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E. Digby Baltzell, "Sporting Gentlemen"
English | ISBN: 1412851807 | 2013 | 468 pages | PDF | 13 MB
Tennis is a high-stakes game, played by prodigies identified early and coached by professionals in hopes of high rankings and endorsements. This commercial world is far removed from the origins of the sport. Before 1968―when Wimbledon invited professional players to compete for the first time―tennis was part of a sportsmanship tradition that emphasized character over money. It produced well-rounded gentlemen who expressed a code of honor, not commerce.
In this authoritative and affectionate history of men's tennis, distinguished sociologist E. Digby Baltzell recovers the glory of the age. From its aristocratic origins in the late ninteenth century, to the Tilden years, and through a succession of newcomers, the amateur era and its virtues survived a century of democratization and conflict. examines the greatest players and matches in the history of tennis. Baltzell explores the tennis code of honor and its roots in the cricket code of the late-nineteenth-century Anglo-American upper class.
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