An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Since February is Black History Month, I have been focusing on books about African American tennis players. In the previous two weeks, we have discussed Arthur Ashe in “Days of Grace” and Althea Gibson in “The Match.” If you’re going to talk about the history of black players at the highest levels of competitive tennis, Ashe and Althea are the two obvious places to start.
Before Arthur Ashe, there was Althea Gibson. Long before Ashe broke the color barrier in men’s tennis, Althea was the true pioneer. Her journey was much harder than the one Ashe endured. Part of the challenge was that Althea was female playing in an era where women’s tennis wasn’t valued by the national associations that staged tournaments at all. A larger factor was the color of her skin.
After my recent reading of John McPhee’s Levels of the Game, I came to the realization that I needed to brush up on my knowledge of the tennis career of Arthur Ashe. His memoir Days of Grace seemed to be an obvious place to start. Additionally, since February is Black History month, the timing is perfect. As a bonus, a hardcover edition of Days of Grace was already languishing on a shelf in my family room.
Fiend At Court spent a virtual six weeks with Dennis Ralston in 2020. To be more precise, this site spent six weeks on a structured improvement program inspired and derived from Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis, a book he authored with Barry Tarshis. Unfortunately, Ralston passed away last month following a long battle with cancer. Revisiting the Fiend at Court “Six Weeks” project became compulsory with his passing.
There is a lot to break down in Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played. On the surface, the book is about a tennis match between Don Budge and Gottfried Von Cramm played during the 1937 Davis Cup. It is also a unique account of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party in the run up to World War 2.
When I first embarked on the project manifested by the Fiend at Court site, I would have asserted that I have little personal interest in the early history of international and professional tennis. The first appearances of early tennis stars in what was published was in the context of newspaper articles summarizing proposed changes to the ITF Rules of Tennis of their time. I am embarrassed to say, that some names that I did not initially recognize are now turning up repeatedly in the tennis books of their era.
I am suddenly obsessed with literary and media claims of “The Greatest” tennis matches. It was a natural next step as my examination of Strokes of Genius concluded. Strokes of Genius was published in 2009 with the phrase in the subtitle “The Greatest Match Ever Played.” By sheer coincidence, a second book was also published in the same year with a similar phrase in the subtitle. Consequently, “A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played” is the next book which will be tackled by this site. It is the most natural progression.
Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played is a book by Jon Wertheim about the 2008 Wimbledon Final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. It would be weird if it were about a match between two other players. While Strokes of Genius is ostensibly about the match, in reality it is a portrait of the rivalry between the Federer and Nadal as it stood at that time.
I finally completed my reading of Levels of the Game by John McPhee. The book is a detailed account of the 1968 semi-final match between by Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner play at Forest Hills and is widely regarded as a literary masterpiece. The match is the foreground of for a much deeper cultural and societal examination. The backgrounds and attitudes which shaped each player are interwoven with the match play.
Levels of the Game is a detailed account of the 1968 semi-final match between by Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner play at Forest Hills. The match is the foreground of for a much deeper cultural and societal examination. The backgrounds and attitudes which shaped each player are interwoven with the match play.