In the 2008 Wimbledon men’s final, Centre Court was a stage
set worthy of Shakespearean drama. Five-time champion Roger
Federer was on track to take his rightful place as the most
dominant player in the history of the game. He just needed
to cling to his trajectory. So in the last few moments of
daylight, Centre Court witnessed a coronation. Only it
wasn’t a crowning for the Swiss heir apparent but for a
swashbuckling Spaniard. Twenty-two-year-old Rafael Nadal
prevailed, in five sets, in what was, according to the
author, "essentially a four-hour, forty-eight-minute
infomercial for everything that is right about tennis—a
festival of skill, accuracy, grace, strength, speed,
endurance, determination, and sportsmanship." It was also
the encapsulation of a fascinating rivalry, hard fought and
of historic proportions.
In the tradition of John McPhee’s classic Levels of the
Game, Strokes of Genius deconstructs this defining moment in
sport, using that match as the backbone of a provocative,
thoughtful, and entertaining look at the science, art,
psychology, technology, strategy, and personality that go
into a single tennis match.With vivid, intimate detail,
Wertheim re-creates this epic battle in a book that is both
a study of the mechanics and art of the game and the
portrait of a rivalry as dramatic as that of Ali–Frazier,
Palmer–Nicklaus, and McEnroe–Borg.
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