Tough Draw: The Path to Tennis Glory - Tapa dura

A gifted chronicler of the game and published novelist, Eliot Berry focuses on the pivotal matches of the 1990 and 1991 seasons. He uses a competitor's eye to reveal the subtleties that separate the big winners from the journeymen players.
Some of the top pros are great talents but mediocre competitors. Others survive because - like boxers - they have something to prove to the world. Steffi Graf, bruised and unnerved by family scandal, is down 5-4 in the third set of the 1991 Wimbledon final, with her opponent, Gabriela Sabatini, serving for the match. Steffi Graf finds an opening, just one shot, that recalls in both players memories of their competitive natures - and the match swings her way.
Likewise, we observe Jimmy Connors, the unseeded wild card at the 1991 U.S. Open, as he reaches back to uncover his special magic as a competitor, only days short of his thirty-ninth birthday. A year earlier John McEnroe, whose behavior has defaulted him in Australia, returns from his exile to win his ninth (out of ten) five-set match at the Open.
The big matches and the lesser known ones that often shape the players are analyzed. Edberg, Becker, Berger, Courier, Navratilova, Capriati, Seles, Lendl, Agassi, Krickstein, Sampras, among others, are all here, along with surprising comments from top players of the past, including Pancho Gonzales, Margaret Court, and Ken Rosewall. Like the game itself, Tough Draw is a triumph of art, grace, and power. Fresh, vivid, uncannily accurate - only someone who cares so deeply about tennis and knows the game so intimately could write with such eloquence and authority - Tough Draw does for tennis what Roger Angell has done for baseball.