"The Darkness": the all-black kit, the KANSAS hick persona, and the unearned "gift-body"

pivotal · UNDATED → YDAU standing

• When: standing condition through YDAU (his E.T.A. identity)
• What: Stice is from a part of southwest Kansas "that might as well be Oklahoma"; off-court his flattop crew cut, cuff-rolled bluejeans, and checkered short-sleeves are "strictly from hick," and he pronounces things in a flat Kansas twang. He compels his equipment sponsors (Wilson sticks, all-black Fila) to issue him only black clothing and gear, and his E.T.A. cognomen is "The Darkness"; even his towels are his own trademark black ones. He is E.T.A.'s 16's A-1, a "serve-and-volley prodigy," universally regarded as Show-bound after graduation. The load-bearing portrait: Stice's beautiful, lithe, Polycleitan tennis body is so incongruous with his broad, slab-featured, jowly "ravaged Winston Churchill" face that the narration calls the body an unearned divine gift — "a poorly spliced photo," a superhuman cardboard persona with a hole for a human face.