<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><b>Winner of the 2019 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing</b><br><b><i><br>"The Circuit</i> is the best sports book I've read in years, maybe ever." --Rich Cohen, author of <i>The Chicago Cubs</i> and <i>Monsters</i> <p/>"As sports writing goes, <i>The Circuit </i>is unusual in the very best way. Rowan Ricardo Phillips writes with such fluidity, and packs the book with bursts of brilliance. This is a compulsively readable guide to one truly Homeric year of professional tennis." --John Green, author of <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i> <p/>An energetic, lyrical, genre-defying account of the 2017 tennis season.</b> <p/>In <i>The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey</i>, the award-winning poet--and <i>Paris Review</i> sports columnist--Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it's divided into four seasons, each marked by a final tournament: the Grand Slams. <p/> Phillips charts the year from winter's Australian Open, where Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal renewed their rivalry in a match for the ages, to fall's U.S. Open. Along the way, Phillips paints a new, vibrant portrait of tennis, one that captures not only the emotions, nerves, and ruthless tactics of the point-by-point game but also the quicksilver movement of victory and defeat on the tour, placing that sense of upheaval within a broader cultural and social context. Tennis has long been thought of as an escapist spectacle: a bucolic, separate bauble of life. <br><i><br>The Circuit</i> will convince you that you don't leave the world behind as you watch tennis--you bring it with you.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"Phillips keeps the pages turning with an easy yet exacting style and keen observations. Tennis nerds in particular will enjoy his parsing of Federer's retooled backhand . . . Phillips's wit suffuses this text . . . <i>The Circuit</i> is a welcome palate cleanser, a license to enjoy an underrated sport at its best. --Andrew Lawrence, <i>The Atlantic</i> <p/>Rowan Ricardo Phillips's <i>The Circuit</i> is a tennis romance, and unique. Phillips knows the love. He is a sportswriter and poet, and remarkably, because tennis love isn't easy to explain, he has found the right supple, sometimes tactile, and tender language for it . . . --Lynne Tillman, <i>Bookforum<br></i><br>"The touchstone for any tennis writer is John McPhee, who wrote <i>Levels of the Game</i>, the finest book in the history of the sport. Mr. Phillips has writing skills comparable to Mr. McPhee's, which is high praise." --Tom Perrotta, <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> <p/>"As an aficionado and player, Phillips is especially attuned to tennis' weirdness among other sports . . . Phillips' lyrical impulses ignite his compressed, efficient, accurate, lively and always liquid prose . . . Phillips wields his prose like an elegant, one-handed backhand, fending off florid metaphors and deflecting the canards about sports, to present the tour's basic process: the sport is a distraction." --Walton Muyumba, <i>Los Angeles Times</i> <p/>Phillips reveals his love of tennis on every page. There is a generosity of spirit toward the reader . . . a joy to read: a poet's love song to the game of tennis. --Geoff Macdonald, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i> <p/>A delightful book, told with a true aficionado's passion. <i>The Circuit</i>'s engrossing account of the 2017 professional tennis season opens out into unexpected vistas of meaning. --Ian Frazier, author of <i>Travels in Siberia</i> <p/>"For those who follow tennis, <i>The Circuit </i>is <i>the </i>book to read. With sharp insight into the key players' mannerisms, dazzling physical description, and lyrical, gorgeous prose, it's a pure treat. Rowan Ricardo Phillips's passion for the sport, its subtle geometries and self-defeating head games, is unequaled: game, set, match. --Phillip Lopate, author of <i>To Show and to Tell<br></i></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Rowan Ricardo Phillips</b> is the author of <i>Heaven </i>(FSG, 2015) and <i>The Ground </i>(FSG, 2012). He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and the GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, and of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City.
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