Customer Reviews

Venus Envy: A Sensational Season Inside the Women's Tennis Tour

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I got this book, I couldn't put it down. If you have any interest in women's tennis, you must read this book.

There is more behind-the-scene information in it than you can get from any television broadcast. It's fascinating to hear about all the locker room activities. It's so much like high school with all of the cliques: the popular girls, the wannabees, the rookies, the pretty girl everyone hates. So interesting. Interesting profiles on all the major players.

Yet this book goes beyond gossip and give the casual tennis fan an insight beyond game-set-match. Tour politics. Money. Tournaments.

A great look at the year in Tennis. The anecdotal style makes for an easy read. The book went by so quickly, it could have been 100 pages longer and not gotten stale.

Too bad the author didn't get to conclude this book with the Williams sisters penultimate match against one another. Short of that, however, I can't imagine this book being more entertaining. Fans of women's tennis know that matches have gotten more exciting in recent years, arguably as entertaining as men's tennis. Author L. Jon Wertheim has managed to score a cup by getting into the hidden inner circles of the women's tennis world, spending a year with a tour. The result is a close-up view that is intriguing, exciting and impossible to put down and profiles the major players in tennis, including Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati and the Williams sisters.
What even the most avid fans of women's tennis don't get to see - the behind-the scenes gossip, intrigue and behavior that are part of the whole scene - are revealed here. Egotism, bitchiness and incredibly dysfunctional famililies add to the drama. I'd suggest that any family with an aspiring young tennis "star" in their midst give this book to that person and let her know what could await her in the future. If she decides to pursue the sport, anyway, maybe she truly has the determination to become the next star of the courts.

"Sports Illustrated" tennis writer, Jon Wertheim, has written a quick and very entertaining look at the 2000 women's tennis season. As a part-time tennis journalist/photographer myself, over the past several years I have been able to get a firsthand glimpse of the tennis world. From the cocky Williams sisters to the tempestuous Anna Kournikova to those wacky tennis parents, I can attest that Wertheim has accurately captured (warts and all) the many personalities that make up the WTA Tour.

Wertheim gives background information on many of the players to fill in those who do not religiously follow tennis, but he does so without boring those of us who do. There are juicy pieces of gossip that have certainly not made it into traditional sports reporting. One has to give Wertheim credit for penetrating this inner circle and somehow managing to add new material to these already very public personas.

The subtitle of this book is "A Sensational Season Inside the Women's Tennis Tour." It could have easily (and perhaps more appropriately) been called a "sensationalistic" season. While Lindsay Davenport has often expressed disdain for the "three-ring circus" that women's tennis has become, she, along with many others, certainly understand there is no such thing as bad publicity. A must-read for any tennis fan or even those who are just curious about these women--the "circus" is certainly in town in "Venus Envy."

I flew through this book in one night. I am an avid tennis follower and fan of Wertheim's "mailbag" on cnnsi.com. He is a wonderful reporter, asking the right questions and taking certain people to task when necessary. His interviews are insightful and entertaining and this book was obviously very difficult for me to put down. It's a shame that the book is so poorly edited and errors abound. It makes the whole endeavor come off much less professionally than I believe it is. The book is also too short (when's the last time you said that?). I had the feeling that he could have added about a hundred pages to flesh out some of the players better. But this is an enjoyable and fun read. Anybody who is a fan of women's tennis will love the insights and profiles of big-named players.

I know Jon Wertheim as the CNNSI site's shoot-from-the-hip Gen-X tennis guy. He used to do a zippy little top-10 list but now just answers "mailbag" questions every week ... I've consistently enjoyed his stuff but have always suspected there wasn't a whole lot of knowledge or writing ability beyond the one-liners.

I was wrong. This is as engaging, perceptive and well-written a tennis book as I've seen in a long time. I'm reminded of Tennis magazine's legendary Peter Bodo, though Jon is funnier. He reveals a not-so-sweet side of Lindsay Davenport that only makes her more appealing, he explores the complicated friendship between Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova, and he walks an intelligent line in telling it like it is about the Williams family while giving them all the credit they're due.

The copy editing is atrocious (you could say that about just about any book these days), but that won't distract most people as much as it irked me -- and it probably reflects the quick turnaround Wertheim and the publisher were able to pull off. He's writing about the 2000 season in a book that came out only halfway through the 2001 season, and the freshness of the events he covers is a big plus, even if L'Equipe is sometimes L'Equippe and people are winning sets 7-1.

I'm a big fan of Wertheim's Sports Illustrated work, and this definitely lives up to the hype. The key is detail: Venus Envy is full of it. there are tons of tidbits I never knew, even about my favorite player, the ass-kicking monica seles. I've already bought a copy for my mom, also a big tennis fan. i love this book.

I overlooked this gem for years, thinking it was just about Venus Williams. Not so. It's a great, candid look at some of the players on the WTA tour, circa 2000, most of whom are now retired, such as Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati and the soon-to-be Lindsey Davenport. Since the book came out, Martina Hingis retired, then came back to top 10 results, though not like when she was burning up Grand Slams as a teenager. The author is a bit too worshipful of the Williams sisters, though he accurately paints Richard Williams as nuts. If you follow tennis, you'll want to read this, though the definitive insider look at the WTA tour is still to be written.

This book, though dated now, chronicles the re-emergence of women's tennis as one of the world's most popular, most intriguing and most marketable sports.

For the better part of the 1990s, all we heard from tennis aficionados was how the sport was dead in the USA, how the dominance of Steffi Graf & Monica Seles failed to raise the sport's profile a la Martina & Chris and how the women's game pailed miserably in comparison to what was a bustling men's game (you still had Sampras, Agassi, Becker, Moya, Bruguera, Courier, Chang, Washington, Stich, Henman and Rafter doing wonders for the sport's popularity).

BUT, along comes a new, different and exciting generation of young pony-tailed, bleached-blond and beaded wonders who were as eye-catching in appearance as their game's were revolutionary, aggressive and athletic.

This book attempts to capture the essence of what Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters and Anna Kournikova brought to a table that already included notable top players like Lindsay Davenport and Mary Pierce.

You'll get a refreshing behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the women's locker room.

You've got the smug, borderline arrogant Hingis, the world No. 1 that everyone respects but nobody really likes off court.

You've got the Hingis-foil Williams sisters who couldn't be more different: African-American, large, strong and coming up from the hood to wreck havoc on the lily white, privileged tennis establishment.

Then you've got the sex-kitten, Lolita type in Anna Kournikova -- a celebral player with good hands to match that gets more credit for the skimpy outfits and goldie locks, girly girly appeal that sent pre-pubescent kids & dirty old men into a frenzy a like.

All four players were immensely talented and all contributed to the rivalries that gave rise to the pro women's tennis circuit heading into the new millennium.

This book specifically will look at the 2000 women's tennis season, so it'll focus on Venus Williams' ascent to becoming the best player in the world with wins at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Olympics.

However, this book easily could've been used on a broader scale to examine women's tennis: 1997-2001.

That's what I'd consider the golden age of the sport's re-emergence in popularity. Hingis, the Williamses, Kournikova, Capriati, Davenport and Pierce were at their best and you literally didn't know who'd win a tournament when all were present.

In hindsight, this era is definitely in stark contrast to the present: none of the top players are healthy at the same time & you can't get all of them into the same tournament to save your life.

This book will make you miss the 1997-2001 era ... the Henins, Clijsters, Sharapovas and other Russian "Ovas" lack personality if you ask me.

But back to the book ...

The main criticism, and it's a small one, you don't necessarily get the "head to head" feeling of why the players disliked each other or for that matter any sense of unifying quality where a Martina, Serena, Venus and Anna can all take credit for raising the game's profile.

Cat fights, sex appeal and power games were what this generation brought to the table, but that's an inference.

The behind the scenes banter among the world's best players is what this book delivers.

I am a huge fan of the tennis world and of this book. It's one of the best, most-descriptive books I've read in years. The author gets an inside look into the women's world of tennis as a sportswriter. I only have one complaint. That is at the very beginning the author states that women's tennis these day has many "divas" in it, but that Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras are the ONLY two men on the tour right now who are even remotely interesting. I beg to differ. Patrick Rafter, Mark Philopoussis (sp?), Jan-Michael Gambill, Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and Lleyton Hewitt are among the many who make men's tennis unpredictable and enjoyable just like the women's tour. Despite this flaw, this is an excellent read for anyone who wants to get inside the heads of some of the top name's in women's tennis.

This was a great, fascinating book for anyone with even a passing interest in women's tennis. Wertheim managed to correctly peg a lot of the top players by presenting their positive and negative qualities. The only problem, however, is that by the time this book came out another tennis season had just about come and gone, and new names and faces were replacing the ones mentioned in his book. For anyone who's read his book and liked it, I would also recommend his tennis mailbag at ....