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The Tennis Art of Tommervik

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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Rafael Osuna: Mexico’s Greatest Tennis Player

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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Tennis Mulligans and Special Needs in Northwest Arkansas

I double faulted on an important point in a doubles match last weekend. Usually a moment of some agony (few tennis players are intentionally charitable), I smiled at my opponents instead. “Mulligan,” I cried out. (I had purchased 5 mulligans before the match.) So happy to have another serve, I barely thought of all the […]

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Gael Monfils: Improv and the Human Highlight Reel

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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Murals of Monica Puig, Puerto Rico’s First Gold Medalist

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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You Can Get There From Here, The Story of Barry Buss

I softly cried my way through Chapter 25: “Thirty Days in Tuscon.” Maybe I cried because my youngest brother worked through a hidden bottle of Vodka each morning. Maybe I cried because we never knew.  Barry’s parents never knew that, as Barry himself puts it, he was “a suicidal alcoholic bent on destruction.”  In “Thirty […]

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Tracy Austin Made the Big Girls Cry

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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Quartet for the End of Time

January 15, 1941, a light rain descending on Stalag VIII-A: Jean le Boulaire on violin, Henri Akoka on clarinet, Etienne Pasquier on cello. The composer, Oliver Messiaen, plays piano. How to express the mystical truths of Catholicism in the rhythm of musical movement: bird song, Hindu talas, numerical formulas, ancient Greek meters, Gregorian chant. All […]

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Pauline Betz

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” […]

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Life Imitates Art: Paul, Fritz, and Opelka and “The Oath of the Horatii”

From left to right in the picture above: When I saw this fantastic photo from @zootennis on twitter, I immediately thought of Jacque Louis David’s famous Oath of the Horatii (below), a work I have taught countless times as a touchstone of neoclassicism: balance and symmetry, clarity of form, reason over emotion . . . […]