Levels of the Game

"It has been thirteen years since an American won the men's-singles final at Forest Hills, and this match will determine whether Ashe or Graebner is to have a chance to be the first American since Tony Trabert to win it all. Ashe and Graebner are still amateurs, and it was imagined that in this tournament, playing against professionals, they wouldn't have much of a chance. But they are here, close to the finish, playing each other. For Graebner to look across a net and see Ashe--and the reverse--is not in itself unusual. They were both born in 1943, they have known each other since they were thirteen, and they have played tournaments and exhibitions and have practiced together in so many countries and seasons that details blur."

But McPhee is actually after bigger game than this one match. He also provides insightful portraits of the two very different contestants. Ashe, the only championship level Black tennis player of his time, is single, liberal, mercurial, a finesse player and a risk taker. Graebner is married with kids, conservative, religious, a power player and risk averse. McPhee demonstrates how their personalities influence, indeed shape, their play and how their lifelong rivalry lifts their games to higher levels when they play one another, ultimately lifting Ashe's game towards perfection by the end of this contest.

Ashe would go on to win the tournament, becoming the only amateur to win it in the Open era and together Ashe and Graebner lead the US to it's first Davis Cup in years. After that though, while Ashe went on to a respectable career, Graebner slipped into obscurity. But in this book, McPhee has preserved a moment in time when the two were evenly matched on the court, despite being polar opposites off of the court and in charting the lives that brought them to that moment, he provides a penetrating glance at two fascinating men.

This is a real pinnacle in Sports writing.

GRADE: A


A Level All Its Own   November 1, 2000
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

To say John McPhee has written the best tennis book ever is to say too little. This is far more than a tennis book and, if you're looking for instruction, far less. The platform, if you'll excuse the tennis pun, is a U.S. Open final between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe, but it is a study of two men and what brought them to this point, athletically but especially sociologically. The reflective Southerner forced to be a pioneer because he is black. The more rigid son of the Midwest and privilege, with greater power and less versatility. The vagaries that make them human: Graebner, the more up-tight, gambling with a prepared point successfully at a crucial spot in the match. And at the end, there is Ashe, triumphantly whistling a winner off his suspect backhand to close out the match. You want to cheer. And you understand more about people than when you opened the book.


About the people   March 13, 2000
 6 out of 8 found this review helpful

This was my first John McPhee book, selected because of its subject matter (I'm an ex-serious tennis player). John McPhee was recommended to me as a writer/essayist who can take any subject and write about it intelligently and interestingly. After finishing this book, I would agree with that characterization, but clarify that the subject in this particular book is not professional tennis or even the game of tennis but rather two people and how they have managed their lives. That they play tennis is the point around which the book comes together, but it is not the point on which the book stands. If you're looking for insight into the game of junior/professional tennis, try David Foster Wallace's great essay about Michael Joyce in _A Supposedly Fun Thing..._. If you're looking for insight into two particularly interesting people--Arthur Ashe is one of them, but his compatriot and opponent, whose name, of course, I have forgotten, is worth equal time--in a particularly interesting time period and situation, check this book out.


Lovely, graceful book   July 7, 1999
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This book is so gracefully written that it isn't till the end that one realizes that McPhee's writing style(s) has been imitating the players' tennis styles, and that his language has moved effortlessly intune with the 'Levels of the Game'. Inlight of Arthur ashe's death, the book acheives a new poignancy.