I tend to read mainly for research, and that means reading in clusters, not just books about the topic, but books around the topic too. I’m working on a profile for Nick Kyrgios, so there are a lot of books on tennis, which (like cricket and baseball) seems to produce good writing for some reason. Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open is excellent, it was co-written with the Pulitzer-prize winning memoirist J.R. Moehringer. It’s very honest, and driven by a rare emotional dynamic, not dissimilar to Krygios’s own. Agassi hates tennis, but feels somehow chained to it, and compelled to achieve in spite of, or even because of, his hatred.

Like many non-fiction writers, I’m drawn to John McPhee’s work, because his structures are so finessed. Levels of the Game is one of the most famous examples: it’s a double profile of Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, that uses a tennis match at the US Open as a structuring device. A single misstep would destroy it, but there aren’t any missteps. Its perceptiveness about racial dynamics in tennis is sadly almost as relevant nearly fifty years later, recently dissected in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which has a long chapter on Serena Williams and uncompromising blackness. On the technical side, Brad Gilbert’s coaching book Winning Ugly is worth reading even if you don’t play the game. Like Napoleon said, a coward can shed the blood of a thousand heroes.