moonball
n.— «From the extreme to the subtle, there was Torben Ulrich, the bearded Danish eccentric who found himself playing Bill Hoepner in the 1953 Pacific Coast Tournament at the Berkeley Tennis Club. Hoepner was intensely annoying, known to repeatedly tie his shoes, wipe off his glasses or throw up towering “moonball” lobs for no good reason. Trailing 11-9, 4-1 and bored out of his mind, Ulrich finally walked to the net, told Hoepner it “wasn’t any fun,” and quit.» —“Time for on-court decorum to return” by Bruce Jenkins San Francisco Chronicle June 28, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The expression to go chalk has to do with rankings in an athletic tournament and harks back to when seeded teams or players were listed on a chalkboard. To pick chalk means to choose one’s favorite competitor, and you can also speak of a chalk...
Kieran in Huntsville, Alabama, wonders about the term laid an egg meaning performed badly. The expression to lay an egg goes back at least as far as cricket matches in the 1860s, where duck’s egg referred to a zero on a scoreboard. Later in the...