As Tennis Abides heads into 2025, I expect to write a great deal more about tennis and tennis coaching that lies outside of tennis played on professional tours. I am ducking into Infinite Jest again as part of this shift. Warning Spoilers Infinite Jest opens with Hal Incandenza’s interrogation by university officials regarding discrepancies between…
Tag: David Foster Wallace
Chess and Tennis: Chess Can Be Good for Your Tennis Game
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest spends a few pages describing tennis as a hybrid of chess and boxing. Reading this led me to thinking about Ivan Ljubicic being a strong chess player and Boris Becker complimenting world #1 Novak Djokovic’s chess acumen. This might deserve more investigation. Uniquely Qualified? I’ve been playing tennis since 1985…
Tennis Road Trips – The Sport Remains the Same
I was been fortunate enough to be part of two regional high school tennis events over the past two weekends. It was interesting driving over three hours from Louisville, KY to Edwardsville, IL. I remember thinking that road trips in baseball lead to playing in ballparks with different dimensions and that every golf course is…
Infinite Jest: Not an Easy First Reaction
I Started Reading Infinite Jest Not an Easy First Reaction (Some Spoilers) Prologue – My History with DFW I first read David Foster Wallace in the summer of 1996 when I was a work-study intern at Georgetown University. Our office was full of tennis fanatics (always a good thing for me). One of my bosses…
Tennis Abides: Dan Martin on Tennis and Life 