the Clipperton legend: the match voided down at the level of the toss

The competition dies in the mechanics. Clipperton plays with the Glock at his temple, which "makes tossing kind of a hassle, on Clipperton’s serve" — a real technical handicap — but it doesn't matter, because "Reat is letting the serves go by untouched anyway." The sport's smallest physical unit, the service toss, is the exact point where you can see the game has stopped being a game: a compromised serve met by an opponent who has decided not to return it. Nobody's playing tennis; two bodies are just going through its motions.