25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a real pinnacle in Sports writing, January 31, 2001
This review is from: Levels of the Game (Paperback)
Ostensibly this book is about a tennis match, Arthur Ashe versus Clark Graebner in the 1968 US Open Semifinals. The match was historic in itself:
"It has been thirteen years since an American won the men's-singles final at Forest Hills, and this match will determine whether Ashe or Graebner is to have a chance to be the first American since Tony Trabert to win it all. Ashe and Graebner are still amateurs, and it was imagined that in this tournament, playing against professionals, they wouldn't have much of a chance. But they are here, close to the finish, playing each other. For Graebner to look across a net and see Ashe--and the reverse--is not in itself unusual. They were both born in 1943, they have known each other since they were thirteen, and they have played tournaments and exhibitions and have practiced together in so many countries and seasons that details blur."
But McPhee is actually after bigger game than this one match. He also provides insightful portraits of the two very different contestants. Ashe, the only championship level Black tennis player of his time, is single, liberal, mercurial, a finesse player and a risk taker. Graebner is married with kids, conservative, religious, a power player and risk averse. McPhee demonstrates how their personalities influence, indeed shape, their play and how their lifelong rivalry lifts their games to higher levels when they play one another, ultimately lifting Ashe's game towards perfection by the end of this contest.
Ashe would go on to win the tournament, becoming the only amateur to win it in the Open era and together Ashe and Graebner lead the US to it's first Davis Cup in years. After that though, while Ashe went on to a respectable career, Graebner slipped into obscurity. But in this book, McPhee has preserved a moment in time when the two were evenly matched on the court, despite being polar opposites off of the court and in charting the lives that brought them to that moment, he provides a penetrating glance at two fascinating men.
This is a real pinnacle in Sports writing.
GRADE: A
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Level All Its Own, October 31, 2000
This review is from: Levels of the Game (Paperback)
To say John McPhee has written the best tennis book ever is to say too little. This is far more than a tennis book and, if you're looking for instruction, far less. The platform, if you'll excuse the tennis pun, is a U.S. Open final between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe, but it is a study of two men and what brought them to this point, athletically but especially sociologically. The reflective Southerner forced to be a pioneer because he is black. The more rigid son of the Midwest and privilege, with greater power and less versatility. The vagaries that make them human: Graebner, the more up-tight, gambling with a prepared point successfully at a crucial spot in the match. And at the end, there is Ashe, triumphantly whistling a winner off his suspect backhand to close out the match. You want to cheer. And you understand more about people than when you opened the book.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely, graceful book, July 6, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Levels of the Game (Paperback)
This book is so gracefully written that it isn't till the end that one realizes that McPhee's writing style(s) has been imitating the players' tennis styles, and that his language has moved effortlessly intune with the 'Levels of the Game'. Inlight of Arthur ashe's death, the book acheives a new poignancy.
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