Levels of the Game

by John McPhee

Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968.

It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games.

"This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Essays, Psychology, Journalism

149 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1969

About the author

John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, having just read Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death about an allegorical tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo, it seemed logical to move immediately to a book about a real tennis match. This one is about a semi-final match in the 1968 U.S. Open between two amateurs at the time: Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe. The aces, the overhead lobs, the cross-court backhands are served without fault by John McPhee.

Every point is accounted for. Interspersed is a running biography and character study of the two players. A larger picture of America emerges.

McPhee has an eye for detail. What I liked the best was when he looked at what the players were reading. Ashe: "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders," "Fundamentals of Marketing," "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," "Human Sexual Response," "Black Power," "Emily Post's Etiquette," "Contact Bridge for Beginners," "Ulysses," "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," "The Confessions of Nat Turner," "The Human Factor in Changing Africa," "Paper Lion," "Mata Hari," "Dynamic Speed Reading," "The Naked Ape," "The New York Times Guide to Personal Finance," "A Short History of Religions," "Elementary French," "Spanish in Three Months," "Aussie English," and "U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Hearings--N.Y., N.Y. 1968." Graebner: "The Arrangement" ("just for trash"), "The Effective Executive" (because that is exactly what he would like to be), a biography of Richard Nixon, "The Rich and the Super-Rich," "Airport" ("for more trash"), and "The Pro Quarterback." Ashe wins that set.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tennis is a game of levels, and it is practically impossible for a player who is on one level to play successfully with a player on any other."
- John McPhee, Levels of the Game



A fantastic piece of sports writing about the encounter at the 1968 US Open between Arthur Ashe and Clark Grabner. Some of McPhee's best writing is his sports writing. His book on Bill Bradley, A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton, might be one of my favorite sports books ever. Like with his Bill Bradley book, here McPhee is profiling an athlete (two technically) before they've reached their peak. McPhee can see greatness like Ashe can see a ball and Bradley can see a court. Anyway, it is a short read and worth the couple hours and few dollars it requires the reader to invest. I spent a few years in my early twenties living in Richmond and the ghost of Ashe still quietly covers the corners of the town. He was a man of immense talent, class, and intelligence.

[Evi * · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro sperimentale scritto quasi 50, fa quindi ben prima delle logorroiche trattazioni di David Wallace, ben prima dell’ Open di Agassi; l’editore, dalla vista lunga, ha astutamente saputo cogliere un filone narrativo che oggi incontra favorevolmente e in maniera trasversale lettori che giocano a tennis ma anche no.

Sperimentale anche perché scrivere di sport, e intendo non i soliti noti pezzi di cronaca sportiva che compaiono sulle varie Gazzette di tutto il mondo, ma scrivere in maniera ambiziosa, protratta e con estremo garbo scandendo i tempi che sono propri di una partita di tennis: punti, game, set e match point, non è cosa ovvia.

Ancora meno lo è quando, come nella fattispecie della semifinale dell’ US Open del 1968, non esiste un supporto video che corrobori la narrazione, dandoci la certezza visiva di quel che effettivamente successe.
Immaginare , per dire, una nuvola che flutta cangiante e paffuta nel cielo sopra il Campo Centrale di Wimbledon è relativamente facile; è più faticoso , richiedendo uno sforzo immaginativo non scontato (ma che in fondo risulta lieve grazie alla nitidezza della scrittura di Mc Phee) quando ci si deve concentrare su movimenti di corpo, braccia e gambe in primis, sulla mimica facciale, componenti somatiche che rimandano alle intuizioni a volte geniali, a volte fallaci dei due giocatori, lampi di intelligenza e motore delle azioni di gioco.

In appendice un racconto delizioso sul giardiniere che con dedizione e amore quasi coniugale si occupa dei 780 mq del prato di Wimbledon, ne conosce ogni filo d’erba nome per nome.

Un libro per adepti di questo sport, no per tutti, non annoia direi mai, originale, consigliabile.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there's any question that I am completely in thrall to the miraculous literary powers of John McPhee, the fact that he inspired me to read a book about tennis and that I thoroughly enjoyed it should remove all doubt.

This isn't really a book about tennis as much as it is a battle of the wills between two completely different men who symbolize two very different Americas -- one rich, white and conservative (Clark Graebner) and the other striving, black and open to new ideas (Arthur Ashe). Like a skilled sportscaster, McPhee masterfully builds tension in his description of the volleys between the two men on the court. But he also provides a probing psychological portrait of each man and their complicated relationship to each other. The fact that this is accomplished in 160 pages without a single extraneous word is further proof of McPhee's literary prowess. Highly recommended.

[Jon Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Ferris said this may be the best piece of sports journalism ever. I see why.

[Bill Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little book. No chapters, no headers, just 150 pages straight through. It is dedicated to Bill Bradley. The book is built around a single tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in the 1968 US Open at Forest Hills, New York. Interspersed between descriptions of the match are bits about the backstory of each player, focusing a bit more on Ashe.

A black doctor, Dr. Robert Johnson, had a tennis court in his backyard and made it his personal mission to develop young black tennis talent, at his own expense. He also coached Althea Gibson. Arthur joined his group at age 10, living in his house and traveling all around to tournaments with him. Prior to that, Arthur learned tennis by walking to the local court near his house and asking the best black tennis player in Richmond (Ronald Charity) to teach him how to play. They played together every day, at first with Ronald on the same side of the net just throwing balls to him.

After not being allowed to play against white kids in Richmond in 1960, Arthur moved to St. Louis and spent his senior year at Sumner High School. He was then allowed to play in the US Interscholastic tournament, which had previously been segregated, and he won.

After winning the match that this book revolves around, Arthur also won in the final, becoming the first black man to win the US Open and the only amateur to win in the Open Era.

It is supposed to be a compare / contrast between the two but there is not that much that’s interesting about Graebner tbh.

Here is some stuff that I looked up about this book after reading and found interesting: McPhee had been doing a lot of individual profiles (i.e. A Sense of Where You Are) and wanted to mix it up. He watched this match on TV and was struck by their similar ages but different upbringings. Several weeks later he called CBS to get a tape of the match and was told he called just in time, it was going to be erased later that day. Then he flew to Puerto Rico with the four reels of tape and a movie projector, to rewatch the match with each player and get their thoughts on it and each other (they were both there preparing for Davis Cup). That all would be a lot easier today!

I took one star off because while it was well written and very interesting, I did not find it “gripping”

[Vaidya · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a The Master of Go feel to this book. Two players squaring off, their backgrounds, how that decides what they are, the political and social undercurrents of that time, etc. While Kawabata's protagonists represented different ages and the different ways of playing the game, McPhee's are of the same age but from as different backgrounds as they can be from.

A white male, born to privilege and deep pockets, an only son, and his eye right on the money and the American dream which he knows is within his grasp thanks to his 'social contacts' as he himself says. And a conservative Republican.

Pitted against a black upstart who struggles to come through the ranks, funded by other black philanthropists and a supportive father. More than just a game of tennis, it is a massive reflection of the times. The way Dr. Johnson asks his wards to not call any balls that are out by less than 6 inches (reminds one of the incident in Agassi's Open), to not swear or throw rackets on the ground and how that shapes up Ashe as he becomes the player is. And a liberal, Democrat - "It was hard to be religious growing up, could never relate to a Jesus with blond hair and white skin. You knew he wasn't your God."

At 150 pages it takes barely 2 days to finish this book. But it is a one-of-its-kind experience - similar to what Master of Go was.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a passage in Levels of the Game, a short book about tennis by John McPhee, where the narrative pulls back and begins to consider the family of the tennis player Arthur Ashe. Names cascade, one after the other, starting from back in 1735 when a ship full of slaves sailed from Liverpool to Virginia, and ending in the present day:

‘…On the Blackwell plantation, where Hammett had lived, the plantation house—white frame, with columns—still stands, vacant and mouldering. The slave cabin is there, too, its roof half peeled away. Hammett’s daughter Sadie married Willie Johnson, and their daughter Amelia married Pinkney Avery Ashe…and Amelia had a son named Arthur, who, in 1938, married Mattie Cunningham, of Richmond. Their son Arthur Junior was born in 1943…’

The details here have been taken from an immense family tree, painted on a huge piece of canvas at the home of one of Ashe’s relatives. There are over fifteen hundred leaves on that tree. Only Ashe has his leaf trimmed in gold. This is not all:

‘The family has a crest, in crimson, black, and gold. A central chevron in this escutcheon bears a black chain with a broken link, symbolizing the broken bonds of slavery. Below the broken chain is a black well. And in the upper corners, where the crest of a Norman family might have fleurs-de-lis, this one has tobacco leaves, in trifoliate clusters.’

Ashe was one of the greatest American tennis players. He was a black man who forged a career in a sport dominated by white faces. He is one of the two subjects of Levels of the Game by John McPhee, which is really a sort of long essay. It documents a tennis match at the 1968 US Open between Ashe and Clark Graebner. They made for an ideal contrast because Graebner was everything that Ashe was not: white, conventional, republican. The passage I have quoted above is immediately followed by the following line, before any break in the paragraph: 'Graebner has no idea whatever when his forebears first came to this country.’

The book alternates between a point-by-point description of the match and a dive into the lives of both players. The reportage is startling in the amount of detail it captures, to the degree that I began to wonder how McPhee had actually managed to write it at all. I read somewhere that he had access to a recording of the match, though exactly how he watched it again is unclear — this is long before the era of home video recording. At times the writing has all the quality of slow-motion, long before live action replays became an expected part of watching any sport. But beyond these practicalities, there’s a sense here of authority in McPhee’s writing, and of implied trust between the writer, their subject, and the audience.

He addresses us like a professor, and his grand statements are taken to be the work of careful consideration. He quotes both players extensively throughout, but doesn’t care to mention the context in which they spoke. At times he delves into their thoughts, their fears, their hopes. None of that is cited, of course; how could it be? I suppose we oughtn’t to care. There’s a feeling throughout of being invited to experience a certain kind of privilege. Are there room for questions? Sure, but if McPhee tells us that Ashe or Graebner strikes a ball just so, then they did. We have no recourse to say: I thought he hit it differently, or, that wasn’t what he was thinking at all. Were this written about a tennis match that happened yesterday, that’s what we would expect. But now nobody will ever see this match except through McPhee’s language.

A simple description of the match won’t suffice. We need to know about the players themselves: ‘A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background and comes out through his motor mechanisms into shot patterns and characteristics of play. If he is deliberate, he is a deliberate tennis player; and if he is flamboyant, his game probably is, too.’ This is entirely true. Tennis is an unusual sport in the degree to which it becomes a battle between the abilities, physical and otherwise, of two individuals. No outside interference is permitted. The person you are shapes the things you will do on the court.

Ashe is mannered, careful, polite. He is well-read and quietly radical. He plays difficult, risky tennis — he takes clever shots. He has a full arsenal at his disposal: slices, dinks, lobs, volleys. Graebner, with his huge serve, is altogether more conventional. He relies heavily on serve-and-volley to get him through. But Graebner’s was the game of the time, especially on fast grass courts with heavy wooden racquets. According to McPhee, the longest rally in an average set is six shots. But most points between Ashe and Graebner are over in two or three swings of a racquet. By comparison, rallies in a modern match in men’s tennis will start at about six shots and go for up to fifteen or twenty strokes. (I’ve seen rallies go past forty.)

It was a different game for other reasons. Both Graebner and Ashe were amateurs; they had full-time jobs outside of the tennis life. It seems almost cute today that these men should take the subway home after their matches, and no doubt pay for their own fares. Today’s top players make millions from prize money and endorsements, although hundreds of professionals still struggle to eke a living at the lower stages of the tour.

In 1997 they opened a vast stadium named after Arthur Ashe in New York, which became the centrepiece of the US Open as it stands today. Played on a hard court rather than grass, it is today the largest tennis venue in the world. It is so grand that you might easily forget the unintentional pun in the name: Ashe Stadium, built on top of what was once New York’s largest dump of incinerated ash. The seats are clustered so tight and small and high around the court that the effect is vertiginous and slightly nauseating, even when glimpsed on TV. A couple of weeks from today the US Open will start up again and it’ll become a hot, humid cavern for a brawl, packed every night to the rafters with screaming fans.

It’s odd somehow that they still manage to do it. I’m a fan, but even to me tennis still seems like an odd, anachronistic sport; a sport for people who don’t really like other sports. When there isn’t a Grand Slam on, it’s difficult to watch, and when there is a Grand Slam there’s inevitably too many matches spread across too few channels, squeezed into too few hours of the day. It is supremely impractical, elitist, difficult. It also has a strangely internationalist flavour. Devout fans of particular flavours might drape themselves in a flag, but for the most part you don’t go to a tennis match to support your home country. (That the Davis Cup, once the great international World Cup of tennis, is now teetering on the verge of irrelevance, is surely the exception that proves the rule.)

Today’s big name players reside in Monte Carlo and travel the world for ten or eleven months of the year. Their home country is relegated to the status of the little flag alongside their name on the scoreboard. They play for themselves; the extent to which that self represents that flag is entirely up to them. And yet that only serves to make the achievements of its early masters more impressive in retrospect. That Ashe in particular did all that he did in an era where tennis stars had no expectation of the level of reward and popularity they enjoy today, and when he in particular faced such outright racism while rising through the ranks, seems nothing short of miraculous. But again, such is the nature of tennis that while Graebner and Ashe could share a stage as Davis Cup teammates, they represented entirely different ways of life. That American flag next to their names meant nothing at all when they faced each other across the net.

[Aaron Burch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, this book is good. It's obvious DFW loved it/McPhee. It reminded me, though I'd be hardpressed to put into words why, a bit of W.C. Heinz's The Professional. Mostly just because I so loved both? Heinz's book is a novel, whereas this is nonfic, but there's something about boxing and tennis that feels very similar, and both books drew me in in a way that can be tricky with sports narrative, but when it works I'm all in.

Bonus: the word "backswing" is used four times. (And "perfect" = 11x.)

[Joe Noto · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not a book I'd typically be interested in, but I heard about it, saw it was under 200 pages, and gave it a shot. This is a sports novel. The sport is tennis in the 1960s. The book covers a semifinal match in the first US Open between two men at the top of their game. The author takes you through the match and intermittently talks about each player's background, upbringing, beliefs, etc.

As I started it, I honestly got a bit bored when the author would take us back and discuss the athletes' backgrounds. It seemed to happen too often and could last any number of pages and would flip from one player to the other rapidly. I put the book down for a while because I just was not feeling the style of writing. Picking it back up, I read the last 110 pages in a couple hours and noticed I got into the flow of the writing. I also realized this is essentially the script for a sports documentary. The parts covering their upbringings read like a reporter would read it and included quotes from family and friends. I was then able to visualize a documentary in my head instead of a story and....It clicked. I really ended up liking it overall. The two players were just opposites, coming from completely different worlds and meeting there on that day because they both rose to a level of excellence in tennis at that point in their lives. The writing describing the tennis match play by play was extremely high quality. It is hard to describe a tennis match, but McPhee did it very well! Having said that, if you don't know scoring in tennis and don't know what a forehand, a volley, a lob, or spin is, it might be hard to follow the match action in this. This is a 3 for me. Enjoyable, but...it's a sports documentary in print. I just really do not like sports documentaries. This gets a 3, because I still enjoyed it overall despite the subject.

[Joanne Fate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t be fooled – this book is supposed to be about a 1968 tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Sure, it’s an account of the match, but like all John McPhee books, it is about so much more. It is about the life of two young men, budding professional tennis players. The book explores tennis history, class, and race. It was written in a time of racial and social tensions. It would have been interesting to read this when it was written, but I was a kid, so that didn’t happen. You may know about these two players who went on to professional careers. You may know more about Ashe, as I do. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in tennis or not because this is a John McPhee book and he can make any subject interesting. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Grover Gardner. He did a great job.

[henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book to my grandfather for his birthday and it’s the last book he read before he died. I often buy books as gifts secretly hoping I’ll get to borrow it from them down the road — but I wish more than anything that I could give this one back to him now that I’ve finished it.

My grandfather loved tennis and some of my fondest memories of the two of us are the countless afternoons we spent playing tennis together in the park near his house. We’d play tennis and come home and watch tennis — he’d be asleep on the couch by the second set.

This book is about much more than tennis but for me it captures something intangible that makes tennis such a brilliant sport. Every point is full of drama, each movement of both players contains life and intrigue, subtlety and explosion. Of course I root for Ashe, who “plays the game with the lackadaisical, haphazard mannerisms of a liberal.” It’s a fascinating match. I picture my grandfather, thirty at the time, watching on TV.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finding a John McPhee book has felt like destiny both times it has occurred. Last time a book on oranges, this time a full 147 page book on a single tennis match in 1968 between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner.

The book is of course about the match but McPhee provides birds-eye views from various perspectives including, the inner thoughts of the players, stories from each man's family, and tidbits from all over. He doesn't focus on the match as a singular event, but instead as a culmination of both men's lives until that point. He talks about how in tennis (maybe sport in general) one cannot be separated from one's personality. The way a person approaches life mimics how they approach the game.

Because of course, ball is life. (And I'm dead serious that McPhee has you buying into that) (very you take yourself wherever you go... very everything we are/do leaks into everything else).

"When asked why he does the crossword with such energy, he will say something like 'I'm not sure. It may give me a false sense of intellectual security'"

Personal Story: Before reading I knew Ashe was a famous black tennis player that attended UCLA, but I knew him mostly because his name is emblazoned on the student health center on campus. "I need to go to Ashe for my TB test" was a well-worn phrase my first year.

Anyway, I am now sufficiently prepped to go watch Challengers!

[Scott Middleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impeccably detailed, this is a great book to get started with John McPhee even if (or maybe "especially if") you don't know or care much about tennis. As the title suggests, this book goes several levels deeper than the ostensibly titular match, stopping along the way to comment on race, class, athleticism, parenting, civil rights, you name it. As with other John McPhee books, there is very little glitz 'n glam in the style of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, but instead careful insight and well-researched detail. The humility of McPhee's writing style can make the book a bore at times, but it is worth a read nonetheless.

[Eliot Peper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levels of the Game by John McPhee is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. The book narrates a 1968 tennis semifinal point-by-point, while simultaneously profiling the two players, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, and exploring America's politics, history, racism, class structure, and psychology with surgical precision. In following the course of a single tennis match, McPhee illustrates an entire nation.

[Alejandro Sanoja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I read in February 2023.

A master at work. That's all you need to know. If you are a writer, you must read this book. Period.

[andré crombie · Rating 5 out of 5]

With soft, perfectly placed shots, Ashe jerks him around the forecourt, then closes off the point with a shot to remember. It is a forehand, with top spin, sent crosscourt so lightly that the ball appears to be flung rather than hit. Its angle to the net is less than ten degrees—a difficult, brilliant stroke, and Ashe hit it with such nonchalance that he appeared to be thinking of something else.

Notes: Every detail of match and person placed with immaculate precision — a perfect piece of writing.

[Kyle Magin · Rating 5 out of 5]

McPhee writes the most delightful books. He takes complex ideas or studies (tennis here) and explains them simply so that the reader can grasp it.

I really like this style of sportswriting, where a writer explains a single match/game/race and unwinds the biographies of the players involved and the story of the sport through occurrences in the match. Dan Okrent did it for baseball in 9 Innings, and McPhee does it here with tennis.

Also, I never really knew the story of Arthur Ashe (and this book was written in '69!) Fascinating.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's a brilliant double profile of two tennis players I knew nothing about (Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner), as well as an engaging play-by-play of their match at Forest Hills in 1968. McPhee examines how their respective political beliefs (Ashe = liberal, Graebner = conservative) influenced their way of playing tennis. I became a huge fan of Ashe as a result of this book, and I can't wait to read his autobiography next.

[Adam Ashton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had me intrigued about two people I knew nothing about. Read this as a recommendation about storytelling style (alternating between present and pats but maintaining clarity and flow) and it definitely delivered

[Jack Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic writing

[Bob Peru · Rating 5 out of 5]

certainly the greatest tennis book.
arguably the greatest sports book.

[max · Rating 5 out of 5]

turned me into a tennis fan, somehow

[Ariel Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun one to read during the US Open!

[Jules Lings · Rating 5 out of 5]

the sheer amount of research and interviews conducted and to think he wrote this in a matter of months…

[Jon Stombler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read. Terrific use of braiding to keep reader engaged and thinking.

[Mike Dennisuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another gem from John McPhee, master storyteller. This audiobook, narrated by Grover Gardner, is the story of a tennis match in the semifinals of the 1968 US Open between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. This brief account is expertly crafted to blend biographical profiles, social commentary and athletic drama. Excellent book!!

[molly hirschfeldt]

mycket bra 👍 spännande 👍

[Tomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

My goodness what a good game of tennis.

[Tomas Curcio · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unbelievably incredible piece of sports journalism. Within an entire match we find the realities of two athletes in their prime. How closer can one get to what it means to play tennis?