The Circuit

by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Winner of the 2019 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing

“The Circuit is the best sports book I've read in years, maybe ever.” ―Rich Cohen, author of The Chicago Cubs and Monsters

“As sports writing goes, The Circuit is unusual in the very best way. Rowan Ricardo Phillips writes with such fluidity, and packs the book with bursts of brilliance. This is a compulsively readable guide to one truly Homeric year of professional tennis.” ―John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars

An energetic, lyrical, genre-defying account of the 2017 tennis season.

In The A Tennis Odyssey , the award-winning poet―and Paris Review sports columnist―Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it’s divided into four seasons, each marked by a final the Grand Slams.

Phillips charts the year from winter’s Australian Open, where Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal renewed their rivalry in a match for the ages, to fall’s U.S. Open. Along the way, Phillips paints a new, vibrant portrait of tennis, one that captures not only the emotions, nerves, and ruthless tactics of the point-by-point game but also the quicksilver movement of victory and defeat on the tour, placing that sense of upheaval within a broader cultural and social context. Tennis has long been thought of as an escapist a bucolic, separate bauble of life.

The Circuit will convince you that you don’t leave the world behind as you watch tennis―you bring it with you.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 2018

About the author

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of Heaven (2015) and The Ground( 2012). He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Vishal Katariya · Rating 5 out of 5]

It takes a Poet to do justice to the 2017 men's tennis tour, because it was the year in this past decade of the most unlikely change of guard, a schooling of the new-and-upcoming stars by the experienced statesmen of old. And in this book we have Phillips, a poet, resting from rupturing his Achilles tendon, who's watched every single men's tournament of the year, either in person or digitally. He knows the game and describes individual critical points of important matches well, but his skill shines in the description of the pathos of certain players. The best description I've ever read of Andy Murray's scratchy and sometimes ugly game. The tragedy of Kyrgios, who loves basketball but plays tennis better. An eloquent description of the almost Sisyphean curse that befell David Goffin's clay-court season. It's THE tennis book, if you ask me. There is other writing that focuses on individual players, on the sport itself, etc., but this book takes it all in. Read it in one sitting. Watch the individual highlights on YouTube as you read the descriptions of the match. Relive the entire amazing, improbable 2017 season. Honestly, after reading the book, it feels like yesterday. And that's because I finished it last night.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to write about tennis? Heaven knows there's no one way, but The Circuit misnames what Phillips reports on, who doesn't go on the circuit, rather he attends two 2017 tournaments (BNP Paribas and Flushing Meadow) while watching others with much help from his DVR. Andre Agassi's Open opened Phillips to the idea for his own book, and I'm guessing Phillips' tennis fan-editor, Jonathan Galassi, nurtured it further. Agassi's book offers the endless pleasure of the recalcitrant pro nursing his injuries until he decides to call on his entourage, step on a flight, and head off to Stuttgart. Unlike David Foster Wallace, Phillips writes with no particular love for playing the game. Points are generally not narrated using the points' peculiar geometrical syntax. The players, a few of them -- David Goffin, Frances Tiafoe -- are warmly understood, while others (Murray, Kyrgios) are more dispassionately observed. Phillips likes the subjunctive mood to flash forward and back, as though tennis were a glossary of regret. He also likes rankings -- perhaps because he likes to analyze a draw. It's enough to make one wonder what kind of book one of those courtsiders Ben Rothenberg (a tennis writer more suffused in pop) writes about might produce, who travel to far-flung challenger events and wire match-updates to bookies making odds on matches. Tennis is a sport with its tedious uncertainties (injury), as well as its endless journalist's lines -- that it's all about a match-up. There's a trope suggested by David Foster Wallace's always wanting to sit at courtside, so he could feel the game's power-hitters, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips wanting to sit high up in a tennis stadium, so he can observe its geometries. I don't think Phillips entirely thought-through that trope, or how to write about what he evidently loves.

[Swathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put off writing this review since nothing I write would comprehensively describe how awestruck I was at every sentence stitched and perfected by Rowan Phillips. Calling this just another tennis book is an insult to the epic work of poetry that it is, but that was all I'd known about the book when I picked it up. There are some words, lines and entire pages I will forever carry with me for the melody of the words with the tennis ball bouncing in a corner to give us the rhythm. If you're a lover of tennis, and a lover of good writing (or one of the two), pick this book up. This has been the single most memorable work of art in the world of tennis, a position I had previously wholeheartedly awarded DFW's String Theory. The two books are incredibly different and yet strike similar notes, with the authors using their prowess in writing and exploiting their readers' love for the sport to definitively capture their places as the best tennis writers ever.

Thank you Rowan Phillips for this magnificent work and for making me love the sport even more.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

As it’s said there’s no better tennis player that inspired worse thought or writing than Federer. I’m not going to try and do justice to what Federer meant to me as a insomniac looking for literally anything to watch at 3AM and falling in love in the mid aughts but 2017 season was the last spectacular season of the greatest tennis career we will ever see. We know the matches that will stand thru history and Rowan creatively weaves his way thru well trotted territory. He writes with a loose wit and gives grace to the poetry of the sport. I’m still a rabid tennis watcher but the spectre of the big 3 will forever loom large and things slowed courts, big talent disparities on the men’s side etc don’t really help but that’s not the time. Even non tennis fans could dig this!

[Jeremy Bagai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure, it's great fun to read. If you're a tennis fan you know the 2017 season was bonkers, and if you're a Fed or Nadal fan you know the 2017 season was transcendentally bonkers.

So going over all the important matches of that year from an insider's perspective should be a walk in the park, and it is. It's great fun. It's also a pretty strange read.

Phillips seems to take perverse joy in draining the suspense out of the naturally suspenseful. I mean, I went in knowing the outcome of nearly every match played that year, but man I felt robbed when he would casually toss out the name of the eventual tournament winner in order to give more context to this particular second-round match. Or when he would bizarrely fail to even mention pivotal matches altogether (Delpo beating Fed in the US Open?) while covering an event, only to bring them up later, after the fact, in some other context. Strange.

And what about that ten-page digression on the history of clay-court tennis? Out of what left field did that come from? Did I miss something parallel regarding grass courts, or what tennis strings were first made of? Did an editor read this draft?

I like that the tone is reflective and covers more texture than just point by point, match by match. I like that the language tries for insight over reportage. But then there is "If tennis were a leaf falling onto a stream, it would fall on the placid part, the part in a faraway bend, the picturesque but boring part." Sure thing. I'll have what he's having.

[Jacob Lipeles · Rating 2 out of 5]

He doesn't like Nadal, so -1

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book in the staff picks of Type Books in Toronto -- awesome place btw -- and was immediately intrigued. The subject itself sounded great, and I thought right away that if there was ever a sport where a poet writing it was the perfect fit, it was tennis. I haven't read any of Rowan Ricardo Phillips poetry, so I couldn't speak to that, but it really just felt like a great fit.

That was borne out brilliantly in this book. The way Phillips writes tennis is just so wonderful. He doesn't have inside insight or anything, but he captures the spirit and flow of tennis so beautifully, it's really a joy to read. When he dives into the point by point action, the suspense is palpable, and the writing really jumps off the page.

I do feel like I fit the perfect demographic for this book -- tennis fan, have watched a lot of tennis in my life and know the main players well, but didn't follow very closely in 2017 so a lot of this is new to me. I'm not sure I loved the lack of suspense in a lot of the events -- Phillips outwardly states that so-and-so wins in advance with frequency -- but I don't feel the book is necessarily worse off for it, and most of the people reading this probably aren't doing so without knowing coming in who won the major tournaments. A very worthwhile 4 stars.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve played a little tennis throughout my life, enough to be familiar with the very basics, but I’ve never been an avid follower or enthusiast, of the game or the professional players. This book may have changed both. I’ve never really thought too much about the strategy of tennis, which The Circuit artfully exposes, and he is compelling in describing the arcs of the big tennis stars as well.

It reminded me a bit of the way my dad will tell stories about sports: incredibly willing to divert from the main story to go on a tangent about the life story of someone, or the trivia of something. I mean this in the best way - tying in at different times the history of some element of tennis, providing context for the atmosphere of a certain tournament, etc.

The writing is also gorgeous; he is waxing p o e t i c about the sport and his love shines through. And I love that it feels grounded in the real world, not forgetting the other reasons 2017 was a big year of monumental change and upheaval.

He mentioned that 2017 was a big year for Serena too; wish that could’ve been part of the narrative and disappointed that women’s tennis isn’t covered in this.

[Aaron Strouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Title: The Circuit.

When I saw this book at the library, I expected it to be about the grind of the Tennis year, the lifestyle of players and insight into tourneys.

Well, the book is an overview of the 2017 season which i thought would fulfill my hopes of an overview of the yearly tennis circuit.

My hopes were half met. The book describes the preeminent majors and other popular tournaments that’s may have played a significant tale in the season. Moreover, the book talks about Federer and Nadal and other players that impacted the season. I was fine with that information

However, the imagery and comparisons with the circuit to events in the year were far fetched and unnecessary in may opinion. I didn’t enjoy those parts of the book.

Overall, I gained some knowledge of the tennis circuit but I had a hard time retaining things due to the fluid style of the book.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book much more interesting than I thought it would be. While the author does as he stated in the beginning and concentrated on only a few star players and the Grand Slam tournaments, the reader will learn much about the sport and some of the other lesser-known players and tourneys. Having said that, this book will be enjoyed much more by hard-core tennis fans than casual fans. Overall an enjoyable read.

[Mayank Jain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t really follow tennis til 2021 and even still mostly just the grand slams so most of the events were new to me, not that it really matters. The book is probably written more as if you do know what happens but it didn’t really affect me one way or the other.

Loved the writing and could probably read this author write about almost anything. It also helped me appreciate the cadence of the tennis season (the wear and tear of tournaments and travel to maintain your ranking) and what grand slams bring in terms of the stamina needed for 5 set matches and larger draw.

Only negatives are that he jumps around a bit too much in timeline and players especially as he touches on all the different players on the tour, coupled with his tendency to switch quickly from names to pronouns and the subject is unclear.

[Frederik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Måske ikke helt på højde med den suveræne sportsbiografi "Open" af André Agassi, men alligevel et fint, poetisk input, der beskriver det potentielle menneskelige drama, som hver enkelt tenniskamp potentielt indeholder, og som måske kun tennisspillere med et vist niveau, kan nikke genkende til. Men der er selvfølgelig altid en fare for at intellektualisere noget, som i nogle øjnes er en banal sportsgren, og for dem er bogen måske ikke det rette valg. For vi andre, er det en spændende indsigt i en udfordrende sportsgren, der byder på drama hele sæsonen igennem.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stylistically on-point and totally captivating. Phillips' analysis of Nick Kyrgios is likely my favorite piece of sports-writing I've read in quite some time.

[Sumanth J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Easily the most lousy book on Tennis I have read. I am baffled by some of the other reviews. The book has ranking chart popping up every few pages and some boring reports with absolutely nothing of note.

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

A serious fan's chronicle of the 2017 men's professional tennis tour. Appropriate for a true fan of tennis (me), but I'm not sure I can recommend it even to a true fan.

[td · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whoa after the glossary it lost all coherence, a bloated stream of consciousness a wandering narrative of run on sentences...wasn't the informative insight into the ATP that I was expecting

[linz]

"And in the end, the end was like the beginning: the same player who won the first tournament of 2017 won the final tournament of 2017…At its heart, the 2017 year in tennis is about inspiration, not supplication; renovation, not repetition" (214)

strange to read this part-journalism, part-biography, part-cultural criticism, part-lyric of the 2017 tennis season in New York during the 2024 US Open, which has seen the retirement, the absence, the defeat, the ascendance, and the resurgence of many of the names that (re)appear in this 216-page odyssey: The Circuit takes on new meaning, not only of the path these players tread as the circumnavigate the globe, chasing the sun (to take from Phillips who takes from Agassi), but also of the path of tennis history itself, which tends to chase its own tail, except for moments when it short-circuits, like week 1 Thursday and Friday, which saw Alcaraz and Djokovic packing their bags early. without tickets of my own during the height of ticket economy, where $70 tickets resell for $400+, i followed the score lines online and instead read an epic about matches, tournaments, and people from 7 years ago; for two weeks, i burned with a fever for tennis that i have slowly been (re)kindling over the past four years. the cracked, empty tennis courts near my new, unfamiliar apartment called to me every morning.

"This book, in its essence, is about the things we can never quite describe but should try because they're fleeting. I couldn't describe the tennis I was watching despite having all the time in the world to do so and oh so wanting to make sense of seeing Federer fall, a beatable Serena, Nadal all but vanish into thin air, a mojo-less Djokovic fall down a rabbit hole, and Murray finally make it to the top of the mountain. I made myself the promise that someday I would. Someday, when I could walk again and my mind wasn't saddled with sedatives, I would focus on a year and, like the players, follow the sun from beginning to end" (17)

after tearing his Achilles tendon in early summer of 2016, Phillips spent Wimbledon alone in his New York apartment, sustaining himself on a diet of oxycodone and endless tennis, at all hours of the day, live plays and replays, green on green on green. in 2017, he watched every single match of the season (of the ATP Tour. rarely does he ever discuss the women, unless they are in relation to the men).

"At some point that private joy became something I wanted to share again, and so when my leg was good enough to handle the strain I started to play again. And even before that I knew I wanted to write it out, have an experience in words, which is the best and most genuine way I can think of sharing" (9)

professor Rowan Ricardo Phillips taught English at Williams from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021, my first year and the COVID year. one of the courses he taught was called "The Literature of Sports"—at the time, i couldn't care less about physical activity that didn't involve my own body, my own time. in retrospect, i wish i had been more open (ha!). i wonder what it would have been like, to share that private joy, to evaluate it and think it and write it. maybe that is what i am chasing now, too little too late, now that i'm in a city notorious for the space it does not have.

"The U.S. Open is my hometown tournament. I have always wanted it to feel like home, like a warm, inviting, and familiar place with its own local charm…And yet, I want New York to be the other New York, too. You know which one. Yes, that New York. I want it to be an imposing metropolis, a tough city for tough people with an unshakeable sense of itself as the center of the world…No tennis event encapsulates this quite like the U.S. Open, which has been held over the years on all three surfaces—first grass, then clay, now hard courts—at day and at night, outdoors and under a roof; it's been rowdy, it's been pristine; but most of all, regardless of any of this, it's been grand" (168)

if any tennis tournament could be considered mine, it would be the U.S. Open: all the way across the country from my hometown, but the home base for every late summer of college, when my sister and i would make our annual pilgrimage to Flushing on the crowded 7 train (it's always the worst when a Mets game is on that day as well, sports fans in jerseys and sun hats packed like sardines into the only subway that deposits you right in front of the two stadiums). and it is the U.S. Open that i remember to follow the most, no matter where i am: in sunny California, sweltering Williamstown, or humid New York. this is why i continue to follow Osaka, Raducanu, and Fernandez, even as their Instagram comments sections attract equal parts fans and haters, and this is why the feeling of reading out of time and out of order strikes me from time to time as i flip through part 4: fall and am reminded that this was a tournament before the rise of Alcaraz and Sinner and Zverev, the departure of Federer and Nadal, and what has most shaped my perception of the relationship between tennis and the world, between sports and the world: over the course of 7 days and 7 matches in the 2020 U.S. Open, playing in front of an empty stadium, Naomi Osaka wore a mask bearing the names of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philandro Castile, and Tamir Rice.

if this book had been written after 2020: after COVID, after a Trump presidency, after everything—what could have been?

[Brian Nwokedi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t a note-taking, highlighter-in-hand kind of read for me—it was a vacation book, a joy book. And sometimes, that’s exactly what tennis—and life—needs.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s A Tennis Odyssey chronicles the 2017 ATP season, threading together the tournaments, triumphs, and characters of men’s tennis against the backdrop of a chaotic geopolitical moment. Trump was president. The world felt particularly fragile. But tennis carried on. As Phillips beautifully puts it: “Great tennis, fun tennis, something to inject a little joy into the world’s grimness.”

I grew up watching Wimbledon with my dad. In our house, Championship Sunday at the All England Club was an event. Players like Michael Chang, Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf, and Martina Navratilova were household names—not just for their talent, but for what they represented: a shared love between father and son.

Somewhere along the way—teenage years, college, early adulthood—I drifted from the sport. I still kept an eye on the majors but didn’t follow the full ATP or WTA calendars, despite going to school just 90 minutes from Indian Wells.

Now, as an adult, tennis has quietly worked its way back into my life. I don’t play much anymore, but I watch more than ever. I now share this private love of the sport with my son, who’s slowly getting pulled into its rhythm.

What’s surprised me most in recent years is how much I enjoy reading about tennis. Books like Levels of the Game and Late to the Ball have helped me understand the sport more deeply. A Tennis Odyssey joins that company.

Phillips has a poet’s voice and a fan’s heart. He weaves matches with meaning, describing not just the outcomes but the essence of players’ styles. His description of Novak Djokovic’s game as “a passive-aggressive defensive dance in manageable suffering” was pitch-perfect—Djokovic doesn’t overpower, he dismantles. Bludgeoning you through sheer resilience, counter-attack after counter-attack.

That stands in brilliant contrast to his take on Roger Federer, whose artistic brilliance glides across the court in elegant geometry. Phillips doesn’t just describe matches—he elevates them into aesthetic and philosophical territory.

I particularly loved the section on the clay season. After this year’s French Open five-set masterpiece between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, my stance on clay has started to shift. Wimbledon may be my mainstay, but clay may be my secret lover. And let’s be honest—the locations alone are pure chef’s kiss: Buenos Aires, Rio, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Paris.

This book also helped me realize I’ve been sleeping on the “Asian Swing” of the ATP Tour. In the past, I’ve usually checked out after the US Open once college football dominates my attention. But this year? I’ll be tuning in.

If I have one critique, it’s this: I wish Phillips had attended more matches in person. There’s a poetic distance in his prose that might have been even sharper with more firsthand, courtside texture.

That said, this was exactly the kind of book I needed. I typically read non-fiction—behavioral psychology, business strategy, performance science—the kind of stuff that lends itself to highlighters, annotations, and frameworks. But this? This was different. Simple. Immersive. A pleasure.

If you love tennis—or want to learn how to love tennis deeper—A Tennis Odyssey is a worthy ride. It reminded me that the sport doesn’t just reflect the world around us—it helps us endure it.

Easy to Read: (5/5) 100%
Deep Content: (2/5) 40%
Overall Rating: (3.5/5) 70%

[Tejas Sathian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book about tennis and a moment in time in the world, which evokes much of the magic around why we follow sports - to mark the passage of time, to fight the realities of aging, to observe beauty and grace, and to invest ourselves in compelling stories. I just discovered that Phillips is in fact a poet (and not just a sportswriter as I had assumed) which explains a lot about the quality of the book's writing - lyrical, ethereal, a bit jumpy and lateral - the kind of writing that I wouldn't want to read every day but whose continued existence in the modern world I'm very grateful for. Often the style reminded me of David Foster Wallace's tennis writing in his famous Federer essay.

To the tennis - I followed much of that 2017 season in real time, and reading this book was a great chance to revisit that moment. It was a year in which a sea change appeared imminent - Djokovic and Murray taking the mantle as the sport's leading stars - in which everything was flipped by injuries, improbable comebacks, and other stories that unfolded or didn't. In the end Federer and Nadal reprised their epic rivalry and split the year's Grand Slam titles in storybook fashion; Nadal won his 10th French Open; Murray and Djokovic had seasons derailed by injury; some up and comers like Dmitrov had their moments (winning the ATP Tour Finals); others like Kyrgios did not. The tennis coverage was poetic but also real in focusing on the long grind of a tennis season in a way that recalls Agassi's Open; it also did a great job of zooming in and capturing many of the smaller details of the annual circuit, and not solely focusing on the Grand Slam narratives. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who follows and appreciates the beauty of tennis.

[Tomas Curcio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phillips’ tennis odyssey explored my favorite and introductory season to the sport I deeply love to play and watch. At finding this book, I was instantly excited and hooked on the concept. The 2017 tennis season and the resurgence of Federer and Nadal is always in the back of my mind as I watch the modern game, and I hoped that seeing it being given its proper overview would satisfy my fascination with the year. His writing creates fun and romantic prose out of statistics and hours of match time all over the planet. However, his writing style consistently treads over itself back and forth. Most sports writing depends upon tension and the buildup of events until there is an eventual winner. Phillips is quite upfront about who wins and who loses these matches before he even begins to dissect them. So when he eventually does switch to point by point action or to match results there is no bated breath but rather a slight sigh. I do not know anything about his other works to understand if this style of writing of treading backwards and forwards over information is how he goes about it, but it just did not sit well with me.

I do believe he does justice to big moments throughout the year, such as that Tiafoe v Federer First Round Brawl in Queens, but obviously, as a tennis fanatic, I am not completely satisfied with this broad overview. Nonetheless, I understand that what I want would be more personalized and encyclopedic than a book like this should ever warrant being. I do not know to what extent a non-tennis viewer would be able to be gripped by this book, but I definitely enjoyed returning to a tennis renaissance of form.

[Margarita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heard good things about this book, just around the time of the latest US Open, and it is truly a poetic retelling of the annual men's tennis circuit that only a poet and a tennis fanatic could achieve. I am not a sports fan in any kind of traditional sense, I only watch and follow tennis, which I grew up with and lately reconnected with, and have made it part of my own fitness routine. The detailed descriptions of tennis matches and player feelings as displayed on their faces and in their attitudes, the universal tennis fanatic feeling of win, loss, joy and frustration is described with beauty and subtlety usually reserved for natural phenomena.

Tennis is not a game of traditional athletic burl - it is a game that is akin to any highly developed fine motor and sensory skill, innate intelligence and finesse, as well as athleticism, and some things can never be taught, they are things of natural born talent, like poetry (yes, Federer is mentioned in Shakespearean terms). The book examines one recent season in the men's game, when these components came out of sync for 8 out of 10 top players, due to injury or loss of motivation, or both, thus leaving the field open for some unexpected new arrivals and legendary comebacks.

Some of the finest poetry in the book is reserved for the least adored part of the tennis season - the spring season of red clay. As a tennis fan, it was a timely read, as we are entering it now and even some players are professing ennui prior to the Roland Garros and its warm up counterparts. This is an unusual read, it does not profess any type of gossip or familiarity with the personal detail of player lives, as is common in the celebrity crazed around-the-tennis journalism, but it has razor sharp judgement and understanding of the tennis game itself and is highly enjoyable for someone who streams tennis as if it were a Pandora music feed....

[Hannah]

This might be the first "sports book" I've ever read, and I really enjoyed it. It helps that I find pro tennis more interesting than any other major sport, and that the writer's style is so interesting and engaging. I would consider myself a moderate tennis fan, but reading this made me want to pay more attention to smaller tournaments beyond the Grand Slams (that is, if sports weren't cancelled for 2020).

Phillips perfectly put into words what makes tennis so compelling to watch, and why Federer and Nadal are both fascinating athletes, while other greats like Djokovic and Murray are kind of boring to me, despite their obvious talent. I enjoyed that the book was structured across the calendar year with the rises and falls of the tournament. On some occasions the prose got a little too deep for me, but for the most part it was a great escape from reality to relive the highs and lows from a tennis season I hadn't paid attention to at the time. I liked expanding my tennis vocabulary, learning about some of the lesser-known players,* and hearing the author's analyses of the players' strengths and weaknesses. Overall a very fun read.

*Though I can't believe how little space was given to a man named JACK SOCK who appeared on every ranking chart but was hardly mentioned. Maybe the most interesting thing about Jack Sock is his name?

[Bob Mack · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not enjoy this one at all. I desperately wanted to like this book. On paper it sounds right up my alley. The draw here being: What if a tennis fanatic, who is a poet by trade, covered the entire professional tennis circuit for a single year. The book is essentially a prototype for the formula Netflix perfected with F1. Put a spotlight on the smaller, but still exciting moments and tournaments, while tying the bigger names and matches into a larger narrative. Unfortunately it just didn't work for me. It felt like the worst parts of poetry and prose, amounting to something akin to a really long and colorful wikipedia article. If there is a guiding narrative, its that 2017 represents a changing of the guard, but somehow it manages to make some of the last best years of Nadal and Federer's careers not very interesting. There's also random references to world politics that feel unearned, and mostly shoved in to try and infuse it with more weight than it deserves. Almost none of it works for me. It's a no for me, dog.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading the great review in the New York Times, I had high hopes for this title. It really is written for the ultimate tennis fan for who else would revel in such minutiae. The only problem with that is that such a tennis fan is also very critical when inaccuracies abound. The author goes into great detail about tennis terms and seedings, but then makes an "unforced error" on page 53 where he states that the number one seed always faces the number four seed in the semifinals and the number two seed always faces the number 3 seed. When in fact, one and two can face either three or four at that point. This is always a nail biter as the draw is revealed. On page 46, he implies that Andy Murray has won the Australian Open (not true). And he even gets Federer's height wrong on page 125. Leaving these discrepancies aside (which is difficult), the book does rekindle memories of that remarkable year of 2017 when Federer and Nadal re-established themselves as the top two players in the world while in their 30s.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really excited about this one, but I feel a bit let down. I really don't like a stream of consciousness style of writing, which is what Phillips seemed to be going for here. I think his attempts to contextualize the tour with his personal experiences were more successful than when he used global current events to do so. Phillips writes beautifully about the game of tennis on a court-level, but sometimes things got a little convoluted when he wrote about the game's history and when he gave overviews of the tournaments. At times he left you to guess who had come out the victor (I don't remember the 2017 tour with as much accuracy as he does), and other times he gave it away right at the top so that you felt like you didn't have to read any further in the section. Overall, I felt like I needed the same intimate knowledge of the 2017 season as he did to appreciate the book and that is just something I didn't have.

[Audrey H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who doesn't know much about tennis I was excited to read this. In the end I learned a lot and it made me eager to learn more. I found myself looking up and watching many of the matches mentioned.

However, I found the book uneven. I think the 2017 season is too broad a topic to tackle without some sort of organizing principle. It delivered a little bit of everything: backstory on certain players, history of clay courts, a smattering of the author's own experience as a fan, rankings, and play-by-play of key games. But I never got enough of any one thing to be satisfied.

Was it an overview of what happened during the 2017 season? Was it about Federer and Nadal's comeback? Was it supposed to place both of these things in a broader social and political context? It did all and none of the above. Maybe the author bit off more than he could chew or maybe he couldn't decide what kind of book he wanted to write.

[Josh Keller · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a passage toward the middle of this book that says very few things in tennis are perfect, except David Goffin's backhand. Very few commentaries on tennis are perfect, except this book.
To Rowan Ricardo Phillips, ATP players are not merely names on a box score, and are so much more than the tired narratives already written about them. Phillips sees Federer, Nadal, and the rest of the tour as characters on a journey, some redemptive and some tragic. This book is a beautiful reminder that heroes and poets can be found anywhere, just as Phillips finds cursed pasts in the dirt of Rolland Garros and ephemeral beauty in the slog of the tennis season.
If you love tennis, read this book to see it in a way you never have before. If you hate tennis, read this book for the beauty of Phillips' prose and the infectious joy of his obsession.

[I-kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has to be rated three stars for numerous flaws (multiple ranking lists taking up space, certain sections that seem to just be going through the motions for its own sake, occasionally dragging sense of rhythm), and my #1 tennis writer remains Jesse Pentecost after reading this. But the good parts of the book to me are absolutely brilliant and worth reading for that reason. All those carefully, consciously crafted sentences that digress about the history of clay courts, that reflect on Goffin, the shot-by-shot narrative between Federer-Tiafoe at the US Open, the vignettes on Nadal on clay or Djokovic's pinpoint accuracy. And a description of Murray rant. Oh my, that is so spot on, had me in stitches. One might say overall the book is like a nice tennis match - the highlights only acquire meaning in the context of the whole trajectory that eventually produced them.

[Richard Hillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read for tennis enthusiasts, who should skip the brief note about scoring as well as the long glossary of tennis terms at the beginning of the book. Start on page one for an exciting review of the 2017 tennis year. I think it was a mistake to believe that the prefatory explanations would be sufficient for non-tennis addicts to understand or enjoy the book, the superb writing notwithstanding. In other words, this book seems to me ideal for those who play and/or love the sport. The author reveals great insight into the highs and lows of the competitive professional tour. I couldn't put it down.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this account of the 2017 Men’s Tour. The author does a nice job of highlighting what was in the news (Murray’s late withdrawal, player injuries and how they affected the draw, etc.) while also covering lesser known tournaments and players. The writing got a little too poetic for me at times (the description of a particular player’s shot is poetic, but the ghost in the clay was a bit much) but overall I’d recommend this to tennis fans. The author beautifully describes what tennis means to people who love the sport.