Never turn it off

You know how they say that the truly great athletes are hyper-competitive, how there are stories of how they'd want to beat you at marbles or ping-pong or tiddlywinks? This is one of those stories.

It's the fall of 1994, and my friend Leighton is a freshman at Stanford. He and his buddy Winston decide, hey, it'd be fun to go down to the common room and play some ping-pong, maybe meet some of the other freshmen. They head down there and find a couple of other guys playing, so they wait their turn. Eventually Leighton squares off against someone he doesn't know.

"I haven't played in a while," says Leighton, "so take it easy."

Next thing he knows the guy is slamming every chance he gets. And talking trash! "You can't touch my serve!", "Can you handle that?" "Oh, here it comes again!" He beats Leighton pretty handily and stays on the table.

Now, what he doesn't know is that Winston is really good at ping-pong. Like, really, really good. And Winston decides, hey, you're gonna embarrass my friend, I'm gonna embarrass you. So he steps up and starts tossing points away, lets the guy build up a huge lead, he's down 15 points, something like that. Then he starts playing for real for real. He's putting spin on his serves the other guy can't even see, he's returning the other guy's slams twice as hard as they came, he's basically tearing him apart. As he makes his inevitable comeback, the other guy's still talking:

"Man, what is that spin? Is that even legal?"
"That's a lucky shot! A lucky shot!"

And finally, as he realizes he's going to lose, each time he shanks a ball wide or hits it into the net, he exclaims in frustration, "This isn't my sport, man! This isn't my sport!"

A little while later, Leighton and Winston decide it might not be the best idea to make enemies on the first day of school, so they go over to introduce themselves.

"I'm Leighton," he says, "and this is Winston."

"Nice to meet you," replies the other guy. "I'm Tiger."