Tennis's Strangest Matches: Extraordinary but True Stories from over a Century of Tennis

by Peter J. Seddon

In this hugely entertaining collection of true stories taken from over a hundred years of world tennis history, award-winning sports historian Peter Seddon has gathered together the most extraordinary... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1861053797
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Robson Book Ltd
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Tennis has had its share of oddities

Sometimes portrayed (at least in Britain) as a very stuffy sport, we know that's a misleading image thanks to the antics of John McEnroe, Jeff Tarango, Ilie Nastase and others, not forgetting other bizarre episodes such as the battle of the sexes featuring Bobby Riggs versus Billie Jean King, as well as the stabbing of Monica Seles, which could have had a much worse outcome than it actually did. All these players are featured in this highly entertaining book, although Jimmy Connors hardly gets a mention. Didn't the author think any of his matches were strange enough in themselves to merit inclusion? The rules for tennis as we know the game today took shape in the 1870s although the ancestors of the modern game go back many centuries. Seven episodes between 1437 and 1827 are given space on the basis that they give an insight into the development of modern tennis, though not all of them actually do so, while also being very strange. Thereafter, the book focuses on the period from 1877 to 2000, when this book was submitted for publication, and contains a fairly even spread through those years. Bad discipline is one recurring theme, but accidents, the weather, dress code, experimental and novelty matches all get space here, together with matches that merely produced unusual play. (Hey, if Andy Murray wins a Grand Slam, that will be a novelty, which will give the authors and publishers an excuse for an updated edition.) It is incredible to believe that one match between two 11-year-old girls in a junior tournament produced an officially recorded rally of 1,029 strokes that lasted more than 50 minutes. Within recognized tournaments, the record is a mere 643 strokes between two women. More exciting (though before I took any interest in tennis) was the Gonzales - Pasarell match at Wimbledon in 1969, a marathon of a kind that is unlikely to be repeated in these days of tie-breaks, although as the fifth set at Wimbledon still has tie-breaks, it may still be possible. Actually, if tie-breaks hadn't been invented, I think that the old 1969 match would have been replicated, with some variation, many times over. Accidents most frequently occur as a result of balls that go astray, one memorable case involving Tim Henman in his early Wimbledon years. That is included here, but the most unfortunate case involved an umpire who was hit in a very delicate place, fell of his chair, cracked his skull and died a few days later. Unlike some of the other books in the series that I've read, this one doesn't leave me wondering why certain episodes were included, because the author stuck closely to the book's title. He avoided the inclusion of matches simply because they enabled the winner to reach a career milestone, although if such matches merit inclusion for another reason, they're here, as when Rod Laver completed his second Grand Slam in appalling weather conditions. Occasionally tragic but mostly funny and always entertaining, this may be the best of the books in