Bedtime Reading: Tennis Anthologies

It was once said by someone (I don't know by whom -- maybe Frank Deford? I ought to check on that) that sportswriting follows a basic rule: the smaller the ball, the better the writing. Hence the quality of baseball writing exceeded that of football or basketball writing; golf writing was better still; and the best of all was writing on boxing, which had no ball whatsoever. By this metric, tennis writing should rank quite highly. In fact, tennis does inspire excellent prose, not because of the size of the ball but perhaps because of its gladiatorial nature. The one-on-one battles render the sport a sort of non-violent (or non-contact) boxing. The fact that the sweaty visages of professional tennis players are displayed for all to see in close-up television images allows viewers (and writers) to imagine quite naturally the inner demons they are facing throughout a grueling match.

The fact that I play the sport, of course, biases my judgment a bit in favor of tennis writing. In this series of postings, I'll review some of the best tennis books I've read. In the first installment, I'll examine two great anthologies of tennis writing and reporting.
Lawn tennis (which is essentially the modern tennis game we know, as opposed to the ancient game of court tennis) was invented by Major Wingfield in 1874. Soon after that, apparently, folks commenced writing about it, as The Fireside Book of Tennis proves. This collection was edited by the great tennis journalist Allison Danzig, and it covers the period from the birth of the game into the beginnings of the open era, right up to the 1971 U.S. Open, when Chris Evert introduced herself to the world. Many of the pieces are spot reporting of events, accounts which ran in fine newspapers such as the New York Times. These are typically stellar pieces of work from the top tennis journalists of their times.

The anthology also includes long profiles of players that originally ran in magazines. Many of these go into detail about the playing styles of great players. I learned about the strategies of Jack Kramer -- how he would approach down the line virtually every time, even if his opponent knew it was coming -- a legend whom I have never seen play and only knew from his days as an ex-promoter and commentator. Tilden, Budge, Connolly, Rosewall, Emerson, Laver and many more are profiled, from the perspective of observers contemporary to the players themselves and often unafraid to discuss chinks in a given player's armor.

It's an extremely long book, and though the contents are laid out in chronological order, the book is best taken in short bursts. Many of the pieces are only three or four pages long, and several of these can easily be read in half an hour.

As comprehensive as The Fireside Book is, my favorite tennis collection is the 1981 anthology The Tennis Book. Edited by Michael Bartlett and Bob Gillen, this tome is divided into five parts. The first focuses on long descriptions of the famed tournaments and venues of the world, from Wimbledon and the other major events to the minor-league pro circuit. Most of these are magazine articles or excerpts from books. Legendary scribes such as McPhee, Bodo, Bellamy, Herbert Warren Wind, and Gordon Forbes make appearences here, poetically describing various stops (and personalities) along the tennis circuit.

The second part is composed of profiles (again, usually magazine pieces or excerpts from biographies) of the great players, from McLauglin and Tilden to stars of the late '70s like Vilas, Borg, and Evert. This part includes pieces by luminaries like Deford, Danzig, Dick Schaap, Bud Collins, Richard Evans and Mike Lupica. It concludes with a fine pair of news articles by Neil Amdur about the Borg vs. McEnroe battles that captivated the tennis world during the summer of 1980.

The next section includes essays (often written or ghost-written by famous players) about various technical aspects of the game. Laver and Budge offer their thoughts on the backhand, Gonzales discusses the serve, and modern gurus Tim Gallwey and Vic Braden chime in with advice that appeals more to the average club player. The fourth part offers three short stories related to tennis, showing that not all great tennis writing must be nonfiction. Finally, the last section contains some more statistically based works, such as discussions of the greatest matches, top players, and record-setting feats in tennis. The book concludes with a roll call of major titlists through 1980.

For the tennis historian, the first-person accounts in The Fireside Book offer meatier material. But from a literary perspective, the writing in The Tennis Book is nonpareil, deeply rewarding the reader who returns to these pages again and again.