Tennis is a game rich in tradition, personalities, exciting events and even controversy. To attempt to reach back and try to capture all — or at least most of this — and put it inside the covers of a single book is a monumental endeavor. I must congratulate Grimsley on his enterprise and his bravery.
This must be the most comprehensive and ambitious volume written on the sport. Library shelves are loaded with excellent books dealing with every phase of the game but I know of none that has tried to explore the broad reaches from the first primitive bats and balls right up to open competition, with all that has happened between.
It was just a half century ago that I lifted a tennis racquet for the first time and, with dire results, hit my first tennis ball. There was something about the delightful sound of ball on gut, even if slightly marred by the jingle of glass from the broken window, that entered my soul with a never-to-be-forgotten thrill. It was a new emotion to my six years, but one that now, at fifty-six, still carries the thrill-even if not the broken glass. I can, at least, hit the ball in the court most of the time.
I urge you-play tennis! Tennis is the most valuable sport that any individual can learn, even more so than golf. It is the most universally played of all athletics, and its rules are the same the world over. A good game of tennis is the open-sesame on every continent and in almost every nation. Language is no barrier to tennis players, since whether a ball is out or in can be seen and understood without spoken words. Individual sport is always more valuable than team sport in adult life, since team sport requires too much effort to organize in the press of the business world.
Related Link: All About Tennis
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