Game, Set, Cash!

by Brad Hutchins

  Television trading can be incredibly boring, though – to the point where drinking beer becomes the most practical way to deal with the day. On Friday, I am watching the big screen with Doug and Dylan (two of the only traders left on the tour by this stage), and we are all nursing serious hangovers from the night before. Obviously, beers have to be ordered. After a few rounds, everyone is starting to feel better, and it becomes apparent that we’ll be settling in for another session this evening.

  A few matches and a fistful of beers later, we are now officially drunk at work. Our speed isn’t up to scratch but we are keeping it together. Whenever a new round needs to be ordered, there is always the excuse of ‘lost con’ for a few minutes while one of us makes a trip to the bar. There is a fair crowd gathered around the TV by evening and the Chinese tunes are blasting. We don’t need our chairs any more because we are up and dancing! We’re getting among the crowd and cheering for our favourite players. Mistakes are made – that was always going to happen – but at least they aren’t costly ones. By the time the matches finish, there are only three of us left in the grounds and we’ve had a fucking blast for a day of work!

  Leaving the venue hammered, we manage to avoid the rip-off taxi drivers and somehow negotiate a ride home on the back of a local man’s bicycle. He has one of those electric numbers with a little wooden cart attached to it. Doug agrees on a price with him in sign language and we manage to fit three grown men in the cart. We haven’t exchanged a single word of comprehended conversation with the Chinese man, but once we show him the hotel card he laughs and starts riding. We even get a bit of speed up as the traffic buzzes past us from all directions.

  Our chauffeur gets us home safely, so we get changed and hit the town already charged up and raring to go for a second night in a row. TV trading has its merits.

  *

  Did I mention I am rooming with Fitzy in Beijing? There’s never a dull moment when rooming with this kid, and he lives up to his reputation in China. In a dingy bar, Fitzy discovers he’s been ripped off while buying cigarettes. The darts are some shitty variation of tea-leaves rolled in pages from the Bible. ‘Marlboro Reds, my arse,’ he says. Fitzy’s not happy, but when he tries to complain the locals behind the bar go ballistic. It escalates quickly and before we know it, a few glasses have been smashed and we’re being pushed out the front door. Local reinforcements arrive and it looks like a fight is about to break out. As the Chinese gang prepares to charge across the road at us, Fitzy does the last thing imaginable: drops his pants and waves his Johnson around, giving them a good old-fashioned windmill.

  ‘Get a load of this big old western one-eyed warrior!’ he yells at the stunned would-be aggressors. They are literally stopped in their tracks. Nobody wants to scrap with the despicable naked caveman. Fitzy has discovered the ultimate anti-violence tactic. I have mentioned this dude is completely insane, right?

  On Saturday morning, I awake to the sound of housekeeping knocking on my door.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ comes the meek and hesitantly spoken English from outside.

  My head is pounding. It has been a big week and we finished it off with a massive evening out in the Sanlitun nightlife district. ‘No thank you!’ I shout from the refuge of my bed. I am not dealing with housekeeping right now.

  ‘Sorry, sir, but … your friend!’

  I jump up in bed. Fitzy is nowhere to be seen. He has a habit of passing out on the toilet or in the hallway but he’s not there either. Oh dear, this could be bad.

  I throw on a pair of shorts and step outside, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Seven hotel staff await. Yes, seven! The manager is there in a three-piece suit. They are all staring at a naked caveman sleeping in the foetal position on the floor of the hallway. It’s Fitzy. I laugh, then look at the hotel staff and signal for them to wait a second. I run back into the room to grab my camera and snap a few shots of the disgrace while he snores belligerently on the dirty carpet. To the relief of the hotel staff, I shake him out of his slumber and drag him inside.

  ‘Wake up, you fucking clown, we’ve got a train to catch!’

  Two hours later, I wander back from the bathroom to find Fitzy passed out again. This time, it’s on the tiles of the Beijing South Train Station departure area. His passport, ticket and work phone are all strewn across the floor in front of him. I shake my head in disbelief and give him a gentle kick to the ribs.

  ‘Is he your friend?’ a businessman asks me.

  ‘Unfortunately, yeah,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, you should tell him to be more careful in future. Everything could have been stolen.’

  ‘I know. Thanks for keeping an eye on him, pal. This kid is a liability today!’

  Another hour later and we’re on board a bullet train to Shanghai. Until recently, you had to take a flight to cover this distance. But the new lightning-fast rail system sits between 300 and 400 kilometres per hour for the duration of the journey.

  If I had a choice, I’d take train travel every time over flying. Even if it takes a few hours longer, it eliminates the rigmarole of check-in, immigration and security screening. I’d rather spend those two hours relaxed, watching a movie or reading a book than standing in queues and being questioned. It was refreshing to take such a smooth ride at those sorts of speeds without the hassle of turbulence or baggage collection. As for flying … well, flying sucks. I’m well and truly sick of it by now and I don’t even dislike it that much. Take-off is fun. I take turbulence better than most people – a good bout tends to make me laugh and rocks me off to sleep rather than stressing me out. But the whole lengthy process becomes painful and tedious after some time.

  I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God or any religious story I’ve ever heard. I do, however, believe in balance. I think the universe is governed by some undiscovered system that links all things to each other and ensures some sort of equilibrium. Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were all incredibly talented people. But they only got twenty-seven years to make the most of it. Stephen Hawking and John Nash (who Russell Crowe portrayed in A Beautiful Mind) were bequeathed with the greatest minds of our time, yet they were also burdened with torturous disability. The savant paradox is far too familiar and unfair. The best surf breaks in the world are always too crowded so you never get to enjoy them properly. Fresh powder only falls when foul weather presides. It seems to me that you can’t have it all, and that’s the way the universe intends it to be. It makes me wonder how much more I can milk from this wonderful life. Maybe that’s why security issues have escalated at tennis venues. I’ve been blessed with such an incredible few years that I find it hard to imagine a better existence.

  This is why I sometimes get nervous when I fly now. Sceptical is probably the best way to describe it. As I jet off to my next exotic location, I often wonder how many more of these unbalanced treats I’ll get. Plane crashes are rare, so I’m never that stressed. I guess it’s just an indicator of how good my job is – feeling like I’m cheating the universe by having such a great time. As for the safety of bullet trains, well, they haven’t been around long, so I’m not sure, but mine delivers me to Shanghai without incident. Now, the question is, can I stay safe during my week here?

  *

  Now I am in the biggest city I’ve ever been to. With over twenty-three million inhabitants, Shanghai is one of the largest cities on earth. I just wish more of the locals would come to the tennis! I’m sitting on court and feeling like a sacrificial lamb once again. It’s an impressive venue. I’m not impressed with my situation, though. The scout has just walked past me off court. But I wasn’t trading so there’s nothing he can do, right? Negative. Like he gives a flying fuck – in his eyes, I’m incriminated by my presence at this event. He’s seen my photo. He’s had me kicked out in the past. It’s straight-up profiling and discrimination. The security guard is not impressed when I tell him this.<
br />
  ‘You were gambling,’ he tells me.

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ I reply. I wasn’t either. My phone was in my pocket the whole time. Intent to gamble? Sure, but that ‘crime’ doesn’t even exist.

  ‘Well, you’ve been caught doing it in the past and you’re suspected of doing it here, so you’re out,’ he counters.

  ‘This is fucking bullshit, man!’ I explode. There are players and officials walking past as I’m photographed in the media area beneath the centre court. I don’t even care any more, I’m sick of being demonised because a few people have decided, in their minds, that I’m doing the wrong thing.

  ‘Hey!’ In steps a large security officer. He’s the head of security, I realise. ‘You’re either going to cooperate and give us your identification or we’ll hand you over to the police. Fancy trying your luck with them?’ He points towards a couple of armed officers standing nearby. Always with the ultimatums, these guys! I take a deep breath, swallow my anger and shake my head.

  ‘Didn’t think so. Identification, now!’

  I go through the wringer again. I’m banned from yet another event and my week of work is over on Monday, again.

  That’s three Monday boots in four weeks. Which equals fuck all matches traded and a gaping hole in the profit column. I have no delusions; this signals the end for us. I’ll see the rest of the year out but for once I’m not feeling optimistic about my luck changing.

  When Fitzy arrives back at the hotel later that evening, he is rattled.

  ‘Bad security encounter?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah, mate. Bad taxi encounter is more like it. Holy shit. This taxi driver just crashed straight into a scooter rider on the way back. He hit him at serious speed. The rider was thrown out onto the road and was in a bad way.’

  ‘That is heavy!’ I exclaim.

  ‘Yeah. I tried to help but the taxi driver went off at me. He was pushing me away and signalling for me to fuck off, pretty much.’

  ‘What? Was the person okay?’

  ‘I dunno, mate. They would have needed to go to hospital after a crash like that. Your guess is as good as mine – I just hope the taxi driver didn’t do a hit and run after I left.’

  By the time we leave the country, I’ve had enough noodles and dumplings to last me a lifetime. China was fun but it was also a disaster. I failed to trade anything of note, and cemented my face as an immediate ejection with the officials. If it wasn’t for the new culture and country to explore, I would have gone insane this week. The experience of the road is the very thing that made me take up this job in the first place. Unfortunately, it looks like the cultural experiences and international travel are well on their way to being shut down.

  22

  НИЧЕГО ОСОБЕННОГО

  Family, friends and even random people I’ve just met are always asking me how they can score a job as a court-sider. Is my syndicate looking for anybody at the moment? Do I know any other people who will hire them? I can’t blame them; that’s how I got the job myself. My answer is pessimistic these days. It appears the trading industry is in its twilight. The police interviews are becoming more prevalent and some of us are now being turned away at ticket booths. Sandy even jumped out a window to escape police interrogation in Japan last week!

  However, we can’t just quit the tour with a snap of our fingers. Disregarding the fact that we’re very reluctant to give it up, there’s also the issue of pre-booked flights, tickets and hotels to consider. There’s a fair sum of money tied up in these commitments and we need to do all we can to at least cover the expenses.

  After Asia, we only have a few weeks remaining, so we decide to see the tennis year out. The remaining stops, however, do not look like they are going to be any easier to survive.

  Moscow is the next destination for Freddy and me. Getting a Russian visa is almost as difficult as acquiring a Chinese one. The Russian bureaucratic labyrinth is incomprehensible to any foreigner. When I ask my Russian friend, Yelena, why her country is so convoluted and mysterious, she simply shakes her head and laughs.

  ‘This is Russia,’ she explains.

  I drop my bags on the floor of our new Moscow hotel room and the phone rings.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello,’ comes a husky Russian woman’s voice, ‘do you want sex?’

  ‘Um, yeah!’ I profess. But quickly remember what I’ve heard about Russian hotels.

  ‘Oh, no wait. No, no, no, no I’m good, thanks!’ I splutter before slamming the receiver down. Working girls frequent the bars and lobbies of many hotels and offer guests ‘extra’ services during their stay. If you sit at the hotel bar you’ll inevitably be approached, like in some sleazy scene out of Leaving Las Vegas. That type of extra service is just not my thing!

  Navigating Russia is not much easier than China, either. Once again, there’s a different language, alphabet and culture to try to understand. If it wasn’t for Yelena, I’m not sure I would have any joy in trying to collect my tennis tickets from the front office on Monday morning. Even with her present, it still takes fifteen minutes for the employees to piss about and get our tickets organised.

  Sitting with a girl is a great way to blend into the crowd. Many traders have resorted to this technique in the past year to avoid profiling. Bringing a girl along always defies the initial sweep and can help you look like an average punter out on a date. One of the Italian traders follows the tour with his wife. He’s never had any trouble because he’s never even been looked at twice by security. Yves, the ingenious Frenchman, even pays one of his friends a commission just for her to come and sit with him in the stands. This initiative has paid off many times over, as he’s never had any problems and does extremely well in the profit margins as a result.

  Now that Yelena has come to meet up with me in Moscow, I finally have a chance to try this manoeuvre out and will hopefully evade security for a change. The Moscow tennis venue was designed for the 1980 Olympics, and, like most things from the Soviet era, it’s a little worse for wear. It’s also a warren of hallways, and it takes another fifteen minutes before we find our way to our seats in a secluded little corner up the back. Yelena is happy to snap photos on her iPad, chat with me and learn about tennis while I trade with my phone hidden under my jacket. She’s a typical Russian girl: sophisticated, elegant and gorgeous. She knows what I am doing, but I have to explain that there is a slight chance I might be confronted by security. She finds this quite amusing.

  While mid-level female players battle it out on court, I scan the stands for any sign of threat. I must admit, mid-level women’s matches bore me more often than not. The slower play, tactics and attitude of some of the players is just not very entertaining compared with quality matches. I don’t mean any disrespect to WTA players – I’m in awe of the top female players and their talent – but some players are just not as captivating to trade. The generally higher prevalence of choking and double-faults often leads to good trading opportunities, though, with unexpected swings in momentum. Today is one of those days, and, while the going is slow, the profit potential is there.

  Awkwardly, it turns out to be a more embarrassing than amusing day for Yelena and me. We only last two matches before the big, burly security duo approach. They know my name. Kind of. They keep addressing me by my middle name. It appears there has been some confusion during the translation. Either way they’ve been watching me and matching photos to my face. They would have some very recent ones too. It’s amazing to think you can be in China one week and then Russia the next, yet still be recognised by a bunch of strangers just because of the damned ‘folder’ and orders from insistent officials.

  When I stand up to be escorted to the exit, I turn to Yelena and ask her if she wants to stay. The head of security interrupts and says, ‘No, she’s leaving too.’ The poor girl! She is getting kicked out of the Moscow Olympic stadium just f
or sitting next to me.

  I feel bad for a number of reasons. Moscow marks my fifth Monday boot in a row. It is bloody Groundhog Day in the stands. This infuriates me, as I am now more adept in my job than I have ever been. I’ve been following the tour for almost two years now and have built an intimate knowledge of the tennis world. I know the players’ abilities, mindsets and fitness levels inside out. I can predict the outcomes of most mental and physical battles between players. I know which surfaces and tournaments they are likely to perform well at. I am quick on the buttons and can read points better than ever. It is all for nothing, though; even a pretend girlfriend and a shaved head can’t save me from being booted! There is no denying it – I am a marked man and my presence will not be tolerated at any tournaments from now on.

  Outside, in the freezing Moscow weather, I manage to scalp a few of my tickets for some much-needed roubles. Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world and, now that I have the rest of the week to kill, I’ll be doing my fair share of sightseeing and partying.

  The city centre of Moscow is my favourite of any city on earth. I’ve been to Moscow before but it is still a special place to explore. I visit Red Square many times that week. There’s the Kremlin with its sparkling gold spires and regal eagles sitting atop the national armoury – the headquarters of political activity for the country. Then there’s St Basil’s Cathedral – the ‘ice-cream factory’, as some people call it – with its colourful spires and unique architecture. According to legend, once the building was finished, Ivan the Terrible had the architect’s eyes burnt out with a hot iron so he could never replicate its beauty. Easy to see how the guy got his name!