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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3420922
EAN num: 9781597971737
ISBN number: 1597971731
Label: Potomac Books Ltd.
Manufacturer: Potomac Books Ltd.
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: April 28, 2008
Publishing house: Potomac Books Ltd.
Sale Popularity Level: 390654
Studio: Potomac Books Ltd.
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Product Description:
Award-winning tennis writer Paul Fein is back at his shot-making best with Tennis Confidential II: More of Today’s Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies. Tennis keeps moving forward and so does Fein, giving readers his insightful and thoughtprovoking opinions on a myriad of hot-button topics.
Who is the greatest men’s player ever? The greatest women’s player ever? Is it clever or counter-productive to let players challenge line calls? How about oncourt coaching? Scoring system changes? The television networks and tennis’s ruling bodies fervently push these controversial reforms, but do they help or hurt tennis? Fein questions and debunks conventional wisdom as only he can, and his in-depth knowledge and authoritative analyses of the sport provide a welcome perspective.
Fein writes about today’s headliners like Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Andy Roddick, and the Williams sisters, plus popular former champions such as Andre Agassi, Yannick Noah, Jim Courier, Martina Hingis, and Stefan Edberg. He chronicles the exciting evolution of women’s tennis and its heroic pioneers, explains the near-extinction of the dynamic serve-and-volley game and how to save it, and revisits an unforgettable era when tennis players “rocked.”
This entertaining and compelling compendium of tennis interviews, features, and essays is sure to intrigue, inform, and enlighten. Anyone who enjoys reading about tennis will find Paul Fein’s Tennis Confidential II a winner.
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Rated by buyers -
Here is another great book by Paul Fein! This book is for everyone not just tennis enthusiasts. It has stories in it that are very funny, very emotional and often opens your eyes to the inner feelings of a player. So often we watch a player play tennis and form an opinion about the player. This book showed me many other sides of many players.
One of the many chapters that I enjoyed was. "Tennis for the Bloody Fun of it." Paul tells about Roy Emerson, known to everyone as "Emmo," how he called everyone "Blue" because he often forgot their names -- and, win or lose, sang enthusiasticaly in the showers with his shorts on. For one of his favorite hits of the week, he crooned: Many a tear has to falllll But it's alllllll In a game All in that wonderful game.
Throughout the book there are fascinating facts that will surprise you!!
This book has so much in it that is enjoyable, anyone would enjoy reading it. I highly recommend this book!! I learned so much from it.
Rated by buyers -
Tennis Confidential II provides a great window into all things tennis, covering a wide-range of tennis topics in a concise, entertaining manner.
This book has a bit of something for everyone, due to the breadth of the essays and interviews, and will likely satisfy readers whether they are serious tennis players/fans or simply general sports fans looking for an introduction to the sport.
As a youngish tennis enthusiast, who was introduced to the sport during the prime of the American "greatest generation"(Chang, Courier, Agassi, and Sampras), I especially enjoyed learning about players from previous generations that I was not aware of. Fein does an especially good job of tying these players of different generations together, connecting and comparing "old-time" and modern players seamlessly
The interviews that conclude this book are particularly strong. Fein has a knack for asking the right questions to his subjects that bring out their personalites. The interviews with the likes of Mats Wilander and Michael Chang (who I always perceived as being very bland) are fascinating.
Rated by buyers -
This is an excellent book mixing current day tennis with tennis past, the light with the serious. Player profiles and background are quite interesting. His observation and points of view are well thought out and cogent with the exception of his infatuation with Pete Sampras. As much as I personally detest the stuff, to a lot of the world, playing tennis means playing on clay. Pete Sampras (like John McEnroe) was not an all time great all court player. Overall, a real FEIN book!
Rated by buyers -
Paul Fein has done it again. He has written an excellent sequel to his earlier tennis books. This new book provides both an insightful history of the game of tennis, from its origins to the present, as well as in-depth interviews with many of the game's luminaries. He rates both men and women champions,giving impeccable reasoning for his choices. (The only quibble this reviewer has with the list of male champions is Fein's exclusion of Lew Hoad among the top ten.) Bringing his analysis right up to the present, Fein asks the questions of Roger Federer's place among the tennis greats. The author will have to write Tennis Confidential III to address the issue of Raphael Nadal's place in history after the latter's stunning victory over Federer in the Wimbledon 2008 finals.
Among the many fascinating topics in the book, Fein covers the skills peculiar to doubles and the incongruity of doubles which is favored by recreational players, but relegated far below singles by tournament directors. Another interesting point is Fein's comparison of tennis to golf. Tennis, he asserts, requires a much higher degree of athleticism (hand speed, reaction time, conditioning), as evidenced by the fact that tennis players such as Althea Gibson and Ellsworth Vines have been successful at golf, while no golfers have been successful at tennis at the highest levels. The book is replete with fascinating details on such subjects as the history and progress of women in tennis, the decline of the serve and volley game, feuds between players, and the direction that the U.S. must take to produce the game's elite, as it has in the past. Even tennis fanatics will wonder where Paul Fein got all of his information, including the priceless anecdote of Art Larsen,U.S. Open champion in 1950, being excluded from a tournament and then hiring a plane to create rain over the tennis courts as a way to gain revenge by forcing a rain-out.
Fein is quite strong in his opinions about the future direction of tennis (such as the use of tiebreakers and the place of doubles in the game). As a lifelong player and lover of tennis, Fein gives valuable tips on how to "fire up" the game such as bringing back serving and volleying, connecting players and fans more closely, and stopping the persistent stalling in major matches.
All in all, very highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
In his inimitable style, Paul Fein analyzes the issues, arms himself with the facts, and then lets his opponents have it. Whether it's taking a sledgehammer to the misguided advocates of on-court coaching or exposing the flawed thinking that's given rise to the absurdity of player challenges, Fein made me feel like standing up and applauding.
As a coach, I found myself actually cheering when I read his enlightening chapter entitled "How America Can Produce Champions Again." I was fascinated to learn why "the best two-handed backhands are much superior to the best one-handed backhands," and why we should "ditch the flawed, open-stance, two handed backhand that Venus and Serena use regularly." This chapter alone should make the book required reading for any tennis coach with an interest in US junior tennis development.
However, what I liked most of all about the book is that Fein clarified my thinking on many of tennis' controversies. He takes seemingly grey issues, quickly separates the grey from the white, and then presents well-reasoned arguments with a certainty that must leave some of tennis' "dogmatists for change" looking for the nearest sewer to slither back into.
On the other hand, if you're an advocate of introducing no-ad scoring, replacing deciding sets with tie-breakers, or sacrificing the integrity of the game to the mindless masses in the name of television and entertainment, whatever you do, don't buy this book. It'll be much too dangerous for your health.
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