Miracle to Be the Pro (プロへの軌跡 Puro e no Kiseki) is the 211st chapter of manga, Baby Steps.
Characters in Order of Appearance[]
- Yukichi Fukazawa
- Eiichiro Maruo
- Eiichiro Maruo's Mother
- Natsu Takasaki (flashback)
- Takuma Egawa (flashback)
- Soji Ike (flashback)
- Ryuhei Aoi (flashback)
Summary[]
Yukichi and Eiichiro face each other in an official match for the first time. It is because of watching Eiichiro throughout his transformation that Yukichi works hard as well until he finally manages to fight in All-Japan Junior.
Synopsis[]
Eiichiro's mother is surprised when she learns that some people are interested on his son's match. Eiichiro is confident that he can win against Yukichi as he always won in their practice matches - yet, practices matches and official matches are different in many ways and Yukichi performs at his best condition recently. On the other hand, Yukichi still wants to surpass Eiichiro even though Yukichi has given up on being a professional tennis player. Even though he lost during practice matches, the one who won in an official match will be the real victor.
Fukazawa is the one who serves first in the first out of three sets in the match. Eiichiro does not hold back and launches a short cross using his control. Unlike his match against Okada before, Eiichiro has a lot of options to use to attack Yukichi - thus his change-of-pace strategy works efficiently against Yukichi. On the other hand, Yukichi remembers his stay in STC - how he was intimidated to the strong players in STC and how Eiichiro becomes his motivation in order to become a strong player as well.
Eiichiro manages to win the first set and since he can play the way he usually does, he decides to take a higher risk. On the contrary, Yukichi is surprised on how different Eiichiro performs now compared to practices. Yet, he also knows at first hand how Eiichiro worked really hard to reach his goal - thus, he actually wishes for Eiichiro to win in the tournament. The match ends with Eiichiro winning the first two sets.