Sandeep Ponniah is 18 years old, which is to say, he is bright in a school sort of way and dumb as a post in a practical sort of way.

Yesterday morning did not start out well for Sandeep Ponniah. He forgot his shoes.

If you are the parent of a teenager, this will not surprise you. A teenager would forget his spleen if it wasn't attached and really, really hard to leave behind.

But Sandeep Ponniah is a ball boy at the Tennis Masters Canada tournament. You need shoes for that.

BORROWED SHOES

Sandeep was assigned the evening match between Spaniard Carlos Moya and German Nicolas Kiefer on the grandstand court. Sandeep borrowed another ball boys' shoes. Sandeep wears size 11. His buddy passed him his size nines.

Now, for all I know, every ball boy at every tournament wears his friend's shoes but at this precise moment God chose to teach Sandeep Ponniah a lesson.

Five games into the third set, Kiefer developed a blister and called for some medical attention. This being Ontario, none came for about 15 minutes.

A few minutes passed. Finally, Moya got up and walked right up to Sandeep Ponniah who was doing what ball boys do during injury timeouts -- staring at his feet.

"It was an important moment and I wanted to hit some balls before we started again," Moya said later. "I would have liked that if I was his age and I had the chance to hit with a player."

Moya's proposal was simple enough:

"Do you play tennis?"

"Yes."

"Let's hit."

Sandeep's first reaction was terror. His feet hurt. The racquet Moya was handing him was strung tighter than Pam Anderson's corset.

"At first, I wanted to say no," Sandeep said.

While he played some provincials out of the Unionville Tennis Club, Sandeep hadn't hit a ball in six months. He's going into his second year at the University of Western. He had told himself it was time to hang up the shoes, even if they weren't his.

"I thought, it's my last year. What the hell. I'm never going to see these people again."

His first shot was in. His third shot ended up in the stands. People started to cheer. Every Moya return fell into his racquet.

Imagine one of the legion of anal retentives in the PGA pulling a marshal over and letting him knock a few approach shots toward the green. Imagine Barry Bonds taking a kid out of the stands, putting him on the mound and telling him, "let's see what you got."

That's what happened to Sandeep Ponniah yesterday.

"I was just saying to myself," Sandeep said later, "don't fall down, don't fall down."

You mean Moya?

"No. I meant me."

Moya started to have to move to reach Sandeep's shots. The crowd started to get into it. When Moya hit a ball into the net, they went nuts.

It lasted no more than 10 minutes and there was a tangible sense of disappointment when Kiefer pronounced himself ready and Sandeep returned Moya's racquet.

I would like to tell you that Moya won the match but it was Kiefer who prevailed, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4. A professional, Sandeep did not cheer for Moya, at least outwardly.

They gave Moya a big hand as he left the court last night, a victor in the eyes of the public and the ball boy he made a hero.

"I'll remember this forever," Sandeep Ponniah said.

And next time, he'll also remember his shoes.