Levels of the Game

"Levels of the Game" is, on the surface, an account of a single match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in the semifinals at the U.S. Open in Forest Hills. But as the title suggests, a game --- any game, at any degree of competition --- is not just about competence. How you play is a revelation of character; how you play is who you are. It's on all the other levels that this is a great book --- one of the greatest you may ever read, period. First, because of the subject. Arthur Ashe was not the Jackie Robinson of tennis; when he emerged in the 1960s, he was the only African-American player of note in America. Clark Graebner was a dentist's son and a ringer for Clark Kent. As it happened, Ashe and Graebner were both best-of-breed. It's not inaccurate to say that they were friends. But you can't miss the notion that they are also archetypes: privileged white kid from Ohio vs. against-all-odds black kid from Virginia. In a mere 146 pages, John McPhee --- you know his byline from a zillion profiles in The New Yorker, many of them mesmerizing, some beyond dull, but all meticulously reported and more carved than written --- has pulled off a literary coup. He has written an account of the match that's thrilling sports reporting. After, he clearly interviewed Ashe and Graebner at length, for he recreates what they were thinking and feeling at every key point in the match. And then he goes still deeper, talking to parents and wives, coaches and mentors, so he can deliver acute biographies of each player and a revelatory portrait of a sport --- and a nation --- in transition. A mediocre writer would construct this book with long passages in italics. Or chapters that pull us out of the match and take us back to Virginia or Ohio. Well, you don't write a book called "Levels of the Game" without being aware of the levels of your craft --- and knowing that, when you settle yourself at the keyboard, you can play at a championship level. Which is not to say that the book reads like "great writing". Just the opposite. It reads like great storytelling. There are no flights of language. It's just great reporting. And then, for a paragraph or a page, the telling of a story that takes place far from Forest Hills that helps to explain why Ashe or Graebner are playing a certain way or having certain thoughts about their match. The biographical, historical and psychological passages are surprising. And thrilling --- you will be amazed at what Ashe had to overcome, and who helped, and how it worked out. And the same for Graebner, though, of course, the challenges are considerably smaller. But what's most exhilarating is when the strands merge, and you're both in the match and inside the players' heads. Like this: Now the thought crosses Graebner's mind that Ashe has not missed a service return in this game. The thought unnerves him a little. He hits a big one four feet too deep, then bloops his second serve with terrible placement right into the center of the s

Anyone who has written will appreciate this book, and how McPhee tells two stories-the forestory and the back story-and keeps both moving along nicely. This is among several McPhee books that are worth looking at closely, for anyone who loves to write-or loves to read.

Ostensibly this book is about a tennis match, Arthur Ashe versus Clark Graebner in the 1968 US Open Semifinals. The match was historic in itself: "It has been thirteen years since an American won the men's-singles final at Forest Hills, and this match will determine whether Ashe or Graebner is to have a chance to be the first American since Tony Trabert to win it all. Ashe and Graebner are still amateurs, and it was imagined that in this tournament, playing against professionals, they wouldn't have much of a chance. But they are here, close to the finish, playing each other. For Graebner to look across a net and see Ashe--and the reverse--is not in itself unusual. They were both born in 1943, they have known each other since they were thirteen, and they have played tournaments and exhibitions and have practiced together in so many countries and seasons that details blur." But McPhee is actually after bigger game than this one match. He also provides insightful portraits of the two very different contestants. Ashe, the only championship level Black tennis player of his time, is single, liberal, mercurial, a finesse player and a risk taker. Graebner is married with kids, conservative, religious, a power player and risk averse. McPhee demonstrates how their personalities influence, indeed shape, their play and how their lifelong rivalry lifts their games to higher levels when they play one another, ultimately lifting Ashe's game towards perfection by the end of this contest. Ashe would go on to win the tournament, becoming the only amateur to win it in the Open era and together Ashe and Graebner lead the US to it's first Davis Cup in years. After that though, while Ashe went on to a respectable career, Graebner slipped into obscurity. But in this book, McPhee has preserved a moment in time when the two were evenly matched on the court, despite being polar opposites off of the court and in charting the lives that brought them to that moment, he provides a penetrating glance at two fascinating men. This is a real pinnacle in Sports writing. GRADE: A

To say John McPhee has written the best tennis book ever is to say too little. This is far more than a tennis book and, if you're looking for instruction, far less. The platform, if you'll excuse the tennis pun, is a U.S. Open final between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe, but it is a study of two men and what brought them to this point, athletically but especially sociologically. The reflective Southerner forced to be a pioneer because he is black. The more rigid son of the Midwest and privilege, with greater power and less versatility. The vagaries that make them human: Graebner, the more up-tight, gambling with a prepared point successfully at a crucial spot in the match. And at the end, there is Ashe, triumphantly whistling a winner off his suspect backhand to close out the match. You want to cheer. And you understand more about people than when you opened the book.

This book is so gracefully written that it isn't till the end that one realizes that McPhee's writing style(s) has been imitating the players' tennis styles, and that his language has moved effortlessly intune with the 'Levels of the Game'. Inlight of Arthur ashe's death, the book acheives a new poignancy.