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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games
The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic memoir, A
Handful of Summers. Gordon Forbes played for the South African
Davis Cup team in the 50s and early 60s and returned to the circuit
as a writer and observer. In 'Too Soon to Panic' he takes the
readers behind the scenes at the big tournaments - Wimbledon,
Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows; Germany, Spain and Italy - and
introduces them to many of tennis's most extraordinary and dynamic
characters, including Mark McCormack, Rod Laver, Jim Courier and
Andre Agassi. Crammed with riotously funny anecdotes and vivid
evocations of the innocence and camaraderie of the game in Forbes's
day - when tennis as still a gentlemanly, amateur and often rather
ramshackle affair - and insightful observations on today's
glamorous game - where money reigns and sheer strength sometimes
seems to conquer skill - Forbes explores the remarkable changes
that have come over the sport in the last forty years.
Early in 2004, two writers and Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan and
Stephen King, decided to chronicle the upcoming season, one of the
most hotly anticipated in baseball history. They would sit together
at Fenway. They would exchange emails. They would write about the
games. And, as it happened, they would witness the greatest
comeback ever in sports, and the first Red Sox championship in
eighty-six years. What began as a Sox-filled summer like any other
is now a fan's notes for the ages.
Jack O'Brien is a high school basketball coach extreme in both his
demands and his devotion. With monastic discipline, he has built a
powerhouse program that wins state championships year after year
while helping propel players to college. He does this as a white
suburban guy working exclusively with black city boys who make the
daily trek across Boston to attend Charlestown High School, where
the last battles of the city's school desegregation wars were
fought a generation ago. The Assist is a gripping, surprising story
about fathers, sons, and surrogates, all confronting the narrow
margins of urban life. The book follows the players on their hunt
for a state title. But it also stays with them, to see how young
men who seldom get second chances survive without their coach
hovering over them,and how he survives without them.
Cricket is a very old game in Scotland - far older than football, a
sport which sometimes exercises a baleful, obsessive and
deleterious effect on the national psyche. Cricket goes back at
least as far as the Jacobite rebellions and their sometimes vicious
aftermaths. It is often felt that Scottish cricket underplays
itself. It has been portrayed as in some ways an English sport, a
"softies" sport, and a sport that has a very limited interest among
the general population of Scotland. This is emphatically not true,
and this book is in part an attempt to prove that this is a
misconception. Sixty-one games (it was going to be just 60, but one
turned up at the last minute!) have been chosen from the past 250
years to show that cricket does indeed influence a substantial part
of the nation. The matches have been selected at all levels, from
Scotland against visiting Australian teams all the way down to a
Fife school fixture. These naturally reflect the life, experience
and geographical whereabouts of the author. The games are quirky
sometimes, (and quirkily chosen) with an emphasis on important
events in the broader history of this country, notably the
imminence of wars and resumptions at the end of these conflicts.
But the important thing is that every single cricket contest does
mean an awful lot to some people.
When Vince Lombardi took the job of coaching the Green Bay Packers
in 1959, he inherited a team that had gone from legendary to
laughing stock. They hadn't fielded a winning team in over a decade
and had gone 1-10-1 in the 1958 season despite having seven future
Hall of Famers on the team. They were a team accustomed to losing
and in desperate need of a turnaround. """That First Season"
chronicles that turnaround at the hands of Lombardi, himself
serving as a head coach for the first time. The Packers were a team
of talented underachievers more used to lax coaching and late
nights than grueling practices and curfews. Lombardi's no-bull
coaching style helped hammer them into winners who operated with
machine-like precision. Every football fan knows that the Packers
under Lombardi were champions, but "That First Season" shows how he
did it, bringing readers the inside story of a sports
dynasty.
In 1957, when very few Mexican-Americans were familiar with the
game of golf, and even less actually played it, a group of young
caddies which had been recruited to form the San Felipe High School
Golf Team by two men who loved the game, but who had limited access
to it, competed against all-white schools for the Texas State High
School Golf Championship. Despite having outdated and inferior
equipment, no professional lessons or instructions, four young
golfers with self-taught swings from the border city of Del Rio,
captured the State title. Th ree of them took the gold, silver and
bronze medals for best individual players. Th is book tells their
story from their introduction to the game as caddies to eventually
becoming champions.
'A master of plotting and pacing' - New York Times 'With every new
book I appreciate John Grisham a little more, for his compassion
for the underdog, and his willingness to strike out in new
directions' - Entertainment Weekly ONE MAN. ONE HOPE. ONCE CHANCE
TO BECOME A LEGEND. ONE MAN Seventeen-year-old Samuel Sooleymon
comes from a village in South Sudan, a war-torn country where one
third of the population is a refugee. His great love is basketball:
his prodigious leap and lightning speed make him an exceptional
player. And it may also bring him his big chance: he has been
noticed by a coach taking a youth team to the United States. ONE
HOPE If he gets through the tournament, Samuel's life will change
beyond recognition. But it's the longest of long shots. His talent
is raw and uncoached. There are hundreds of better-known players
ahead of him. And he must leave his family behind, at least at the
beginning. ONE CHANCE As American success beckons, devastating news
reaches Samuel from home. Caught between his dream and the
nightmare unfolding thousands of miles away, 'Sooley', as he's
nicknamed by his classmates, must make hard choices about his
future. This quiet, dedicated boy must do what no other player has
achieved in the history of his chosen game: become a legend in
twelve short months. Global bestseller John Grisham takes you to a
different kind of court in this gripping and incredibly moving
novel that showcases his storytelling powers in an entirely new
light. 'Grisham's books are smart, imaginative, and funny,
populated by complex interesting people' - The Washington Post 'A
superb, instinctive storyteller' - The Times 350+ million copies,
45 languages, 10 blockbuster films: NO ONE WRITES DRAMA LIKE JOHN
GRISHAM
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Level Up
(Hardcover)
Sammy Clark; Edited by Ana Joldesx; Contributions by Iris M Williams
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R676
Discovery Miles 6 760
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A one-time Southampton policeman and BBC literary producer working
with such writers as E.M. Forster, John Betjeman and Dylan Thomas,
who became a close friend, John Arlott has always considered
himself lucky. From his first ten-minute summaries of the 1946
Indian cricket tour until his retirement in 1980 he commentated on
every Test match England ever played. This autobiography looks at
his schooldays, about great cricketers he has known or watched and
about his standing for the Liberals in the 1955 General Election.
Every cricket lover, for better or worse, has their year. The year
it all fell into place or all fell apart. A year of triumph or
disaster; of tragedy or comedy. This being cricket, there's
normally a bit of everything. Covering 50 different seasons, from
1934 right up to the weird summer of 2020, a series of journalists,
poets, musicians, comedians, and ex-players - plus the odd England
captain - have come together to produce a collection of personal
essays, using the game of cricket as the backdrop to tell the story
of their own Golden Summers. 50 voices for 50 years: each one
delving into the year that means the most to them. This is Golden
Summers.
A golf instruction book written by Graham Hawkings, PGA Advanced
Golf Coach with over thirty years of experience of teaching all
standards of player, from the complete beginner to the elite
competitor. The book takes you on a journey in which you will learn
how to maximise your own personal strengths, at the same time as
giving you the necessary information you need to improve you
weaknesses. The basis of the book is that we all have what Graham
calls our own individual "DEFAULT GOLF SWING" this is the one which
we were born with, unfortunately very rarely is this the method
that will allow us to reach our optimum performance level. However
what our DEFAULT SWING provides us with is a framework on which we
can with one or maybe a number of tweaks allow us to capitalise on
our natural skills. Using tried and tested methods DEFAULT GOLF
offers the reader in plain and easily understood language the
opportunity to maximise their potential by travelling along a
structured route. It begins in Part one with a brief explanation of
the impact that the golf clubhead has on the flight that the golf
ball will take, but the book never deviates from its initial theme
that a golfers performance is totally their own responsibility. No
one method is preferred to another, the reader is encouraged to go
out and explore various options. Like all good teachers Graham
tells you where you need to look to find improvement but he doesn't
necessarily tell you what to see.
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