Chapter 35Beijing, the near future
Alex arrived in Beijing that fall only to find that he was considered as newsworthy as the One World Festival. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to see him, meet him, photograph him, even touch him. He found it disconcerting the way he generally found everything that distracted him from preparing for a tournament but now even more so as he had to focus also on the game within the game.
First the China Open where he wimped out of the semifinals in a tournament that Ramon ultimately won. Alex was astonished to see that now that he was part of the select Grand Slam club, people were only too happy to make excuses for his failures and foibles. He had been wiped out by his Grand Slam Everest, they said and wrote, drained by expectations, particularly the media’s,
