Wimbledon Confidential

An entertaining and unfiltered look at professional tennis as only Patrick McEnroe can offer. Patrick McEnroe has been in the world of professional tennis in one way or another for most of his life. As a player, coach, and ESPN commentator, he's seen it all. The significant tennis books of recent years have all been autobiographies--famous players burnishing their image or attempting to set the record straight within carefully controlled memoirs. No one has been willing to do a book that pulls back the curtain and presents an honest, no-holds-barred look into the ultimate gentleman's sport and the larger-than-life personalities that inhabit it. Patrick McEnroe does just that. Curious to know which marquee player threw a tantrum and bailed early on a tournament? Why Roger Federer, presumably the greatest player of all time, has a losing head-to-head record with Rafael Nadal? Why certain tennis prodigies burned out early? The real role of coaches like Nick Bollettieri? Which player is as much of a diva off the court as on? The greatest match ever played? In Hardcourt Confidential, McEnroe uses his twenty-five-plus years in the trenches of the game to tell true tales and wild stories about the players you think you know (from Sampras to Agassi to Roddick to the Williams sisters), how and why the game has changed since he first swung a racket, and what the future holds in store for American tennis. McEnroe takes an unapologetic look at the men, women, and events of the past three decades, right up to the epic Federer vs. Nadal rivalry that dominates the game today. He's got a lot to say and he's not afraid to say it.

Includes insights about the top players through full-length interviews and features

Tennis has never before been blessed with such an array of talented stars doing battle for the sport's most coveted titles. Games featuring Murray, Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, the Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova are among the most thrilling matches in the history of the game - and Neil Harman has witnessed them all. He is so close to the beating heart of tennis that he has become a confidant to many of the game's stars and administrators, even at one stage mentoring Victoria Azarenka to help her handle the media pressure at the top of the women's game. In short, Neil enjoys a privileged access that is unmatched elsewhere in the sport. Here he shares tennis's most intimate secrets in a book replete with personality, excitement, drama and intrigue. Featuring frank, in-depth interviews with all the leading players, their coaching staff, their agents and managers, Harman presents the game from an insider's perspective and offers the fresh insights and strong personal views for which he is celebrated. Court Confidential recounts a defining time for modern-day tennis: from Wimbledon to the Olympic Games, from Serena Williams's battle with illness to Andy Murray's historic grand slam victory, this is a book for tennis fans everywhere.

An autobiography which provides an account of more than 30 years of author's professional involvement with the tournament that turns the Championships inside out. It provides a picture of tennis stars who are so surrounded by minders that the public has little idea of what these sportsmen and women are really like.

This original and lively study is an analysis of the dynamics of British press reporting of India and the attempts made by the British Government to manipulate press coverage as part of a strategy of imperial control. The press was an important forum for debate over the future of India and was used by significant groups within the political elite to advance their agendas. Yet it also provided the wider British public with the information and images from which they formed their conception of the subcontinent. The repercussions of press reporting were accordingly considerable, being felt not only in Britain, but also within India and the wider world. For this reason British imperial administrators felt the need to integrate press management with their approach to government. Kaul focuses on a period which represented a critical transitional phase in the history of the Raj, witnessing the impact of World War I, major constitutional reform initiatives, the tragedy of the Amritsar massacre, and the launching of Gandhi's mass movement. The War was also a watershed in official media manipulation and in the aftermath of the conflict the Government's previously informal and ad hoc attempts to shape press reporting were placed on a more formal basis, being explicitly incorporated into official strategy. This book should be useful reading for students of the British empire, Indian history and the British press. It also offers important insights for students of media and communications studies and the history of political communication - and indeed anyone concerned with understanding the ever-deepening relationship between politics and the mass media today.

The original essays in this comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so-famous African American male and female athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how these changes mirrored the transformation of sports, American society, and civil rights legislation. Some of the athletes discussed include Marshall Taylor (bicycling), William Henry Lewis (football), Jack Johnson, Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Lewis, Alice Coachman (track and field), Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams.

Fields in Vision offers a comprehensive and analytical study of the international phenomenon of television sports coverage. Garry Whannel considers the historical development of sport on television, the growth of sponsorship and the way that television and sponsorship have re-shaped sport in the context of the enterprise culture. Drawing on archival research, Whannel first charts the development of the BBC Outside Broadcast department, and the growing battle for dominance between BBC and ITV, showing how sponsorship and the rising power of sports agents began to transform sport - not only in the UK but across the world - in the 1960s. He goes on to examine the implications of this vast and escalating global network during the 1980s by analysing the central role that stars and narratives began to play in television sport, presenting case studies of major contests such as Coe versus Ovett and Decker versus Budd. His study also takes into account one of the more indirect, but no less significant results of international televised sport - the rise of popular fitness chic and the American monopoly of the workout boom of the 1980s. Fields in Vision explains the development of television sport by linking its economic transformation with the cultural forms through which it is represented, offering a study encompassing not simply the sports world, but our relationship with television and the media industries as a whole.