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• Scott Korb

  This Tennis Life

  Tags:

  amateurs,

  Andre Agassi,

  David Foster Wallace,

  memoir,

  tennis,

  writing

  

  On August 30, 1992, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an essay by David Foster Wallace now known as “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” a title Wallace apparently chose when the piece was collected in his 2005 book Consider the Lobster. In the essay, Wallace ostensibly reviews 1980s tennis juggernaut Tracy Austin’s sports memoir Beyond Center Court: My Story, and for those of you who have never read Wallace on Austin, suffice it to say he was disappointed by the book, which at one point he calls “breathtakingly insipid.”

  Wallace’s heartbreak is clear from the very start. “I think,” he writes towards the end of the first paragraph, “Austin’s memoir has finally broken my jones for the genre.” The book’s essential failure is not to come through on what Wallace sees as its promise to “let us penetrate the indefinable mystery of what makes some persons geniuses, semi-divine, to share with us the secret and so both reveal the difference between us and them and to erase it, a little, that difference.” For Wallace, an excellent junior tennis player himself, another reason the book was such a monumental disappointment was that growing up he had loved Austin’s prodigiousness, beauty, and inspiration—or, in a word, her genius.

  I’ve been an off-and-on tennis player and fan for most of my life. I went to tennis camp as a kid, for a few summers lost in the early rounds of United States Tennis Association junior tournaments, was known to be a bad loser with a bad temper, and had a subscription to Tennis that I used for an eighth-grade research project on Andre Agassi. Despite my McEnroe-esque on-court attitude, during those summers Agassi shaped both my on-court fashion—day-glo pink Nike Air Tech Challenges, stonewashed denim shorts, the occasional spandex—and the way I tried to hit my forehand on the rise. Yet, though I love all that Bart Giamatti and John McPhee have written about sports, to say nothing of Roger Angell and of course DFW, in all my life I’ve never shared Wallace’s jones for sports memoirs. Andre Agassi’s Open, published last year, excerpted in this summer’s “Sports & Games” issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, and now out in paperback, may indeed have been my first.

  Continue reading » August 24, 2010
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• The Editors

  Thrilla in Manila

  Tags:

  basketball,

  fans,

  interview,

  journalism,

  Philippines,

  rules and regulations

  

  Rafe Bartholomew spent three years exploring the Philippines’ passion for basketball, highlights of which included monsoon-wracked research and at least one on-court screaming match. The result is Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball. LQ's Brendan Carney Byrne sat down with him at an East Village café and discussed Filipino politics, graft, and a game in which corporate sponsorship is everything.

  LQ: Why did you pick the Philippines?

  RB: I was really interested that basketball had caught on in a country I knew very little about. At the time, I knew what most Americans who haven’t gone out of their way to study Filipino history know: that it used to be an American colony, something about the Spanish-American War, a little about the Marcos family, and general South-East Asian stereotypes—it’s hot, there’s corruption, prostitution, and some terrorism. I didn’t just think, hey these guys can play ball. Basketball means something different in this country. It’s part of everyone’s lives in a really deep way—they even incorporate basketball into Christmas processions.

  Continue reading » August 17, 2010
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• Marc Palatucci

  The Horns of a Dilemma

  Tags:

  animals,

  bullfighting,

  fight to the death,

  nature,

  Spain,

  violence

  

  When David Villa, striker for 2010 World Cup champions Spain, netted a goal against Honduras during the group stage, he celebrated in distinct style. Planting his cleats in the turf, and with a backhanded sweep of his arm, he pantomimed one of his country’s most legendary and patriotic personae: the matador. In Spain’s heritage bullfighting is paramount, and Villa’s display delighted an already rapturous crowd.

  However, while regard is generally fond for the sport as a cultural artifact, opinions on the contemporary practice of the pastime are far more polarized. While traditionalists cite its artistic merit, naysayers condemn it as outdated and barbarous. On July 28th, under the pretext of animal rights, the Spanish region of Catalonia voted to ban the sport altogether. This was a monumental decision, as bullfighting has a deep-rooted past in the area. Fights have been held there since the fourteenth century, and regional capital Barcelona was remarkably once home to three operational bullrings. The ban will be enacted in 2012, by which point the region will be expected to dismantle its arm of the colossal national industry. Barcelona’s one remaining bullring will likely be repurposed as a concert venue and museum.

  Continue reading » August 11, 2010
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