When tennis is mentioned today Cuba is not usually thought of. Neither its great stars – like Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or the Williams sisters – nor its most renowned scenarios at present are related to the island. However, 2016 left a story that joins Cuba to the elite of the so-called white sport. Its protagonist was Alain Alvarez Legrá, a Cuban living in the United States who has started making himself known as an umpire in the most recent US Open, one of the four most important tournaments of the international circuit. Alain started umpiring in 2007, when he was an English teacher in the Friedrich Engels Vocational Senior High of Pinar del Río. He took his first steps in a junior tournament through his brother Ernesto Alvarez Legrá, in the clay courts of the Guamá sports complex in the city of Pinar del Río. “Pinar del Río’s courts will always be in mind,” he commented after his experience in New York. “My beginnings weren’t so difficult because I always had the backing of my family and I had Ernesto as my guide. He is the best Cuban umpire I have known and he has been vital...