Steven Yenzer’s Reviews > The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey > Status Update

This is infuriatingly hard to read. “Next up was another big hitter with a thunderous one-handed backhand and powerful serve but a better overall package—the ninth-ranked Dominic Them of Austria, who's a fixture in the top ten but whom Goffin had proved in the past to have the measure of—he'd defeated him in the round of sixteen of this year's Australian Open, as he had the year before as well.”

But when he came back for the hard courts and beat Kyrgios to help Belgium get past Australia to play in its first Davis Cup final and won the title in Shenzhen and the title in Tokyo, qualified for the end-of-the-year ATP Final, and beat Nadal in the
round robin and Federer in the semis before losing the final, once again as in January, to Dimitrov, he ended the season for the first time ever as a top-ten player.”

I think the author’s problem is that he loves the wind-up. He loves hinting at and previewing what he’s going to tell you about, in the hopes of piquing your interest. But most of the book ends up being wind-up, and it’s confusing and frustrating, especially when he closes an anecdote in a weird truncated way that makes it unclear whether the wind-up is over or not.

This book desperately needed an editor. The author defines terms and introduces ideas multiple times, mentions things that have not been introduced, and just doesn’t seem to grasp how to make his stream-of-consciousness style comprehensible. It’s just confusing at times and overall not enjoyable to read.