What Tennis Gives Us

An exploration of Tennis as a way to see the world, each other, and ourselves, from the author of The Tennis Court

Tennis is one of the most widely played recreational sports in the world, and today, everything tennis is in demand. But why do we play it, watch it, struggle with it, obsess over it? And can a game really show us who we are? 

Nick Pachelli, author of the bestselling The Tennis Court, has his finger on the pulse of all things tennis—being a lifelong player and an award-winning journalist with access to some of the most famous players. He set out on a journey to every corner of the tennis world (again!) to discover what the sport means to the millions who play and what people find endlessly seductive about it. He spoke with hundreds of players and spectators: an octogenarian who has played barefoot on grass as therapy for most of her life; a coach training students out of a dojo in New Jersey; Grand Slam champions, such as Carlos Alcaraz, Rennae Stubbs, Rohan Bopanna, and the teams behind them; daily players in Kyiv, still finding their way onto a court. 

The result of these conversations is an immersive collection of essays and reflections that move between the reported and the personal, the comic and the meditative. From a tongue-in-cheek analysis on the psychology behind racquet smashing to a poignant observation of how the game’s focus on self-reliance and boundaries fuses with another kind of distance in our relationships, Pachelli’s writing takes us through the full emotional arc of a tennis match—excitement, surprise, anxiety, glee, anger, frustration, relief—and shows how much of what happens on a court mirrors life’s most pivotal moments. He gathers stories from every continent where the game is played, from public courts and private ones, from players in top-of-the-line shoes and players in no shoes at all. 

So what does tennis give us?  It’s much more than wellness, or scratching our competitive itch. Tennis can be an act of healing, of health, and a way to discover more about who we are. Seeing the game from multiple perspectives can bloom our imaginations of ourselves. This book uses tennis as a way to see the world. 

What Tennis Gives Us is not an instruction manual, Zen guide, memoir, or cultural history, but rather the book that sits at the intersection of all those to find wisdom and meaning in what the sport gives to the people who can’t stop playing or watching it.