February 19, 2010

Jumping bean

"He's a flying jumping bean, a bundle of hyperkinetic energy, with the tour's quickest hands. Still, he's never learned to hit a tennis ball. He hits off-speed, hacks, chips, lobs -- he's the X of Y. Then, behind all his junk, he flies to the net and covers so well that it all seems to work. After an hour you feel as if he hasn't hit one ball cleanly -- and yet he's beating you soundly."

Questions: Who wrote this? About whom?

No Google/Wiki/Bing/whatever. As they apparently say in quizzing circles, this is "workoutable". Eminently.

Extra credit: What is X, what is Y?

6 comments:

Rohan said...

I dunno. John McEnroe about Pete Sampras maybe?
X=Heidi Klum
Y=Wimbledon

B said...

This is peanuts, 'cause peas drives one nuts. Or beans. or whatever.

Since he does not have gold or silver he is only _prince_ of _persia_, says the golden boy.

Rajagopal said...

Agassi on Leander Paes...

Dilip D'Souza said...

Rajagopal has it right! That's Agassi, in his recent book "Open", describing his defeat of Paes at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

X = "Brad", for Brad Gilbert, the once-pro player who then coached Agassi for several years.

Y = "Bombay".

B said...

When Lee overheard Hesh talking about the passage, he said, he was at least a Brad from Bombay, but had the alliterative Andre played Hesh, he would've called him "the broad from Bangalore". Ouch!

Hari said...

About Paes, Agassi was the one who said it?