The Circuit

"Phillips reveals his love of tennis on every page. There is a generosity of spirit toward the reader . . . a joy to read: a poet’s love song to the game of tennis."—Geoff Macdonald, The New York Times Book Review

“As an aficionado and player, Phillips is especially attuned to tennis’ weirdness among other sports . . . Phillips’ lyrical impulses ignite his compressed, efficient, accurate, lively and always liquid prose . . . Phillips wields his prose like an elegant, one-handed backhand, fending off florid metaphors and deflecting the canards about sports, to present the tour’s basic process: the sport is a distraction.”—Walton Muyumba, Los Angeles Times

“The touchstone for any tennis writer is John McPhee, who wrote Levels of the Game, the finest book in the history of the sport. Mr. Phillips has writing skills comparable to Mr. McPhee’s, which is high praise.”—Tom Perrotta, The Wall Street Journal

“Phillips keeps the pages turning with an easy yet exacting style and keen observations. Tennis nerds in particular will enjoy his parsing of Federer’s retooled backhand . . . Phillips’s wit suffuses this text . . . The Circuit is a welcome palate cleanser, a license to enjoy an underrated sport at its best. It’s a love letter that looks to inspire a new generation of fans to watch through the darkness, and to motivate the older zealots among us to keep spreading the gospel to all corners."—Andrew Lawrence, The Atlantic

"Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s The Circuit is a tennis romance, and unique. Phillips knows the love. He is a sportswriter and poet, and remarkably, because tennis love isn’t easy to explain, he has found the right supple, sometimes tactile, and tender language for it."—Lynne Tillman, Bookforum