Tennis, anyone?

The US Open Tennis Championship began last week and I, for one, am hooked watching. I love the fact that they are televising some really good matches during prime time and I try to check in during the afternoons every chance I get.

There have been some outstanding books published recently about tennis and great tennis players and I wanted to recommend a few.

On the Line by Serena Williams is just out. Serena is one of the world’s best women players and quite an interesting character. She and her sister (Venus) burst on the tennis scene in the 1990’s and have been vying for a first and second place ranking ever since. Novelist Plus says “The Grand Slam and Olympic champion traces her rise from a disadvantaged childhood to one of the world’s top tennis players, discussing her battles with racism, the injuries that threatened her career, and her current roles as a philanthropist and media personality.”

Strokes of Genius by L. Jon Wertheim is subtitled Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played and is about the 2008 men’s final at Wimbledon (England).The author calls this match” essentially a four-hour, forty-eight-minute infomercial for everything that is right about tennis.”

Monica Seles has written Getting a Grip. Seles was attacked and stabbed by a crazed spectator in the middle of a quarterfinal match in Germany in 1993. This memoir details her struggle to find her way back to professional tennis.

And finally, A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played by Marshall Jon Fisher is about the 1937 Davis Cup competition held as the world was on the brink of war.  Meg