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Book review: "Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played" by L. Jon Wertheim
Photo credit: Game Face
"Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played"
L. Jon Wertheim
224 pages, $24
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The stunning 2008 Wimbledon final — in which Rafael Nadal toppled the five-time champion Roger Federer — never was adequately chronicled by the writers who gushed over it for days last July.
It was all too much to encapsulate. From the contrast between the men to the weight of tennis history to the world-class quality of the play, the five-set classic cried out for a full-length account.
Enter “Strokes of Genius,” published next month, a gripping narrative of the match.
Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim offers both finite focus and wide scope. On one page, he explores the inner physiological state of the contestants during one of match’s many rain delays; on another page, he monitors the fickle movement of the betting lines during the seesaw duel.
The book’s occasionally hyperbolic style lacks the in-game focus of the definitive one-match tennis book, John McPhee’s “Levels of the Game,” which spends paragraphs suspended within a single stroke of a single point of a 1968 U.S. Open semifinal.
But Wertheim’s involving tone is well suited to the sweep of his project, which successfully reawakens the excitement of one of the greatest encounters in sports history.
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