Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Author of THE CIRCUIT
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:28]I'm honored to be interviewing Rowan Ricardo of Phillips.
[0:31]Today, Rowan is a poet, author, screenwriter, translator, and journalist.
[0:35]He has won many prestigious literary prizes and written four books.
[0:38]When blackness rhymes with blackness, the ground, heaven, which just won the Nicholas
[0:43]Guillen Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and his most
[0:48]recent, The Circuit of Tennis Odyssey.
[0:50]He has written about sports for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review.
[0:54]In English professor, he is taught at Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Princeton, and Stony
[0:58]Breck.
[0:59]He graduated from Swarthmore College and received his PhD from Brown University.
[1:03]He currently lives in New York and Barcelona.
[1:05]Just a friendly reminder, please follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at momstone
[1:10]have time to read books, and please subscribe to this podcast.
[1:12]Thanks so much.
[1:13]So I'm really excited to be here today with Rowan Ricardo Phillips, who's the author of
[1:18]The Circuit.
[1:19]We've already been chit chatting for a while, so I feel like we could talk forever.
[1:23]Welcome, Rowan.
[1:24]Hi, Zibi.
[1:25]Tell us what The Circuit is about, and what gave you the idea to write it.
[1:29]Yeah, The Circuit is a book and just published last year, so we're to say last year
[1:35]2018 in November by my publisher for us crossing Drew.
[1:39]It's a book about tennis and life.
[1:41]It's set to one year, the 2017 season from the start, January 1st, through the end in
[1:48]the end of November.
[1:49]So it becomes a chronicle of a year in the life of tennis and the way in which that year
[1:54]kind of marks a really incredible way that we saw two players that we thought were maybe
[2:01]done for, come back more, try them for it than ever, talking, of course, about Roger
[2:06]Fredron Raffron of the Al, but it's not a book about Fredron of the Al.
[2:09]It's a book about the year, the grind on The Circuit, and focus on the men's tour, though
[2:13]it also mentions the women's tour when the two intersect at places like Indian Wells, which
[2:18]I know you like to go to.
[2:19]I do two in some of the majors, but it's really a year in the life of 2017 was a unique
[2:26]year on the court and off, and I've often found myself wondering whether life seeps
[2:31]into the world of tennis, or whether tennis keeps it out, and it seemed like a wonderful
[2:37]year to kind of test that and explore it, and, you know, on geography, who's a player
[2:42]I've always loved and he has that wonderful autobiography open, and he talks about it.
[2:47]I know.
[2:48]I know.
[2:49]I know.
[2:50]I know.
[2:51]Hi, Andrea, if you're listening.
[2:52]But he talked about how he was explaining to his trainer Gill about The Circuit, the grind,
[2:55]the tour, and how it's players chasing the sun, right, in such an elegant way to think
[3:00]about it and, for me, it became a control among so many variables in tennis and in life.
[3:07]Who are you?
[3:08]Where are you?
[3:09]Where have I come from?
[3:11]What am I doing here?
[3:12]When you see in tennis players a lot of that going through their head while you're watching
[3:16]them, that's part of what I love about it.
[3:17]They're really exposed.
[3:18]No helmets, no teammates to pass to, and it's really just kind of the kinetics of
[3:23]problem solving.
[3:24]You're watching it either live or on television, and you don't know what's going to
[3:29]happen, but you feel involved and implicated, and I think that's why people become such
[3:33]devout fans of players.
[3:35]So yeah, that's what it's about.
[3:37]It's a book that kind of lives and breeds tennis, but is a way to kind of understanding
[3:42]how we live and what it means to kind of like think about a year in the life, right?
[3:46]Totally.
[3:47]You described it so beautifully in the beginning of your book when you were saying how
[3:51]2017 came with a lot of geopolitical, national, you know, controversy and issues and all
[3:59]the rest, and in the book you were kind of debating, you know, maybe this is an escape,
[4:03]is watching tennis and escape from it all.
[4:05]So you wrote, the world feels slippery, dense, supercharged with social and political
[4:09]change, and yet for a few hours here was tennis, literally a light and the sleepy darkness
[4:14]of my apartment.
[4:15]It's moments like this, these odd hours with the game on when it's metronome and angles
[4:19]take the form of therapy, I listened to the world, take it deep breath.
[4:22]It's so beautiful.
[4:23]You can tell this is like a poet writing a book, this is like, but it's true.
[4:28]It's like some people escape, there are different ways people escape and tennis, I feel
[4:32]like gives such a great way to do that.
[4:35]Yeah, I think that it becomes useful escape in two ways.
[4:40]One is for the individual, you know, it's January, I've been up way too early today because
[4:44]I've been watching this really open and when you live on this side of the world, when
[4:47]the tennis year starts and the year starts, you know, if you catch and matches live, it's
[4:51]this kind of commitment, you know, sort of like, you know how so many people in January
[4:56]have these New Year's resolutions and if you're an early bird, you look at your window
[4:58]and you see all these people running the first week of January and then you see fewer
[5:02]the second week, it feels the third week, but with tennis, it's not a resolution, it's
[5:06]just it's that time to kind of get up early and watch tennis kind of rejuvenate itself
[5:11]again.
[5:12]But it's also, I think, in escaping an unexpected way in that it builds community, you don't
[5:18]know who else is up until maybe, you know, you catch up with a friend, you're out at work
[5:22]and you're like, oh, how you doing?
[5:23]Oh, I'm alright, but I've been up since four because Roger Fredder was playing, I really
[5:27]want to see that match.
[5:28]Oh, you too, so there are ways in which these private joys that you have can become
[5:34]communal and bring us together.
[5:36]I also like to think of tennis as being an escape that rather paradoxically builds bridges.
[5:41]It's not an escape to shut yourself off, but it's rather an escape from the kind of paint-by-numbers
[5:49]life that we live if we're not careful.
[5:51]You know, when you follow tennis, when you follow a player you love, you know, you're
[5:54]in Melbourne one moment and then you are in Miami the next moment and then you're in
[6:00]Monte Carlo the next moment and it almost becomes like a caper or a chase and I like that.
[6:08]It's really crazy how much travel is involved.
[6:10]It's really crazy.
[6:11]It's really crazy.
[6:12]Like before I married Kyle who's like, who's in the professional tennis world and is
[6:14]such an addict that we watch every, every tournament all the time, I'm like that guy
[6:18]volleyball.
[6:19]I like him too.
[6:21]I couldn't believe how much travel, like these guys were just in this part of the world
[6:25]and now like two days later I'm like they're in another tournament so far it's crazy
[6:29]what your body has to go through.
[6:31]I mean after I like go to LA and I'm like oh my, oh my, I'm just like, yeah, just go
[6:36]back to the class myself and I'm like oh, right?
[6:38]I mean to have to travel that much and then for form it's such a high level it's such
[6:42]a big ask of these players really.
[6:45]Yeah and well and that's part of the reason why I wanted to set the book to a year because
[6:49]I wanted to see the way in which characters kind of appear and reappear.
[6:52]I started to think about players who you know if you're not a top 30 players say and
[6:58]you lose in the first amount of a tournament you get on a plane and finding the next tournament.
[7:02]Yeah.
[7:03]And it's hard to even really make a living even if you're not like in the top.
[7:06]Absolutely.
[7:07]All the, you know, absolutely the grind is real and even when spoiler alert the circuit
[7:12]begins in Brisbane, right?
[7:14]Everybody's warming up for the Australian Open and you see players showing up in their
[7:17]fresh.
[7:18]The Australian Open is great because you see players fresh, the new line of whatever brand
[7:23]they wear is fresh.
[7:24]Not tired of it yet.
[7:26]But then when you see them in say September at the Australian Open, not so fresh, you know.
[7:31]And in that way the book, it's a tennis odyssey.
[7:34]The title is the circuit a tennis odyssey, but it's really also kind of like ineliod as
[7:38]well.
[7:39]There's just, there are a lot of people in it and there's a lot of injury and there's
[7:44]a lot of trial and tribulation and some folks you see in the beginning don't make it to
[7:48]the end and some folks who are down for the count in the beginning pick themselves up in
[7:53]the end.
[7:54]It's a real, it's a grind, it's a beautiful grind.
[7:56]I don't know how they do it and sustain it, but I love to spend time with them in that
[8:02]way.
[8:03]It's a game that I think is deceiving as it be because it seems like it's about swinging
[8:06]a racket.
[8:07]What's about your feet and it's about your mind, you know, the strokes you get those kind
[8:11]of hardwired into you by the time you're 11 or 12, right?
[8:15]And you make some tweaks going forward, but you know, you have to have your strokes by
[8:18]the end, the rest is kind of like how you think and how your feet think.
[8:22]You love Roger Federer.
[8:24]I spend some times because I've spent most of my adult life watching him.
[8:29]I watch his feet now more than anything else, I don't watch his feet.
[8:32]See, the thing about Federer is that you know what you're saying about, you know, helmets
[8:37]and that you get to see the players.
[8:39]I feel like Roger Federer is so stoic, like he does, he's so good about not showing his
[8:46]emotion that I feel like I'm like, Jeff sometimes is his tennis is beautiful.
[8:51]It's like watching art, but I feel like and I can, I can talk about this for a bit.
[8:55]Anyway, I feel like someone like one routine del pocho is so expressive, right?
[8:59]And you see it and he like gets it.
[9:00]So I feel like I connect more sometimes with players who have it or more like open books.
[9:05]Yeah.
[9:06]Oh, yeah, that's right.
[9:07]You're more del pocho.
[9:08]Not Federer.
[9:09]No, it's kind of like still pocho.
[9:10]That's right.
[9:11]That's right.
[9:12]That's right.
[9:13]Well, but no, that's, I think that's fascinating because you say Federer is so stoic,
[9:17]but Federer's biggest meltdown on a court was against del pocho.
[9:21]2009, US Open, final del pocho wants to challenge a call.
[9:27]He takes his time, del pocho takes his time with most things.
[9:30]There's amount of time you have before you can challenge the chair and allows it and
[9:35]Federer's I rate and is doing change over and Federer just going off when they cheer
[9:40]on fire.
[9:41]And the chair on fire says to Federer, you know, well, I allowed it.
[9:44]You can calm down and Federer's might off on him, you know, don't tell me what to do.
[9:48]I'll talk whenever I want to talk.
[9:51]So I love that relationship between those two.
[9:52]I'm going to split the difference between the two of you.
[9:55]I like those two as a pair.
[9:56]Yes.
[9:57]I love Federer del pocho matches so much.
[10:00]And you were saying, you know, when you were saying that you're yelling at the umpire
[10:03]and I was like thinking, oh, that sounds interesting.
[10:05]I wouldn't mind going back and saying that you have a whole thing about bad boys in
[10:08]the book.
[10:09]Like, they're curious and how different, you know, what do you think?
[10:12]I know this wasn't something I was thinking about ahead of time.
[10:14]But what do you think about tennis like really sparks that bad boy instinct or makes
[10:19]people, you know, even just just come out with it more than maybe in other sports or
[10:25]maybe not?
[10:26]I don't know.
[10:27]You are in tennis hyper controlled until you're not.
[10:31]So many pros there are coaches.
[10:33]The first coach was their folks and many times their coach still is.
[10:37]Their parents or their parents are on the tour with them.
[10:40]Obviously not all of them, but you know, you have a weird relationship with a coach
[10:45]if the coach is not your parent and that you pay them, but they're supposed to be boss
[10:48]of you around, but you know that's until you carry the purse strings.
[10:53]So I think that there are very limited ways for tennis players to sort out their stresses.
[11:00]And I think that the kind of on font tree comes out from that, that you don't have venues
[11:06]to pop.
[11:07]You can see one of the things that I'm so amazing about open is how open Andre was about
[11:14]all of that.
[11:15]He was a guy who had all the equipments of a bad boy that he would get a discard.
[11:19]He would turn on Celine Dion or have you, right?
[11:22]Because that's actually who he was.
[11:24]And a lot of tennis players, I guess, to survive, they build up a big metaphorical callus
[11:29]or they're like an artichoke and it's hard to peel back the layers.
[11:32]But when you do, you find an idiosyncratic, complicated human being.
[11:36]I like that.
[11:37]What I don't like about the whole bad boy thing often and what I write about in the book
[11:42]regarding Nick is that we've seen it, you know what I mean?
[11:44]Yeah.
[11:45]Do something.
[11:46]Yeah.
[11:47]And every bad boy thinks they're inventing the wheel and that, you know, I don't like tennis
[11:51]or I'm going to, you know, do what I want to do, but it's kind of, you know?
[11:58]But everybody has to go through their process.
[12:00]You have kids.
[12:01]I have kids and, you know, I just kind of like trust the process and I find myself realizing
[12:06]as I get older that even if you've seen stuff before, sometimes you'll feel like they're
[12:10]discovering things and it's important for them to have that discovery.
[12:13]So, you know, Nick is somebody who seems like he's realized he needs some help off the
[12:18]cord and he's starting to embrace that and he had a really bad result and this was really
[12:22]an open already.
[12:23]But hopefully now he's going to start to be a trust the process person.
[12:26]He's got the talent to and multiple majors, but, you know, you got to go through seven
[12:30]matches and you're not always going to be playing federal or a joke or a victim of
[12:33]the aisle to get that adrenaline running.
[12:35]Sometimes you're going to be playing the 270th player in the world and you got to want
[12:38]that too.
[12:39]Speaking of process.
[12:40]So, tell me a little more about how you wrote this book.
[12:43]When did you write it?
[12:45]Did you write it?
[12:46]Like, while you're watching the matches, you take notes all year.
[12:48]And then go back.
[12:49]Like, how did you, and how did this book's process differ if at all from how you wrote
[12:53]your other book?
[12:54]Oh, wow.
[12:55]What a question.
[12:56]I didn't in January 1st say, I'm going to write a book about the UN Tennis.
[13:00]I knew I was going to start writing.
[13:01]I was already writing some sports pieces for the Paris Review and the New Yorker, but
[13:05]I basically write what moved me.
[13:07]When it moved me, I tore my Achilles tendon in the summer of 2016.
[13:12]It left me bedridden at home and I was watching a lot of tennis hopped up on a lot of
[13:16]oxycodone, which I stopped taking as soon as I could stop taking it, which you should
[13:21]do because it's very potent.
[13:23]But I was just watching so much tennis and I had so many questions about what was next,
[13:29]what was next after we saw a federal take that basically frat fall and center court at
[13:34]Wimbledon, what was next for Del Pochro, who disappeared with the injuries and surgeries
[13:39]on his risk.
[13:40]What was next for Nadal?
[13:41]What was next for Serena?
[13:43]What the hell happened?
[13:44]A joke of it.
[13:45]I had, who was coming next because it didn't really look like anyone was really ready.
[13:49]I had so many questions.
[13:50]I felt like 2016 was a cliffhanger and so I wanted to start writing and, you know, the
[13:55]Paris Review has always been really good for me and good to me and I've repaid them by
[14:00]giving them, I think, pieces that they're really proud of and, you know, I started by
[14:04]writing on the Australian Open.
[14:07]Before you knew it, we had a final of Venus and Serena and also Roger and Rafa, the
[14:13]day of the final between Fedor and Nadal was also the day of the executive order and
[14:20]the airport protests and everything and I really started to think about how, you know,
[14:24]some people were really up to watch this match because they thought, holy cow, it's a
[14:29]grand slam final between Fedor and Nadal.
[14:31]I don't know when this is going to happen again and when that match was over, they went
[14:33]to the airport, you know, and they congregate and they protested and started thinking
[14:37]about the ways in which, you know, tennis is part of the world, implicitly, explicitly
[14:42]whatever way it might be and I was writing essays and as I was writing on these matches,
[14:48]just kind of like the, the pull of a story, you know, of a book formed and so those essays
[14:55]grew into.
[14:56]A larger project which became the book, I'm not a note taker when I watch matches.
[15:00]I'm pretty big with, actually, I think I can answer both of your questions regarding
[15:04]the process in other books at the same time.
[15:06]I do a lot of my work in my head, actually, I like the risk of forgetting things, yes,
[15:10]I have a notebook, yes, I'm an avid note taker, but I do that not in the white heat of
[15:14]ideas.
[15:15]I like to think that if an idea is good, if an idea is memorable, you'll remember it
[15:19]and it's even better if you don't remember syllable, high syllable what you set at that
[15:23]time.
[15:24]It becomes rather this like atmosphere or this move that you have to put back together.
[15:27]The Nobel Prize winning poet, Derek Walcott, in his address in Stockholm, he said something
[15:33]to the effect of, take a broken vase and piece it back together and the love you'll find
[15:38]in those seams is greater than the beauty of an unpracked vase, right?
[15:44]I like to think about that when I think about how I approach writing in general, I let
[15:50]what's important bubble up, right?
[15:53]So Rafa once again in 2017, like in 2018, put everybody to the sword at the French
[15:59]Open, right?
[16:00]I was memorable to me about those tournaments then it's not necessarily that.
[16:04]You can click on any type of match report and see that, now that I'll completely annihilated
[16:09]someone, right?
[16:10]Just the fennel snap and they turned into dust.
[16:13]But those I love the, I love sometimes the great match is on court 18.
[16:18]I love sometimes when you had a tournament and there's stuff going on on the main court
[16:22]or whatever, but all of a sudden there's this kind of buzz that people start filling up
[16:25]this court.
[16:26]When you're like, why isn't it going to court 14, wasn't it, yeah, you know, what's going
[16:30]on over there and that's just, oh, that's just what it's all about.
[16:34]So I let my passions and my sense of things bring me through whatever, whatever matches
[16:43]seem really kind of alive and worth, worth dipping an amper, worth remembering, you know,
[16:48]you know, that's more than the match report or the final, you know, the final score or
[16:53]what have you, for instance.
[16:54]I mean, Nadal in 2017 and that final just destroyed Stanford, Renka.
[17:00]But I think Stan played a really good match.
[17:02]I think Stan played really well.
[17:04]There's just sometimes only so much you can do.
[17:06]Your memory isn't same that you know, you can like recall it with just, I mean, it seems
[17:11]like your brain is like, it's like you have it all.
[17:14]I don't know.
[17:15]I think it's kind of like a job requirement.
[17:16]All right.
[17:17]But that's what I love about.
[17:18]That's what I also love about tennis though.
[17:19]Like a good tennis player has to, if Kyle and I played and Kyle whip me, I hope I would
[17:24]have a sense of how he whip me, right?
[17:27]And I could try something different.
[17:29]Maybe it wouldn't work, but you can't just keep walking into the same wall again and
[17:34]again and again and again.
[17:36]And that's part of what was also fun about the book.
[17:38]Sometimes you have John and Larry played in Indian Wells in March.
[17:43]And now here they are in Shanghai.
[17:47]What's different?
[17:48]Yeah.
[17:49]And so yeah, maybe that's also from not always just writing things down.
[17:52]I remember things and I'm compelled by things and hopefully when I write a book, what
[17:57]I remember and what I want to tell you as a reader, you also think, you know what?
[18:02]Oh, I remember that.
[18:03]And yeah, that was awesome.
[18:04]Oh, I didn't remember that.
[18:05]I'm really glad to be diving back into that.
[18:08]But that's kind of, I don't know.
[18:10]That's the work of being human.
[18:11]All, you know, you write these books, all these wonderful authors that you have on on your
[18:15]wonderful podcast.
[18:16]It's kind of like the work of being human and humane and even with technology, whether
[18:21]it's these wonderful rackets and strings that now have, you know, you'll see I was
[18:26]just in P West and you'll see some separate generarians who just are wailing on the ball.
[18:32]If they could get to it, you know what I mean?
[18:35]They don't have the same coverage that they used to, but if they cash in the swing path,
[18:38]holy cow.
[18:39]And thanks.
[18:40]My dad isn't such a good tennis player.
[18:42]He's 70 busts.
[18:44]It's as if, I mean, they can do whatever.
[18:46]Well, and that's what it's like.
[18:47]I mean, I hope, you know, I hope when I'm in my 70s, I can, you know, play with Kyle or
[18:52]play with people I hit with now or play with my girls, so they can play with each other.
[18:55]And it's a sport that's not a lot of damage to a lot of people, but it's a beautiful
[18:59]bridge building, expressive sport that at its best also absorbs the environment that
[19:05]it's in.
[19:06]We were talking about that wonderful poured in Monte Carlo, but, you know, tennis becomes
[19:10]part of the environment that it's, that isn't, you know, at any type of club you go to
[19:15]the, the people who are there also become part of kind of like the lived history of the,
[19:21]the region, they become beautiful tennis course, become beautiful nexus for people
[19:25]of kind of like me, the morning people, I love a morning hit.
[19:29]The people who will hit in the middle of the day, bless them.
[19:31]I don't know how they do it.
[19:33]And then the night birds, but you learn a lot about yourself through tennis, and I certainly
[19:36]learned a lot about myself, so absolutely totally agree.
[19:40]The way you also describe all the different players have the guys on the tour become just
[19:45]the characters and like the story that you tell.
[19:47]And you write about it in such a great way.
[19:49]like even when you're talking about joke of it when he got like, we're watching him
[19:53]like, he looks so skinny, doesn't he?
[19:55]And meanwhile you write it beautifully, you're like joke of it for his part was looking
[19:58]as gone as he ever had.
[20:00]Slender or slim were approaching skeletal,
[20:02]as though his body were defending on itself
[20:04]from bottom to top, culminating in a sucked-out space
[20:07]on each side of his face where his cheeks used
[20:09]to be flush with life, and two dark vacancies
[20:12]where his eyes should be.
[20:13]That's just such a beautiful way to say, to comment
[20:16]and his physique.
[20:17]And then also to intrigue the reader.
[20:18]Like, what was going on with joke of it?
[20:20]It's like, we don't know, right?
[20:21]I mean, do we?
[20:22]Must be the gluten.
[20:23]Must be the gluten, exactly.
[20:25]And even when you talk about Alexander Dogo,
[20:28]kind of why he's pronounced at Dogo Polo,
[20:30]his game is like the band you think no one has heard of,
[20:32]the one with too many or too few people in it.
[20:34]You're guilty pleasure.
[20:35]That was so great.
[20:36]This is my last one to quote from about Nadal.
[20:38]Please don't stop.
[20:39]Please don't stop.
[20:41]Still, there was something singular about Nadal,
[20:43]a lesser physical specimen,
[20:44]would look like a walking creamsicle in what he was wearing.
[20:47]But he had somehow managed to spend the lifetime
[20:49]making outfits no one should be able to look serious
[20:51]and seem full of intent.
[20:53]Isn't it true though?
[20:54]It is true.
[20:55]It is true.
[20:56]He's such a singular awe-inspiring physical presence.
[21:01]He just makes stuff look good.
[21:03]You shouldn't be able to wear that stuff,
[21:06]but he rocks it like the champion is.
[21:08]And I've got a lot of admiration for that.
[21:10]Another one, they don't have the same body type,
[21:13]but stand for Rinko and he won the French Open.
[21:15]I don't know if you remember,
[21:16]but he was wearing some like checkered shorts
[21:18]that look physically like golf pants
[21:20]that were cut off and, hey man, hats off to you.
[21:24]You can wear the French Open or a hat.
[21:26]So you're writing style, you know,
[21:28]you're background poetry and everything.
[21:30]How is it different for you when you write prose versus poetry?
[21:32]Does it just seem so natural to you?
[21:34]It's like based on the material you're writing about or?
[21:37]I think they're just different faucets, different taps.
[21:40]I definitely don't have a moment where I go,
[21:42]now I'm writing poetry,
[21:44]and now I'm writing prose,
[21:45]but both are, I think about a relationship with time and space.
[21:48]When you write poetry, you have,
[21:49]if you're writing it down,
[21:50]you have a page, if you're composing in your head,
[21:52]there's still kind of space working out,
[21:54]but it's just kind of like you have a different sense of
[21:57]how you're occupying that space she's saying
[22:00]beyond the genius of the sea.
[22:02]The water never formed to mind a voice like a body,
[22:05]holy body, fluttering its empty sleeves.
[22:07]That's not me as well as Stevens.
[22:09]But that's just poems can start from completely out of nowhere
[22:14]in a way that prose really can't.
[22:16]And so I just try to be attentive to what my relationship to,
[22:22]what I want to say is,
[22:24]poetry is how I understand the world,
[22:26]even if I'm writing prose.
[22:27]But when I write and prose,
[22:29]I'm trying to establish a different type of relationship.
[22:31]I'm more interested in you knowing the who, what, where,
[22:34]how, why and when?
[22:37]Of what we're talking about,
[22:38]with poetry, it's the conversation from kind of like
[22:42]the censorial and all of these kind of like things
[22:43]you can't name inside of you,
[22:45]and this conversation you're having with the past, right?
[22:47]Like classical music and jazz.
[22:48]Well, I'm rockin' roll actually even too.
[22:50]These conversation with kind of like the greats
[22:53]for the past as well,
[22:54]and trying to kind of wrestle them into your own type of song.
[22:56]But I'm really fortunate to have an editor
[22:59]so good to me at F.S.K. in Jonathan Glassie,
[23:02]and he's, he looked at the book
[23:04]in what I was doing, and he was just like,
[23:05]this is great, just don't put any poetry in it
[23:08]because the poetry comes out of you anyway.
[23:09]So what you see in my writing style
[23:11]is kind of really, really just kind of like,
[23:13]if I don't think about poetry, the poetry leaks out.
[23:16]If I think about poetry when I write in prose,
[23:17]it's going to be kind of like,
[23:18]I wonder, Lord, there's a cloud,
[23:20]nobody's going to be very interested in that.
[23:22]So it's just kind of like being aware of
[23:25]what my goals as a writer are at a given time,
[23:28]and I told this story in a recent interview.
[23:31]It's not a story, don't worry, I'll keep it short.
[23:33]Poetry and tennis mix in all types of unexpected ways.
[23:36]I was mining my own business once in my dad called me,
[23:38]and he was like, turn on the TV,
[23:40]and I was like, turn on Wimbledon,
[23:42]and I was like, match it on, go on.
[23:43]I was like, turn it on.
[23:44]And John Worthheim was reciting
[23:47]a tennis poem that he written about Wimbledon on the air.
[23:51]And my folks have always been really supportive.
[23:54]I never had that moment where my folks were like,
[23:56]you want to do what?
[23:57]They're always really supportive of me,
[23:59]but it was kind of also nice to see that.
[24:01]I don't have to be the poet when it comes to do these things.
[24:04]And I didn't write this thinking,
[24:06]I'm a poet writing this book.
[24:08]I thought of John McPhee and his great levels of the game,
[24:12]and John Worthheim and his great strokes of genius,
[24:15]and Elizabeth Wilson's love game that I love so much.
[24:18]And Steve Tigor's great book on Oregon, Mackin' Row,
[24:22]and Louisa Thompson's great, great writing for the New Yorker,
[24:25]and the book's dedicated to her
[24:27]because she's as good as there is,
[24:28]and just kind of carrying on the conversation.
[24:31]There've been so many wonderful tennis writers.
[24:33]I'm happy to be among them,
[24:35]and hopefully I'm just kind of like,
[24:37]paying what they've given me forward, you know?
[24:39]And you do that line by line, I guess,
[24:41]the best way that you can.
[24:42]And this book was the best way that I can.
[24:44]I don't know if I have a circuit too.
[24:46]Yeah, I was gonna ask, what's coming next?
[24:49]Oh, well, right now I'm working on a screenplay,
[24:54]a biopic, it's a lot of fun,
[24:56]and I'm just finishing new book poems,
[24:58]and got another new fun project that's popping up.
[25:01]But what I love about this book has been the response.
[25:04]It's been really great and heartening,
[25:06]and I like the fact that people want more.
[25:08]I really wanted to write about the WTA and the ATP tour together.
[25:12]And actually, you know, I should have told you this
[25:14]at the beginning when you asked me about writing this book.
[25:17]At first, I was trying to do that.
[25:19]It's what I wanted to do.
[25:20]It was the task that's greater than me.
[25:22]The two tours are just such different, a species sadly.
[25:25]Not just the rules, but the locations and everything like that.
[25:28]And by the time the WTA is over,
[25:30]the WTA is basically an Asia at the rest of the time.
[25:33]And some matter, I come back to you a lot.
[25:35]I grew up loving women's tennis.
[25:38]I was fortunate to have folks who just really,
[25:41]like, really, really, really loved watching Martina and Chris.
[25:46]And that girl crush on Chrissy Everett.
[25:48]She was like, my hero growing up.
[25:49]Right. Right.
[25:50]But then even I'll see a Gibson when you go back.
[25:53]And even now, I mean, I've got a real sort of spot for the women
[25:57]with the one handers on the tour.
[25:58]Oh, you know, Carlos Suarez, Nevada, Tajana Maria,
[26:03]Margarita, Kasparian.
[26:05]I just, I love the expressiveness of the women's game.
[26:07]I still maintain the Celis, Caparotti, Capriotti.
[26:12]Semi final in 91 was maybe the most influential match
[26:16]of the past 35 years that it brought the future
[26:19]that we didn't know was coming to tennis.
[26:21]And then that, of course, was followed up by the William Sisters
[26:25]and everything that came after.
[26:26]But that match, I still think of kind of like the game of Thrones
[26:30]of tennis matches, great match, and to see those kids.
[26:33]Not just hitting the ball that hard,
[26:35]but being that competitive through three sets was great.
[26:38]Sadly, and this is kind of part of the complicated part of tennis,
[26:42]right?
[26:42]I mean, Capriotti and Celis, when you think about kind
[26:45]of what happened to both of them down the road
[26:46]and you didn't see any of that coming.
[26:48]But it just reminds you how life throws all types of top spin
[26:52]and underspin and side spin at you.
[26:56]And they're both now thriving in different ways as well.
[26:59]And I also love to see like Andre, who's, you know,
[27:03]I could not say enough about Andre Agassi.
[27:05]But I love seeing tennis players
[27:06]who kind of like find things after tennis, too.
[27:10]Yeah, it's heartening.
[27:11]It's really heartening.
[27:12]So for, I know we have to wrap up soon,
[27:15]but for aspiring poets or prose writers or tennis reporters,
[27:20]anyone, do you have any pieces of advice
[27:22]for them based on your experience?
[27:24]Well, based on my experience, I would say with poetry,
[27:27]I'd say read everything and live, you know?
[27:30]I don't, you know, I'm fortunate enough
[27:33]to travel a lot to read and talk about my work.
[27:36]And, you know, you get the expected question of who should I
[27:39]read, who are your heroes and those types of things?
[27:41]And I always see, you know, I have a non-hierarchical mind
[27:45]that, you know, your heroes will let you down
[27:48]because they're supposed to.
[27:49]And there are writers you don't think much of
[27:51]who might have a sentence or a poem or short story
[27:55]that grabs you.
[27:55]And that's what it's also about, the surprise of it.
[27:58]So just kind of like read everything and live in Tenselin.
[28:02]You know, for people who are inspiring,
[28:04]who are aspiring, excuse me, to be part of, you know,
[28:08]writing on tennis, there's so many other people
[28:10]with better advice out there, I think, to give.
[28:13]But I do find there's a world out there
[28:15]in terms of writing on sports in general
[28:18]that you can maybe fit into,
[28:20]but it's not best for you in the long game.
[28:22]I've been on the ground at a number of events
[28:25]with credentials and you see the grind
[28:27]that it is, the slog that it is, you know,
[28:31]match reports get written before the match is over.
[28:33]Press boxes are crowded and people can barely see.
[28:36]People are hustling down to ask a question of a tennis player
[28:40]or whatever athlete and a presser,
[28:42]because the editor asked them to ask that question
[28:44]or they know that that's the only thing
[28:45]that's gonna get filed.
[28:46]So they need to take that angle.
[28:48]When you can quite easily lose the quick silver
[28:53]necessary idiosyncrasy of yourself, right?
[28:56]Man, I don't know what to say to anybody
[28:58]regarding that, that the long game in sports and in art
[29:02]is the, it's not only the most important thing,
[29:05]it's the only thing, the long game is the only game.
[29:08]I mentioned John McPhee earlier, John McPhee.
[29:11]If you look at his career and what he shows to do,
[29:16]he pops in and out when he wants to
[29:18]and how he wants to, because in the end,
[29:20]what you leave is what you leave.
[29:21]I don't think that people are gonna be reading
[29:23]match reports of a semi-final match
[29:25]or somebody's interview or a young tennis player
[29:28]who's trying to park a car 30 years from now.
[29:30]And then does it necessarily need to be the goal
[29:32]of anyone, everybody has their own objectives in writing.
[29:36]But information now, technology.
[29:38]What I love about this podcast and what you're doing is
[29:40]it's labor of love, you know, we're coming together
[29:42]and we're talking kind of unfiltered from the heart.
[29:45]And that's the one which technology in sports
[29:47]can kind of like bring us hopefully to new plateaus.
[29:51]But there's a way in which if you're not careful,
[29:53]you can get perks that seem useful.
[29:56]I get to see the matches, I get to expense my meals.
[29:58]Isn't this great?
[30:00]And...
[30:00]And seven years later, you're still doing the same thing.
[30:03]It's a grind.
[30:04]So I would just say that, believe in good sentences
[30:08]and believe that your experience is a singular experience
[30:10]and that it matters.
[30:11]Understand that access at this point in game is not a charade,
[30:15]but it's a type of dance wear.
[30:18]I don't know how much the reporter is needed
[30:21]if you had David Haverstam, another great hero of mine.
[30:25]He's stuck around with the trailblazers,
[30:27]the Portland Trailblazers in the late 70s.
[30:29]He wrote a book about it, right?
[30:30]It's kind of on the beat for the year,
[30:32]but athletes don't need us in that way anymore.
[30:34]They have Instagram, they have PR firms
[30:37]and everything like that.
[30:38]They don't need you, and they know that.
[30:41]So they put stipulations on you for access.
[30:44]Access is the carrot that's dangled in front of you.
[30:46]But then it becomes a lot about leverage relationships.
[30:49]Fortunately, that's not the case for me.
[30:50]I feel very blessed in that sense,
[30:52]but it's easy to be swallowed up in the maelstrom
[30:54]of all of that.
[30:55]So be an individual and write well
[30:58]and whatever gift you have, just try to pay it forward.
[31:02]That's why I love what you're doing, you know what I mean?
[31:04]That's about paying things forward.
[31:06]Is it be, you know the sweetest thing I've heard
[31:08]in response to this book is, you know,
[31:10]I read this book and I want to go play.
[31:12]Or I read this book and I used to watch a lot of tennis
[31:14]but no, I'm gonna watch a lot of tennis.
[31:15]That for me is what it's all about.
[31:18]It's paying it forward, you know?
[31:20]Well, thank you so much.
[31:21]It's been truly, truly a pleasure to chat with you.
[31:24]Thank you. Thank you.
[31:25]Thank you.
[31:26]This episode has been sponsored by Bookhampton.
[31:29]Bookhampton.com.
[31:30]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[31:32]for the audio editing and mixing.
[31:34]Thanks for listening to maelstrom.
[31:35]Have time to read books.