Here is the story behind this tennis magician, so to speak.
Mansour Bahrami couldn’t afford a tennis racquet growing up, so he used frying pans and broom handles to imitate the players he saw while working as a ball boy at sports complex in Tehran. When a friend gave him a used racquet, Bahrami snuck into the courts to play, but the day he had longed for ended abruptly when a security guard kicked him out — but not before beating him with his own racquet.
So begins the cinematic life story of the man they call “tennis’ greatest entertainer,” who fled his home country after his game was banned, ended up living on the streets of Nice after gambling away all his money, yet somehow managed to find himself in the French Open Doubles finals thanks in large part to the unusual style he developed while playing with pans.
via The Daily What
