Reading and tennis might not seem like natural partners, but I’m convinced that the two are deeply connected. As we continue to explore ideas inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, I have become convinced that reading can be a catalyst for improving tennis performance. The topic for this weekend is pursuing your passions, and Rubin personally gravitated to reading when writing about that theme. It is a mindset that resonates with me. Anyone who follows this site knows that I read voraciously and genuinely enjoy the written art form.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how social media is reshaping our collective attention spans. Instead of immersing ourselves in a novel or a thoughtful essay, many of us spend hours scanning fragments—tweets, captions, reels, headlines. The problem with that mode of consumption is that it rewards short bursts of attention and trains the mind to expect novelty every few seconds. On a tennis court, that same fragmentation can sabotage performance. Players who live in the realm of the quick scroll can find themselves locked into making only point-by-point adjustments. That might sporadically help here and there, but it rarely produces the deeper, strategic recalibrations that can shift the arc of an entire match.
That’s where long-form reading comes in. Books, especially the great ones on tennis, force the brain to slow down, sustain attention, and wrestle with ideas over many pages. It’s the exact same skill set required to recognize patterns over the course of a set or match, to resist the temptation to abandon a strategy after just one failed execution, and to trust the process long enough to see whether an adjustment is truly working. In short, reading strengthens the same muscles of patience, perspective, and analysis that fuel competitive growth on the court.
And here’s a twist: it doesn’t always have to be tennis books. Non-tennis works can produce unexpected insights into performance, mindset, and resilience. This entire series, framed around Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, is evidence of that. A book on happiness may not teach forehands or serves directly, but it can spark ways of thinking that ultimately improve how we approach our sport.
And then there’s the obvious benefit of becoming a true student of the game. There is a wealth of tennis writing out there, including coaching manuals, memoirs, tactical deep dives, and even philosophical reflections, that can expand understanding far beyond what’s learned in practice. Every page is a reminder that tennis is not just about strokes and technique but also about ideas, history, and culture. Reading keeps that passion alive.
So here’s my call to action. This post comes in a weekend dedicated to pursuing your passion. If you’re a subscriber to this blog, chances are you already have a passion for reading and are actively pursuing it. However, there’s probably someone else in your orbit who could benefit from picking up a book on tennis or rekindling their love of reading in general. It would be a good move to forward this post to them. Sometimes all it takes is one spark to ignite a deeper love for both reading and the game.
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Throughout 2025, I am dedicating the first full weekend of every month to exploring how ideas from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (<- Sponsored Link) can spark greater enjoyment and happiness in tennis. This is a non-tennis book that I have come to believe everyone should read. Seriously, you should get your hands on a copy of this book and consider trying some of the techniques described by the author.
