Who Todd is: "the great lobber," pure defensive gestalt, Eschaton MVL

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING — identity, physique, and game across the YDAU November window
• What: Todd Possalthwaite is a thirteen-year-old Boys' 14-and-Unders A-squad player ("14-A lobber nonpareil," n324) from Edina MN: endomorphic, with a weird young-old face and little wet lips that lapse into a sucking reflex under stress — a tic he takes guff for. His game is pure defense: nothing but kick serves and topspin lobs, refusing to come to net, hanging back at any cost and developing the groundstrokes to draw the other guy in for the lob. Scouting him for the visitor Steeply, deLint rates Pemulis's lob the best in East Coast juniors but calls Todd the technically superior player with the better future, because Todd has built a complete game out of his lob — "a gestalt"; Poutrincourt, in Québecois, dissents on the spot ("This deLint is wrong"), reading the same defensive purity as a ceiling: a game that will never change or grow. He is also the reigning Eschaton MVL, two years running, his launch accuracy narrated as having to be seen to be believed (073; the MVL expansion lives in an endnote outside this page's cited scenes — see Dating notes).