Evans crystallizes the origins of the game, tracing the sport from the 16th Century all the way up to 1874 and the official birth of the game invented by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. Nevertheless, his grasp of what matters is unassailable. Evans wisely elects to devote a limited amount of space to the evolution of tennis in its embryonic stages. This journey through the heart of tennis history is thoroughly encompassing. Presidential campaigns and conventions in the 1960’s and seventies, he has always had an agile mind, a sharp eye and quite a good ear for politics in both the world at large and the universe of tennis. It is in clarifying some of the overarching issues in tennis that Evans is at his best. Others have thrown their hats into the ring of tennis history with similar pieces of scholarly work.Įvans does a fine job in his book of combining statistical analysis of the game with a lofty overview of the most prominent champions and personalities, along with isolating landmark developments in the shaping of the sport including the quest for Open Tennis in 1968, the crucial 1970 formation of the “Original Nine” in women’s tennis, the men’s ATP boycott of Wimbledon in 1973, and a number of other things. The last edition came out after Collins passed away in 2016. Bud Collins wrote his first encyclopedia more than forty years ago and later put out several versions of “The Bud Collins History of Tennis”. The lyrical Italian Gianni Clerici put out a highly regarded and perhaps definitive book on tennis history in the 1970’s.

To be sure, there have been other authors who have written voluminously on essentially the same topic and contributed mightily to the literature of tennis. This must be considered his most important work yet.

Evans has traveled as widely as anyone in his profession and, with urbanity and sophistication, has played a role in boosting the popularity of the game with his astute reporting and unbridled enthusiasm for where he believes tennis fits into the fabric of society.Ĭonsidering his stature as a reporter, it is fitting that Evans has released a new book entitled “The History of Tennis”. In many ways, through so many eras in an abundance of capacities, Evans has been synonymous with tennis, living it and breathing it from his youth into his eighties, witnessing all of the sea changes, writing about the game with both exuberance and sagacity.

In defense of history richard evans