t come up with any solutions.” 

Julian nods. “You were right in seeing that his backhand didn’t generate enough power to hit winners. But he also saw that your forehand was risky, so that’s why he kept hitting there. He simply waited for your unforced errors to stack up until he won. He won ugly and it was gruelling to watch,” he laughs softly. “But it taught us a lesson at least.” 

Fabio turns this over in his head. He stabs at his shoes with his racquet. “What should I have done different?”

“You could have used some of the variety you showed on Saturday. Walk him around the court until you can see some space, find an opening.” 

Fabio nods. 

“Wanna try some forehand drills?” Julian suggests. “Let’s try to figure out how to dial it in without compromising the force.” 

Fabio nods again. Julian holds his fist out to him and Fabio bumps it with his own, the first of many more to come. 

Luca waves over a student training on the court next to theirs and asks her to take a picture. That night, in bed, Julian will open up his defunct Instagram that he mostly uses to look at post-workout recipes and he will see a flurry of notifications, leading back to a new post on the academy’s official account that he’s been tagged in. There’s the photo of the three of them, with Fabio in the middle, glowing with sweat and grinning ear to ear. 

New beginnings 💪 we are excited to announce that three-time Wimbledon champion Julian Foster has joined the #romanoacademy team as Fabio Costa’s coach! Forza Fabio, we are looking forward to what you achieve together! 

The comments on the post are expressions of surprise juxtaposed with fire emojis, as well as congratulatory messages aimed at Fabio, in Italian. Julian navigates back to his notifications and glances at the handful of new followers. There’s one that stands out, Fabio’s profile picture blurry and vague in true Gen Z fashion, his eyes squinted and his tongue poking out from in between his teeth. Julian presses the blue button, Follow back.