A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

by David Foster Wallace

I thus further confess that I arrived in Montreal with some dim unconscious expectation that these professionals—at least the obscure ones, the nonstars—wouldn’t be all that much better than I. I don’t mean to imply that I’m insane: I was ready to concede that age, a nasty ankle injury in ’91 that I haven’t bothered to get surgically fixed yet, and a penchant for nicotine (and worse) meant that I wouldn’t be able to compete physically with a young unhurt professional; but on TV (while eating junk and smoking) I’d seen pros whacking balls at each other that didn’t look to be moving substantially faster than the balls I hit. In other words, I arrived at my first professional tournament with the pathetic deluded pride that attends ignorance.