Orin's defection: the awful age: the Show, the satellite tour, or nothing
he was at that awful age for a low-70s player where age eighteen and the terminus of a junior career are looming and either: (1) you’re going to surrender your dreams of the Show and go to college and play college tennis; or (2) [...] try to hop those last few competitive plateaux up to Show-caliber as an adult; or (3) or you don’t know what you’re going to do; and it’s often an awful time.
Context
The institution's terminal fork, laid out as fate: at eighteen a low-70s junior faces three doors — surrender the Show and go play college tennis, chase "those last few competitive plateaux up to Show-caliber" on a "sad diasporic existence" of a satellite pro tour, or "you don't know what you're going to do." The whole developmental machine that has ranked and drilled the body since childhood delivers it, at the terminus, to this: a ranking number that has hardened into a verdict about how far the body was ever going to go. The plateaux you didn't hop become the life you now have to choose.