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My Life with the Pros
The man responsible for making tennis an extremely popular television sport recounts his early days of reporting on the game, describes the great matches at Forest Hills, Wimbledon, and smaller courts, and discusses prominent players
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 9, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2021
Entertaining. A bit dull in parts. Great others with classic stories of McEnroe, Connors, Lendl, Laver, Evert, Navratilova. Cool stories on Cold War era tennis. For the true fan. Not a lot on broadcasting/sideline reporting.
August 28, 2023
Only took me a whopping two years to finish, after I started this sometime in 2021, began an adult reentry into college, and promptly left it on the backburner. Whoops. Well, it's done now - finally. :)
Even when I initially started it, I found it a bit disorienting, without being able to put my finger on precisely why, then revisiting it some time later made it clear: Bud skips around the proverbial timeline a *lot* in this book. One moment, we're in 1963, discussing Bud's initial foray into the world of television, then in the next chapter, we're in 1979, recalling the first live "Breakfast at Wimbledon" telecast on NBC (RIP). I suppose this choice makes thematic sense in tying all of these various anecdotes together, but as a chronological tale, this is WAY out of order - quite often, threads are sewn that aren't picked back up until later, so make sure you're paying attention.
As the writing style itself goes, it's easy-going, breezy, affable - like having a pleasant conversation. If you're familiar with the late veteran's style and demeanor during his on-air appearances, you know what to expect. The funniest anecdote for me was when Bud recollected a tale of one of his first newspaper editors telling him to curtail his language - an early story about college football featured a line about Holy Cross "encroaching on the end zone proximity of the enemy," for which Bud's verbosity received a mild chastising and ended with the line being recast as, "they were close to Dayton's goal line." As someone who often grasps for synonymous phrases out of a desire not to be repetitive, I certainly understand Bud's thinking there - but at the end of the day, a simple, direct sports column is what was being penned, not a college textbook, which was the editor's point. It made me chuckle.
I also enjoyed the chapter on Jimmy Van Alen and his anti-deuce crusade, out of which the tiebreaker (currently still in use on the ATP & WTA tours) was born. I am one of the Philistines who would be in favor of no-ad scoring, or at the VERY least, curtailing the amount of deuces...there's no way, for one obvious example, that you'd EVER be able to convince me that something like the recent Alcaraz/Djokovic Wimbledon final, which contained a 13-deuce, 26-minute game, has any clear benefit for the players or viewers, while the score sits in place for an undetermined (and often interminable) amount of time. If you think that deuce should remain, fine, but my middle ground solution has always been to put a cap on the # of occurrences - say, the 5-10 range, then you play a sudden death point. Why not? I can't think of any other sport that has a rule which could lead to a potentially infinite loophole of time - one game lasting several hours because the participants are stuck in the deuce stranglehold. Kooky and unlikely to happen, sure, but it IS possible.
Were Goodreads more flexible in its ranking and allowed half stars like the other arenas in which I do my (feeble) cataloging, I'd probably hit this with a (weak) 3.5; I wound up enjoying it much more than I thought I wound in the beginning. As it stands among these parameters, I'll have to go with a 3. Good, informative, light reading that - just prepare yourself for a ride that isn't strictly a straight-line narrative, and you'll likely be fine.
Even when I initially started it, I found it a bit disorienting, without being able to put my finger on precisely why, then revisiting it some time later made it clear: Bud skips around the proverbial timeline a *lot* in this book. One moment, we're in 1963, discussing Bud's initial foray into the world of television, then in the next chapter, we're in 1979, recalling the first live "Breakfast at Wimbledon" telecast on NBC (RIP). I suppose this choice makes thematic sense in tying all of these various anecdotes together, but as a chronological tale, this is WAY out of order - quite often, threads are sewn that aren't picked back up until later, so make sure you're paying attention.
As the writing style itself goes, it's easy-going, breezy, affable - like having a pleasant conversation. If you're familiar with the late veteran's style and demeanor during his on-air appearances, you know what to expect. The funniest anecdote for me was when Bud recollected a tale of one of his first newspaper editors telling him to curtail his language - an early story about college football featured a line about Holy Cross "encroaching on the end zone proximity of the enemy," for which Bud's verbosity received a mild chastising and ended with the line being recast as, "they were close to Dayton's goal line." As someone who often grasps for synonymous phrases out of a desire not to be repetitive, I certainly understand Bud's thinking there - but at the end of the day, a simple, direct sports column is what was being penned, not a college textbook, which was the editor's point. It made me chuckle.
I also enjoyed the chapter on Jimmy Van Alen and his anti-deuce crusade, out of which the tiebreaker (currently still in use on the ATP & WTA tours) was born. I am one of the Philistines who would be in favor of no-ad scoring, or at the VERY least, curtailing the amount of deuces...there's no way, for one obvious example, that you'd EVER be able to convince me that something like the recent Alcaraz/Djokovic Wimbledon final, which contained a 13-deuce, 26-minute game, has any clear benefit for the players or viewers, while the score sits in place for an undetermined (and often interminable) amount of time. If you think that deuce should remain, fine, but my middle ground solution has always been to put a cap on the # of occurrences - say, the 5-10 range, then you play a sudden death point. Why not? I can't think of any other sport that has a rule which could lead to a potentially infinite loophole of time - one game lasting several hours because the participants are stuck in the deuce stranglehold. Kooky and unlikely to happen, sure, but it IS possible.
Were Goodreads more flexible in its ranking and allowed half stars like the other arenas in which I do my (feeble) cataloging, I'd probably hit this with a (weak) 3.5; I wound up enjoying it much more than I thought I wound in the beginning. As it stands among these parameters, I'll have to go with a 3. Good, informative, light reading that - just prepare yourself for a ride that isn't strictly a straight-line narrative, and you'll likely be fine.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews