the WhataBurger

The WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational: the marquee junior tournament in Tucson AZ that the whole E.T.A. fall season points toward — "The Port Washington meet. I.D. Day. The Tucson WhataBurger the week after" (p. 113), played over Thanksgiving (p. 267). The novel opens with Hal "seeded third, Boys’ 18-and-Under Singles, in the prestigious WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational out at the Randolph Tennis Center" (p. 4) in the Year of Glad, and the book's most famous flash-forward hangs on the year before: "I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year’s WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father’s head" (p. 17).