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An energetic, lyrical, genre-defying account of the 2017 tennis season.
In The Circuit: 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 tournament: 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 spectacle: 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.
In The Circuit: 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 tournament: 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 spectacle: 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.
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Reviews
"Rowan Ricardo Phillips's The Circuit is a tennis romance, and unique. Phillips knows the love. He is a sportswriter and poet, and remarkably, because tennis love isn't easy to explain, he has found the right supple, sometimes tactile, and tender language for it . . . "
Lynne Tillman, Bookforum
"Phillips keeps the pages turning with an easy yet exacting style and keen observations. Tennis nerds in particular will enjoy his parsing of Federer's retooled backhand . . . Phillips's wit suffuses this text . . . The Circuit is a welcome palate cleanser, a license to enjoy an underrated sport at its best."
Andrew Lawrence, The Atlantic