Player profile: baseline blaster, sights set no higher than Yale

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING — junior year, YDAU fall
• What: Axford is a true redheaded person with copper-colored hair, freckled peeling skin, enormous chapped lips, several cm shorter than Hal. As a player he does nothing but blast from the baseline without discernible spin — the narration likens him to a less effective version of John Wayne — seeded #4 singles on the 18's A team (he and #3 Coyle prefer to skip doubles altogether), high-ranked enough for free Prince and Reebok gear. He is under enormous family pressure to continue the male Axford tradition of attending Yale, and academically so marginal that his only chance is to play tennis for Yale — which would effectively blow any Show-level future — so he has set his competitive sights on nothing past a Ride-offer. Pemulis mocks the fixation ("Axhandle babbling about Yale," n321). A telling on-court quirk he shares with Hal: against all court etiquette, both "seem constitutionally incapable" of asking for help with errant balls — instead of yelling for a shoot-back they halt everything and trudge court to court to fetch their own, "a curious inability to request aid that no amount of negative reinforcement from Tex Watson or Aubrey deLint can seem to correct" (n213 p. 1035).