Heading into New Year’s Eve last year, I shared 12 “Gifts” that people can give themselves to improve the quality of their tennis life. Each of these items is a tennis related life hack shamelessly adapted from a career development webinar gave a while back for cybersecurity professionals. In 2022, I am taking an in-depth look at each one of those items on first Friday of each month. The “Gift” for May is to read a new tennis book.
A site that reviews a tennis book (almost) every week is going to eventually suggest to other people that they should do the same. No matter what your interest is in tennis, there is a book out there with valuable information and insight. Obvious candidate subjects are tennis tactics, stroke development, and tennis psychology. There are also great leadership books and history that contains important tennis life lessons.
Since May is #NationalTennisMonth, the obvious move is to focus on books than encourage people to get out and play. That is important, and we should all do that. Maybe I will take things in that direction tomorrow.
When I sit back and examine current world events, one book that I have previously covered on this site is an obvious candidate for a second visit. With the recent controversial ban of players from Russia and Belarus from Wimbledon competition this year, the tennis world is rife with self righteous indignation of this unprecedented co-mingling of politics and tennis. Except it isn’t exactly unprecedented.
In 1937, a match from the Davis Cup tie between the United States and Germany was played at Wimbledon. Though the actual start of World War II had yet to occur, international tensions were high. The Nazi party had withdrawn from the League of Nations and had established concentration camps in Germany. The presence of Nazi dignitaries and the German flag was certainly an uncomfortable spectacle on Centre court.
Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played tells the story of tennis match between the American Don Budge and a German player, Gottfried Von Cramm. The account of the match is artfully intertwined with the rise of Adolph Hitler as the world teetered on the precipice of war.
With I originally reviewed A Terrible Splendor in January of 2021, I remarked that the match was played at a time when sports and international relations were inextricably linked. I also observed that the world was on an upward trend where politics and sports are once again converging. With the conflict in Ukraine, that observation becomes a prescient understatement.
It is an inescapable fact that Von Cramm was literally playing for his life against Budge at the Davis Cup. He was a thorn in the side of the Nazi party for various reasons. Von Cramm was ultimately imprisoned by the Gestapo shortly after the match was played. He spend a year in prison, narrowly avoiding the concentration camps. His standing as a tennis star created the international interest and visibility that resulted in his ultimate release.
A Terrible Splendor is a stark reminder that when international conflict intersects with sports, loyalties and allegiances do not always align with the flag. I can think of no other tennis book more appropriate for the times.
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