Coffee Table Book of: Tennis (Paperback)

Coffee Table Book of: Tennis is a large format book of tennis, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the felt ball and the strung racket, lawns, red clay and hard courts standing empty at every hour, the net and its lines, the old games the sport grew from, and a few players seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The making and the care follow two pieces of felt shaped like a figure eight beside a rubber half shell, a coil of pale gut, a wooden racket clamped in its press, an iron roller on a lawn at dawn, a line marker at the start of a fresh white line, stripes of mown grass seen from above, red clay watered, brushed smooth and lined with nailed tape, the mark of a ball in the clay, a court cover rolled up in the rain and a squeegee on a wet hard court.

The past runs from a thin leather glove and a ball of stitched cloth from the palm game, a lopsided real tennis racket, handmade balls in a wooden bowl, a stone cloister and a tall bare hall, to the garden game of the 1870s: an old net on turned wooden posts, a croquet mallet and a racket against a brick wall, a boxed set with its net and posts, an iron push mower, bare rubber balls in a basket, a long white dress and a straw hat on a peg, white canvas shoes and an old racket on a garden step.

Short notes run through the book, on the rules and words of the game, the ball, racket and courts and how they are made and cared for, and the history of the sport from the palm game to the garden lawn: a tennis ball is a small, hollow rubber ball with a uniform outer cover of felt, the felt cover is usually a blend of wool and nylon, glued over the rubber core, a wooden racket was kept in a press, screwed tight round its head, so that the frame would not warp, and a tennis bubble is an indoor court under a dome held up by air pressure from blowers inside.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Perfect Bound

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-10-30

ISBN - 9671456008424

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 0.7 cm

Page Count - 100