Word: pelotaris
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...alai is no game for amateurs -and the life of a pelotari is short as well as happy. After a few years, shoulders and arms are noticeably deformed by the strain, and biceps bulge almost as large as Sonny Listen's. Few professionals risk playing past 35. When their legs tire and their reflexes slow down, they are likely to catch a pelota where it hurts-like Erdoza, a Basque champion of the World War I era, who was known as "El Fenomeno" until he put a little extra on a forehand one day and wound up whistling through...
Such swift skill is the product of long practice. As a ten-year-old choir boy in the tiny Basque town of Saint-Palais, Jean Urruty was already a promising pelotari. Sunday mornings, after Mass, his priest would take him to the local court for an hour-long workout at main nue. At 14, he quit school to become a carpenter's apprentice, but his heart was still at the fronton. French Tennis Champion Jean ("The Bounding Basque") Borotra, a fine pelotari himself, took the youngster under his wing, brought him to Paris and taught him tennis. Urruty...
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