There is only one language in the world where fluency is a birthright: love.
It speaks in the gentle caresses of zephyrs, in the calm swell and surrender of the ocean, in the rustling of leaves beneath our feet and the birdsong at dawn. In fact, if you are still enough to watch and listen, you can see and hear it all around you.
Sports are no exception.
Tennis, the hottest sport on the planet right now, starts with, you guessed it…LOVE (0-0). With the final Grand Slam of the year, the US Open, now into its second week, you can expect to be swept up by the frenzy of who-gets-their-hands-on-this-coveted-title.
In the meantime, if you are like us and hooked on the game, then you need to run to your nearest library and whet your appetite with some tasteful non-fiction tennis books curated by The Bombay Circle Press.
Open by Andre Agassi
When we watch a tennis match, we are entranced by the balletic ferocity of the
exchanges. It is easy to become absorbed in the spectacle and lose sight of the beating hearts behind those heart-stopping rallies. Andre Agassi’s (an 8-time Grand Slam champion and former world number one) memoir offers an excruciatingly candid, near-photographic description of his journey. It acts as a raw exposé into the unforgiving world of professional tennis and tells an acutely honest tale of his disdain for the game that thrust him into the upper echelons of greatness.
Here is our favourite quote from the book that will be sure to reel you in:
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature.”
The Racket by Conor Niland
You watch Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Venus
Williams, and think that the life of a professional athlete is a breeze and ABBA’s famous song rings through your mind: “Money, Money, Money, always sunny, in a rich man’s world”.
Wrong. In reality, it is not all sunshine and rainbows, especially if you are grinding on the second and third tiers of the professional tour and struggling to break into the top 100 of the world. So, what happens when you are always straddling the liminal—a place where you can get close enough to experience the absolute best, yet remain so far away that those moments feel like a fever dream?
Former Irish tennis player, Conor Niland (a career-high world ranking of 129 and now Ireland’ s Davis Cup Captain), details the absurdity of life on tour and its unremittingly chronic solitude. An existence shaped by a mounting pile of bills, endless physical and mental despair—fretting over rankings and letting numericals shape one’s entire identity—and constantly having to cut corners in every area of life.
Here is our favourite quote from the book that will be sure to reel you in:
“A professional tennis career is ultimately founded on a horrifying gamble: every successful player compromises their entire childhood to make it, but so does every unsuccessful player too.”
The Art of Tennis by Nicholas Fox Weber
Earlier, I wrote that the hottest sport on the planet right now is Tennis. I would like to
amend that by saying: it has always been. Like an octopus’s tentacles, its influence has been multifaceted and far-reaching, spanning art, literature, fashion, music, history, design to name a few. This book discusses figures such as René Lacoste, Oleg Cassini, Eadweard Muybridge, Alexander Calder, Claude Debussy, and Vladimir Nabokov, along with tennis legends like Bill Tilden, Helen Wills, Althea Gibson, and Guillermo Vilas and the hotly disputed debate over tennis-ball colours. Blending history, culture, and personal stories, this book is unconventional and idiosyncratic in the best way possible.
Here is our favourite quote from the book that will be sure to reel you in:
“…tennis as the manifestation of the elusive quality we call charisma, and how it opens our eyes to the ways that the sport has been the inspiration for world-class painting, literature, music, dance, and photography.”
We hope you enjoy these eclectic non-fiction tennis book recommendations. Follow The Bombay Circle Press Bulletin for more reading recommendations and literary discoveries!