Best 10s in Boston with Bain; peak at thirteen; the lob and Eschaton

texture · UNDATED (Orin's junior-tennis years, B.S.)

• When: UNDATED (ages ~10-17, junior-tennis era, B.S.); competitive peak at 13
• What: Orin and Marlon Bain were "the two best 10-year-old males in Boston," practice partners at the Auburndale club. Orin's peak came at thirteen (14-and-Under quarterfinals, National Clays, Indianapolis, taking a set off the #2 seed); then the same delayed puberty that had compromised JOI as a junior sank Orin's ranking to the low 70s. A becalmed counterpuncher/baseliner with a phenomenal lob (he could hug the Lung's dome and nail a coin on the far baseline), Orin was "Eschaton's first game-master at E.T.A." — the lob-dependency Schtitt would later diagnose as the same weakness he carried into punting (event 12). (E.T.A.-era domestic texture, per n82: "in like psychic opposition to their Moms's compulsive cleaning thing, both Orin when he was at E.T.A. and now Hal are horrific slobs" — n82 p. 0999.)