From then on, conquering the world was easy . . . I wondered if anyone had taken a set from Jay before. Later that day, someone in the assembled crowd would tell me that plenty of others had. But that's getting ahead of the story. I was only to the second set.
Numerous adjectives come to mind.
There's humiliating . And embarrassing, degrading, frustrating, and disastrous . I didn't die, but that's about as silver as the lining gets. I tried every conceivable means of propelling forehands back across the net, including topspin, backspin, and even flipspin, a stroke I made up on the spot. The first two worked a few times, offering false hope that was quickly dashed when Jay's deep and powerful shots again brought out the wimpiest forehand since Aaron Burr slapped Alexander Hamilton with a silk glove.