
On Tennis
Five Essays
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
About this listen
From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers.
A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not").
With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.
©2014 David Foster Wallace (P)2014 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
He's been called the best in the world at the mental game of tennis. Brad Gilbert's strokes may not be pretty, but looks aren't everything. He has beaten the tour's biggest names - all by playing his "ugly" game. Now, in Winning Ugly, Gilbert teaches recreational players how to win more often without necessarily even changing their strokes. The key to success, he says, is to become a better thinking player - to recognize, analyze, and capitalize. That means out-thinking opponents before, during, and after a match - forcing him or her to play your game.
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Tried and True
- By Professor Hardcore on 09-12-18
By: Brad Gilbert, and others
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A Champion's Mind
- Lessons from a Life in Tennis
- By: Pete Sampras, Peter Bodo
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest tennis player ever, a man whose hard-nosed work ethic led to an unprecedented number one world ranking for 286 weeks, and whose prodigious talent made possible a record-setting 14 Grand Slam titles. While his more vocal rivals sometimes grabbed the headlines, Pete always preferred to let his racket do the talking. Until now.
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Not As Strong As His Forehand
- By A. M. Dalessandro on 07-21-09
By: Pete Sampras, and others
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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
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David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
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This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
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Open
- An Autobiography
- By: Andre Agassi
- Narrated by: Erik Davies
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography. Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf.
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Just an Incredible Story!
- By Patrick on 12-13-09
By: Andre Agassi
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The Operating System
- An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State
- By: Eric Laursen, Maia Ramnath - foreword
- Narrated by: Bea Flowers
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.
By: Eric Laursen, and others
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Infinite Jest
- By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 64 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
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With footnotes!
- By George Saris on 04-25-24
By: David Foster Wallace, and others
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The Rain King
- A Murder of Crows, Book 1
- By: Selena
- Narrated by: Amanda L'Orien, Gregory Salinas
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Mysterious. Dark. Deadly. They say crows are bad omens, but until I met them, a single crow was my only friend. Then, the boys next door come to welcome me to the neighborhood.
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Hate FMC
- By Anonymous User on 05-22-25
By: Selena
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Childhood, Boyhood and Youth
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Roger May
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending fact and fiction, this trilogy by a very young Tolstoy centres on the inner life of Nikolai as he navigates the universal challenge of growing up. In relating his thoughts and feelings, his self-awareness and embarrassing mistakes, the work is timeless: regardless of era, location and environment, we are given an unvarnished portrait of one boy—both self-important and self-deprecating—as he tries to find his place in the world. The sense of nostalgia, with its strange blend of sadness and solace, is tangible as the years pass and the child becomes a young man.
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
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Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
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Tennis Strategy 101
- Master The Basics To Win The Close Matches
- By: Bill Patton, Chuck Tomlin
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Are you a player who has been playing competitive matches for less than a few years? Are you in the NTRP range of 2.5-3.5 or UTR 1.0 - 4.0? Do you lose matches you felt you should win? Are you the better player with technical skills and/or athleticism, but are not coming out on top against seemingly lesser players? The bad news is that the scoreboard doesn't lie. The good news is that this book is designed to put you on a firm foundation, to help you win the close matches.You can have fewer bad days, and also gain more satisfaction with less frustration. It's not Winning Ugly, The Inner ...
By: Bill Patton, and others
Where does On Tennis rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Best so far. But to be honest I've only read (listened) to three.Who was your favorite character and why?
The author is my favorite character because he is both informative, entertaining, and insightful. Okay, that's three, but still, it's a treat of a book for anyone remotely interested in tennis.Have you listened to any of Robert Petkoff’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
The narrator rocks.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Laugh out loud funny. And often.Read This Book
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He got it!
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Worth re-reading!
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Pro Tennis in a nutshell
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A must have for tennis enthusiasts
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Wonderful tennis stories..
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Captures all that makes tennis magical & artistic
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Even if you have never played, or even seen a tennis match, this ride is well worth the price of a ticket.
Why Tennis?
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Fantastic performance
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This Guy Can Write
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