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The Ghost In the Racket

Phishstones David Salmon

$15.95

Paperback

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English
Phishstones
28 August 2025
Title: The Ghost In The Racket: The Hidden War for the Soul of Virtual Sport Author: PhishStones Genre: Investigative Nonfiction / Technology / Cyberculture

They told us virtual reality was the purest form of competition. That the physicality of the medium-the need to actually swing your arm-would make it uncheatable. They were wrong.

The Ghost In The Racket is the shocking result of a two-year deep dive into the dark underbelly of VR esports. When PhishStones, a sixty-year-old former tennis player with a titanium knee and a hacker's curiosity, first stepped onto the virtual court, he discovered a world where opponents returned serves with impossible power and foresaw shots before they were even made. His quest for answers led him far beyond simple glitches, into a clandestine world of technological deception.

You think cheating only happens in smoky backroom poker games? Think again. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of VR Tennis Esports, where backhand winners are coded, Bluetooth mods do the dirty work, and ""fair play"" is just another marketing slogan.

In The Ghost in the Racket, PhishStones rips the lid off the world's fastest-growing VR sport and exposes how some players will do anything-phone spoofers, hacked controllers, shady Discord deals-to climb the ranks. Part memoir, part exposé, part boomer-rage comedy, this book swings harder than a McEnroe meltdown and hits right where it hurts.

From behind-the-scenes betrayals to late-night tournaments where you can practically smell the desperation through the headset, PhishStones takes you inside the game the way no one else dares. This isn't just about tennis-it's about truth, tech, and the players haunted by the ghost in their racket.

Boomer humor. Raw storytelling. A VR scandal you'll never forget.
By:   ,
Imprint:   Phishstones
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 140mm,  Spine: 3mm
Weight:   82g
ISBN:   9798232356545
Pages:   62
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

About the Author PhishStones aka David Salmon David Salmon, known by the name PhishStones in dive bars, trailheads, and twisted love stories, is a 60-year-old rock 'n roll survivor with a heart full of rebellion and boots caked in Adirondack mud. Born with a Stones record spinning and a middle finger in the air, he's spent his life chasing freedom through forests, women, campfires, and chaos. Raised by old-school Parents who tossed him into the wild like a cub learning to bite back, he grew up in the greatest classroom known to man-the Adirondack Mountains. That park didn't just raise him. It baptized him in pine needles and bear tracks, carved him into a storyteller, and gave him enough dirt-under-the-fingernails wisdom to call bullshit on just about anything. PhishStones writes the way he lives: raw, funny, deeply nostalgic, and just offensive enough to get you kicked out of Sunday service. His words are for the boomers who never sold out, the broken-hearted hikers, the stoned philosophers, and anyone who knows you can find God on a mountaintop-or in a woman who smells like woodsmoke and bad decisions. He still believes in vinyl, karma, freedom, and second chances. And he's probably already writing the next book from the porch of a rusty Airstream with a blunt in one hand and a black coffee in the other.

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