Britain's tennis players are often regarded as gallant losers and also-rans. There was a painful 76-year gap between the grand slam triumphs of Fred Perry and Andy Murray, and most Brits perennially fail to progress beyond the early rounds at Wimbledon. But in this first detailed account of Britain's place in world tennis from the Victorian period to the present day, historian Kevin Jefferys shows that British players have a surprisingly strong record. He traces the fluctuations in the nation's tennis fortunes - with barren spells counterbalanced by periods of ascendancy - and looks beyond the domestic obsession with Wimbledon to highlight British successes at other grand slam tournaments, in the Davis Cup and in Olympic tennis. The author also focuses on key individuals, providing fresh profiles of his selection of the best British players of all time: the men and women who have delivered most on the international stage, from the time of the Renshaw brothers in the 1880s to Andy and Jamie Murray today.

The only book of its kind, Tennis and the Meaning of Life is a resplendent collection of the best fiction (and poetry!) written about this extraordinary sport/obsession. The stories are hilarious and sad, whimsical and philosophical, lyrical and profane - and thoroughly saturated with the art of the game. Fathers play against sons. Business partners attempt mutual destruction by tennis. An amateur challenges the local pro. Humbert Humbert rhapsodizes about Lolita's heartbreakingly beautiful game. Tennis is played by telegraph. Tennis saves a life or two. The metaphysics of tennis balls is debated. Lovers cavort in a commingling of tennis and desire.

'BRILLIANT' - Daily Mail 'Is there any expectation? I'm a qualifier, so there's no pressure on me!' In 2021, Emma Raducanu shocked and charmed the tennis world as she raced to the US Open title with a smile on her face. But how did a little-known 18-year-old from Kent become the first ever qualifier to win a Major? Now Mike Dickson, who as Tennis Correspondent of the Daily Mail was one of the few journalists present in New York to see her lift the trophy, reveals what it took to become Britain's first woman Grand Slam champion since Virginia Wade in 1977. Drawing on interviews with key figures in Raducanu's development, he has written a fascinating account of a remarkable journey. From her early days falling in love with the game as a young girl in Bromley and the years of hard work and dedication that followed, he traces the ups and downs of a junior career that took her to the furthest reaches of the international circuit. But it was her breakthrough on home turf at Wimbledon, just weeks after sitting her A-levels, that really grabbed the attention of the public. It led to her first prolonged spell on the full professional tour - a life-changing trip around the hard-court tournaments of America which culminated in her unexpected triumph at Flushing Meadows. Full of authoritative insights and eye-opening details, Emma Raducanu: When Tennis Came Home paints an inspiring and compelling picture of one of the brightest new stars in British sport.

Hashim Khan, the legendary squash rackets player, established a record of victories that has no parallel in the game. This book is his story. The style may startle the reader at first. Hashim never learned to write English, or even speak it in the textbook fashion. So he "talked" the book in a great number of sessions, in the court and out of it, with Richard E. Randall, one of his students and a professional writer. The collaboration worked well. The book gives Hashim as he actually thinks and talks. It gives detailed instruction on the Khan grip, stroke, stance, court strategy, ploys, and favorite combination shots, plus a wealth of observations on fitness, stamina, and gamesmanship.

This book first describes the physical profile of elite young tennis players focusing on the Inertial Movement Analysis patterns. In Inertial Movement Analysis, wearable microsensor technology is used to improve the knowledge about activity patterns such as accelerations, decelerations, jumps and changes of direction. Following this, the authors review the prevalence and risk factors of low back pain in tennis players and discuss the optimal rehabilitation program, focusing on non-operated adolescent/adult tennis players. A methodology for creating educational training programs in volleyball is examined. Algorithmic methodological steps of educational training programs, models and methods that were used in their creation and control, and the calculation and analysis of their effects and changes in volleyball are presented. The game pattern of the 2008 and 2012 Olympic women's volleyball finals between the USA and Brazil is assessed through data obtained from an observational video analysis of the Olympic finals in Beijing and London. Studies on game analysis in volleyball are discussed which identify that the points generated through the fundamentals of attack, block and serve are decisive for a team to achieve victory in high performance volleyball. Thus, the objective of this study was identify the factors that determine victory in high-performance men's volleyball. In the conceptual aspect, the authors discuss the theoretical assumptions of sociology of sport and historical-critical pedagogy, aiming to understand volleyball's history and basic fundamentals. In closing, the relationship between athletes, parents, and coaches is discussed in detail, depending on each individual's expectations and how these expectations influence the self-confidence of volleyball players.

Solid groundstrokes, a confident net game, a dictating serve, a sharp return game, and specialty shots for every situation--build your game from the ground up with the techniques and shots that are essential for success in today's versatile and powerful game. Combine that with winning tactics for singles and doubles, and "Tennis Skills & Drills" is your blueprint for taking your game to the next level.

Start with assessing the basic techniques for the various strokes and see how you can improve your footwork, grip choices, and swing patterns. Then increase your options with spins, angles, and depth. Complete instruction for all of the strokes along with over 110 practice drills is like having your own personal coach.

Since your technique is only as effective as your tactics, the book also covers the key tactical principles and game plans for maximizing "your" strengths while minimizing your opponent's. You'll learn to prepare for, adapt to, and counter every style of play.

Whether your goal is to beat your favorite playing partner or to win the next league, state, or national title, "Tennis Skills & Drills" is your guide to mastering the game.

This revised and updated biography intertwines the incredible playing career of one of the best and most popular tennis players of all time with a history of how he came to rescue the image of a young, war-torn country on the world stage. It describes Djokovic's modest upbringing, revealing how he met the woman who taught him both to play tennis and how to deal with life as a high-profile icon. It charts Djokovic's battle with illness, his relationship with a volatile father, and how his on-court deeds have made his country proud. It also tells the story of Serbia, offering a nuanced portrait of a people with a troubled past, and offers an unrivaled assessment of the player's recent drop in form--and the untold reasons behind it.

The wildly entertaining Sunday Times bestseller 'This book deserves to be seeded No. 1' Daily Mail Fifteen years after his massive bestseller Serious, John McEnroe is back and ready to talk. Who are the game's winners and losers? What's it like playing guitar onstage with the Rolling Stones, hitting balls with today's greats, breaking bread with his former on-court nemeses, getting scammed by an international art dealer, and raising a big family while balancing McEnroe-sized expectations? But Seriously is a richly personal account, blending anecdote and reflection with razor sharp and brutally honest opinions. This is the sports book of the year: brilliantly funny, surprisingly touching, and 100% McEnroe.

Analyzing how tennis turned pro The arrival of the Open era in 1968 was a watershed in the history of tennis--the year that marked its advent as a professionalized sport. Merging wide-angle history with individual stories of players and off-the-court figures, Greg Ruth charts tennis’s evolution into the game we watch today. His vivid account moves from the cloistered world of nineteenth-century lawn tennis through the longtime amateur-professional divide and the battles over commercialization that raged from the 1920s until 1968. From there, Ruth details the post-1968 expansion of the game as it was transformed by bankable superstars, a popular women’s tour, rival governing bodies, and sponsorship money. What emerges is a fascinating history of the economics and politics that made tennis a decisive, if unlikely, force in the creation of modern-day sports entertainment. Comprehensive and engaging, Tennis tells the interlocking stories of the figures and factors that birthed the professional game.

Read a fan's eye view of one of tennis's most notorious stars, and an exploration into the idea of sporting obsession. The perfect nostalgic treat for any Wimbledon fan. The greatest sports stars characterise their times. They also help to tell us who we are. John McEnroe, at his best and worst, encapsulated the story of the eighties. His improvised quest for tennis perfection, and his inability to find a way to grow up, dramatised the volatile self-absorption of a generation. His matches were open therapy sessions, and they allowed us all to be armchair shrinks. Tim Adams sets out to explore what it might have meant to be John McEnroe during those times, and in his subsequent lives, and to define exactly what it is we want from our sporting heroes: how we require them to play out our own dramas; how the best of them provide an intensity that we can measure our own lives by. Talking to McEnroe, his friends and rivals, and drawing on a range of reference, he presents a book that is both a fan's-eye portrait of the most vivid player ever to pick up a racket, and an original study of the idea of sporting obsession.

Tennis history is filled with unusual, bizarre, and unbelievable stories. "Tennis's Most Wanted(TM)" chronicles 700 of the most outrageous players, coaches, and officials in tennis history. Its seventy lists describe in detail tennis's colorful characters, surprising matches, inept players, bizarre nicknames, outrageous outfits, embarrassing losses, errant shots, terrible tantrums, and more. Only here will you learn that Joshua Pim won Wimbledon in 1893 and 1894 under an assumed name because he was afraid that being a tennis player would hurt his medical practice. Frank Riesley and Sydney Smith settled their 1904 Wimbledon semifinal match by flipping a coin. M. H. de Amorin served seventeen consecutive double faults in a 1937 match at Wimbledon. Renee Richards played in the 1955 U.S. Open as a man and, after a sex-change operation, as a woman in 1975. W. C. Fields played tennis with a racket in one hand and a martini in the other. Tony Pickard lost a match at the Italian Open when a linesman left to buy ice cream. "Gorgeous Gussy" Moran did a striptease at a press conference, and Pat Stewart wrote her phone number on her panties for the 1961 Wimbledon. You can find all this and more in "Tennis's Most Wanted(TM)"

The Sunday Times bestseller Judy Murray provides the ultimate insight into life with her tennis champion sons Andy and Jamie. What happens when you find you have exceptional children? Do you panic? Put your head in the sand? Or risk everything and jump in head first? As mother to tennis champions Jamie and Andy Murray, Scottish National Coach, coach of the Fed Cup, and general all-round can-do woman of wonder, Judy Murray is the ultimate role model for believing in yourself and reaching out to ambition. As a parent, coach, leader, she is an inspiration who has revolutionised British tennis. From the soggy community courts of Dunblane to the white heat of Centre Court at Wimbledon, Judy Murray's extraordinary memoir charts the challenges she has faced, from desperate finances and growing pains to entrenched sexism. We all need a story of 'yes we can' to make us believe great things are possible. This is that story. Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 'Quite simply, she is inspirational, passionate and great fun' Observer

At the time of Marcus Dupree's birth, when Deep South racism was about to crest and shatter against the Civil Rights Movement, Willie Morris journeyed north in a circular transit peculiar to southern writers. His memoir of those years, "North Toward Home," became a modern classic. In "The Courting of Marcus Dupree" he turned again home to Mississippi to write about the small town of Philadelphia and its favorite son, a black high-school quarterback. In Marcus Dupree, Morris found a living emblem of that baroque strain in the American character called "southern."

Beginning on the summer practice fields, Morris follows Marcus Dupree through each game of his senior varsity year. He talks with the Dupree family, the college recruiters, the coach and the school principal, some of the teachers and townspeople, and, of course, with the young man himself. As the season progresses and the seventeen-year-old Dupree attracts a degree of national attention to Philadelphia neither known nor endured since "the Troubles" of the early sixties, these conversations take on a wider significance. Willie Morris has created more than a spectator's journal. He writes here of his repatriation to a land and a people who have recovered something that fear and misdirected loyalties had once eclipsed. The result is a fascinating, unusual, and even topical work that tells a story richer than its apparent subject, for it brings the whole of the eighties South, with all its distinctive resonances, to life.

Jimmy Connors took the tennis world by storm like no player in the history of the game. A shaggy-haired working-class kid from the wrong side of the tracks, he was prepared to battle for every point, to shout and scream until he was heard, and he didn't care whom he upset in doing so. He was brash, he was a brat. He was a crowd-pleaser, a revolutionary. And he won more tournaments - an astonishing 109 - than any other man in history, including eight Grand Slam singles titles. Only now is Connors ready to set the record straight on what really happened on and off the court. The rivalry with John McEnroe, that frequently threatened to turn violent, with Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl. His romance with Chris Evert, which made them the sweethearts of the sport. The escapades with his partner in crime, Ilie Nastase. The deep roots of the fierce determination that made him the best player on the planet. This is no genteel memoir of a pillar of the tennis establishment. Unflinching, hard-hitting, humorous and passionate, this is the story of a legend - the one and only Jimmy Connors.

Step onto the court confident, focused, and prepared to dictate the match and dominate your opponent.

In "Championship Tennis," world-class coach and regular Grand Slam clinician Frank Giampaolo and long-time Tennis magazine editor Jon Levey bring you expert instruction and professional insights to eliminate unforced errors, increase winning percentage, and improve your overall game.

Inside, you'll learn how to

- assess individual skills, evaluate practice sessions, and analyze performance;

- identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement;

- customize your training and conditioning to your skill set, experience, and style of play;

- increase the consistency and accuracy of your shots; and

- control your emotions and mentally prepare for every match.

You'll also find the most effective, unparalleled drills for mastering groundstrokes, serves, volleys, and specialty shots as well as invaluable advice for improving anticipatory skills and recognizing, neutralizing, and countering your competition's strengths and playing styles.

Add a copy of" Championship Tennis" to your bookshelf and turn errors into winners and three-set losses into straight-set wins. This is a must-have resource for players and instructors seeking to maximize potential as quickly as possible.

The digital age has hit the tennis court. Games like Top Spin use lifelike animation and innovative hand controls to provide gamers with a realistic simulation game against real-life pros. Racquet-mounted sensors measure and track shots and impact speeds and provide analysis. But a player still has to know how to play the game, how to plan the next move and be able to anticipate an opponent's likely return, all in an instant. A player has to build a winning strategy, play the full court and outsmart an opponent. All the sensors in the world can't do that. Enter Tennis Skills, an in-depth guide to improving a player's game. It features a battery of lessons designed by tennis professionals that lays down a solid foundation of stroke skills and game strategy. Clear instructions and annotated diagrams provide valuable coaching and corrective techniques - a great value for any player. It's like having a personal tennis pro on call for expert coaching. The book is fully illustrated with sequential pictures, court diagrams, tips, typical faults and coaching ideas which can help to build strong foundation skills and great players. Tom Sadzeck provides an abundance of visual features to help players of all levels improve their game and build on existing skills. Six chapters cover the game's key skill sets, from basic techniques to singles and doubles strategies. There are more than 40 drills that focus on the target areas of form, strategy, coordination and footwork. Other coaching content include: Stroke-production exercises; Forehand, backhand, serve, volley, slice and other shots; A breakdown of each stroke to promote consistent form; Warm-up, grips, body position, footwork, targeting, follow-through; Court diagrams to help players visualize a stroke's outcome; How to handle game pressure. Tennis Skills also features Master Stroke sidebars that give easy-to remember tips, Fault Finder boxes that point out common mistakes and Coach's Comments that share the wisdom of seasoned pros. Whether the reader is new to the sport or a more experienced player who wants to improve his or her game and try new drills, Tennis Skills is a practical book to have in the equipment bag or locker.

In Everyball author Mike James delves deep into his own tennis experiences, first as a child growing up playing on the 'murram' courts of Kenya, then to the hard courts of Tucson, Arizona, and finally to a 22-year coaching career in Great Britain, to bring alive his coaching philosophy of Everyball. Sometimes humorous, sometimes more serious, these parable like reflections, anecdotes and observations from a life in tennis aim to tool you up for the game of life! It's no doubt a book for the tennis coach, parent, player and enthusiast, all of which Mike is, but also for anyone interested in learning, growing and thriving in the bigger game we all have no choice but to play.

Play Tennis Forever is a practical guide to slowing down the gradual decline in your body as you get older. Suzanne Clark has 30 years' experience as both a Physiotherapist and a social tennis player. She explains in layman's terms how your body works when you play and what you can do to make it younger, fitter and healthier. She describes how to strengthen key muscles as part of the everyday tasks you already do and how this will help prevent injury. This book is for all the over 50s who want to keep playing tennis.

Amusing and informative for readers of all ages, this compilation of tennis lore and legend was written by an undefeated Davis Cup champion. Blending fact with humor and philosophy, it recounts the origins of the game, uses of the terms and equipment, scoring methods, and other elements, and features 29 antique illustrations.