A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played
This thoroughly researched account uses the deciding 1937 Davis Cup match between Germany’s Gottfried von Cramm and the U.S.’s Don Budge to explore both the pre-topspin era of tennis and prewar international tension. The debt to John McPhee’s justly sanctified “Levels of the Game” is acknowledged and largely paid, but Fisher’s dutiful focus on the historical details of the era leads to long rehashes of familiar Nazi outrages. Von Cramm emerges as an elegant resister to the Reich, a persecuted homosexual who is clearly more interesting to the author than the bland, prodigiously talented Budge. But the figure at the edge who overshadows the narrative, as he did the tennis world until the Open system began, in 1968, is Bill Tilden, Cramm’s coach, a vain, theatrical box-office star who essentially invented the mid-century game.Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.