Long Island Tennis Magazine's Literary Corner

I am supposed to review books about tennis in this space, but every so often, a book comes along that weaves the tennis content with so much other profound content that the tennis parts seem secondary. Joel Drucker's Jimmy Connors Saved My Life is one such book. It's a great title for starters. The...Read more

Winning Tennis Strokes is a short guidebook to tennis techniques and a splendid general introduction to tennis strokes. With this book, Bill Longua, a veteran tennis instructor and USPTA pro, has produced a concise guide to learning the fundamentals of the game. As Longua explains in his foreword,...Read more

The two top American tennis players of the 70s and 80s, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, were Irish-American lefties who were cheaters. Brad Gilbert doesn't say this in his classic guide to the mental side of winning tennis matches, but it isn't a far-fetched inference from some of the war stories...Read more

It is impossible not to compare Matthew Cronin's Epic: John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever with Stephen Tignor's High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and the Untold Story of Tennis' Fiercest Rivalry . If you have to read only one, I'd recommend Tignor's book as he offers...Read more

You don't have to be a New Yorker, or a New Yorker who plays tennis to savor the pleasure of Tennis in New York by Dale G. Caldwell and Nancy Gill McShea , a delightful addition to any library, or even as a surprise gift for that doubles partner or singles rival who has everything. All of the...Read more

For tennis fans too young to remember the glory days of the 1970s and the early 1980s, High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and the Untold Story of Tennis' Fiercest Rivalry is a thoroughly researched guide to an era when the game was on the front pages of the world's sports consciousness in a way...Read more

Rafa , an autobiography of former number one player Rafael Nadal, was published last summer, but considering that its subject has just scored another career triumph, playing on Spain's winning Davis Cup team late last year, this is a good time to revisit Nadal's story. As sport autobiographies go,...Read more

Players will want to read this book for its many interesting anecdotes and because it may arm them to win drinks at tennis gatherings by betting on either of the following obscure tennis history questions: Who was the youngest Wimbledon winner for over 50 years until Boris Becker's first title in...Read more

I think many of us in the tennis world, understandably, take the Williams Sisters and their accomplishments for granted. But just because they have been mainstays on the women’s tour for more than 10 years, it is instructive to take another look because Venus and Serena are quite a story. One way...Read more

Right before the Grateful Dead played “Johnny B. Goode,” guitarist Jerry Garcia used to announce, “This is the one that started it all off.” For tennis memoirs, the same can be said about A Handful of Summers by former South African tennis pro Gordon Forbes. A Handful of Summers is a coming of age...Read more