Julie defeats William Henry Devereaux Jr. at tennis

Julie Devereaux’s tennis victory over her father, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is both a belated change in their athletic balance and a family rebuke. In a match that lasts less than an hour, she beats the father who had spent nearly a decade using advice and misdirection to keep her from winning; afterward, she makes clear that the victory is also about what he did to Russell.

Circumstances and Long Postponement

The match takes place on a bright, warm Sunday afternoon during the summer, before Julie leaves for Atlanta. Her opponent is fifty years old and has been jogging through the spring in an effort to preserve his place in left field, a detail that frames the tennis match within his wider awareness of age and diminishing physical ability. For nearly a decade, he has postponed what he regarded as Julie’s inevitable victory with “smoke and mirrors.” In earlier matches, he could unsettle her by warning her not to double-fault; the tactic worked because she was still listening closely enough to be affected by his advice.

The Match and Its Turning Point

The two-set match takes just under an hour. Julie runs her father from sideline to sideline and from net to baseline with an efficiency he finds unlike her. The decisive change is not only her superior play: he recognizes that she is no longer listening to him. That is different from her earlier habit of consciously reminding herself not to listen, which still left his words present in the contest. The old tactic has lost its hold, and he knows he is beaten.

When the match ends, Julie has accomplished what she had not quite dared to believe possible. Her radiant smile brings the victory’s emotional force into the open, but her explanation gives it a sharper edge: “That’s for what you did to Russell,” she tells him on the way home. The win therefore settles more than a sporting contest. Julie connects her father’s defeat to his intervention in her marriage, making the match an act of reproach as well as a demonstration of her independence.

The Russell Reference and the Victory’s Meaning

Her father initially takes the remark to mean that he had driven Russell out of town after finding him at Meg Quigley’s. For a moment he reads Julie’s words as referring to that episode; then he remembers the basketball game, in which Russell put a hook shot onto the roof behind the backboard. The brief uncertainty preserves the layered, teasing character of the exchange: Julie’s point is unmistakably personal, while her father’s thoughts move among the family incidents that might explain it.

The scene makes the father’s loss concrete through a change in attention. For years, he could shape Julie’s play by getting her to react to him; now she can tune him out as effectively on the court as she once did at the dinner table when he recommended books. Her win marks a shift in their relationship as well as in their athletic roles: he can no longer rely on the familiar authority of advice to keep the advantage, and Julie leaves the match with both the victory and the last word.