Epic (eBook)

Matthew Cronin is the main tennis columnist for Fox Sports and a senior writer for Inside Tennis magazine. He contributes regularly to Reuters and USTA.com and appears fre-quently as a tennis analyst on radio and television stations throughout the United States and abroad. He is the main writer for TennisReporters.net, the award-winning, second-largest pro tennis site in the United States, and is a radio analyst at all the Grand Slams: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open.

Acknowledgments.Foreword (Tracy Austin).Introduction: July 5, 1980.Part One: WIMBLEDON.1 Taming a Passionate Spirit.2 A Losing Set Is Not So Much after All.3 "A Little Boy or a Midget in Disguise?"4 Better Call a Cab.5 Th e Sport's First Rock Star.6 "I Can Do Anything with a Tennis Ball".7 France to Stanford.8 A Four-Hour Match.9 "Borg Is Borg".10 The Battle Begins.11 To the Ends of the Earth.12 Both Still Alive.13 In Search of the True Genius.14 The War of 18-16.15 "A Notch above Son of Sam".16 Love and Sets.17 Th e Genius Tested in London.18 True Nature.19 "Something in Me Wilted".20 Living the Moments.Part Two: THE U.S. OPEN.21 Rock of Gibraltar.22 The Cowboy Bucks Up.23 "I Didn't Know What Was Happening".24 The North Star of Vitas.25 Willing and Able.26 Among the Bad Actors.27 Frozen in Time.28 "You Are Not Going to See a Tougher One".29 "Poetry Written on Water".Epilogue: Th e End of a Great Rivalry.Bibliography.Index.

In the late 1970s, professional tennis held a firm grip on the United States, and no two players better personified the sport's growth than cool-as-ice Swede Borg and brash New Yorker McEnroe. In his first book, Fox Sports tennis columnist Cronin captures a series of pivotal events in the evolution of the sport from European to American dominance, from wood to metal racquets, and from staid players to a colorful cast of supporting characters including Ilie Nastase, Vitas Gerulaitis, Jimmy Connors, and Guillermo Vilas. Despite its misleading subtitle, Epic recounts much than that magical 1980 season, with the marathon 1980 Wimbledon final serving as Cronin's hook. In that match, the veteran Borg (en route to his record fifth consecutive Wimbledon title) outlasted the upstart Mac (who grew up with a Borg poster on his bedroom wall) in a five-set showdown. Chapters containing point-by-point analysis of that match take advantage of the author's seasoned knowledge of the game, and a lengthy denouement recounts Mac's revenge against Borg at the 1980 U.S. Open. Although it appears he didn't have personal access to his protagonists, Cronin gets to the heart of Borg's genius and explores the catalyst for McEnroe's ugly on-court temperament, while providing context with historical and pop-culture references and mostly avoiding melodramatic play-by-play prose. (Apr.) (PublishersWeekly.com, 16 May 2011)