When the greatest writer of his generation wrote about the greatest tennis player in history.
Likely spurred by Wimbledon, a Facebook acquaintance dismissed tennis the other day. Perhaps he referred to tennis players as “fancylads prancing and clad in fads,” though I’m sure it wasn’t even that clever. The point is he was inferring tennis was for lesser men.
I’ve never had that opinion about tennis, partly because I regard those sorts of opinions as stupid. There was a time I didn’t care, I suppose. But then, years ago, I read David Foster Wallace’s “Federer as Religious Experience,” a famous essay about the greatest tennis player in history, written by the greatest writer of his generation. I loved tennis after that, which is why I recommend this essay to anyone who doesn’t care about tennis or who’s never read David Foster Wallace.
DFW usually needs editing badly, so not on board with the “greatest writer.”