I’m not a good player. Geoff Dyer once described my game as “so inelegant and ineffective” that he worried it might be “infectious”. Fact checkers from Harpers, where he published the line, got in touch with me to establish the evidence base. I was happy to corroborate. I used to get beaten regularly by William Skidelsky, whose memoir Federer and Me ends this list. We used to argue about Federer but the book is a moving reminder that for lots of us fandom has an intensity as profound as playing – that watching sports is like reading a novel, an experience that doesn’t entirely belong to the writer or the athlete. Books and ballgames made up my childhood and I haven’t outgrown them yet.Read about the other entries on the list.
Also see: the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on tennis.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
