You ever watch a Roger Federer highlight reel on YouTube and feel like you're watching someone break the laws of physics? Like, the guy shouldn't be able to hit a flick-of-the-wrist passing shot while running full tilt in the wrong direction, but he does it anyway.
Honestly, most sports writing is just a collection of clichés about "giving 110 percent" or "taking it one game at a time." It's boring. But when you read tennis David Foster Wallace style, things get weirdly beautiful. Wallace didn't just write about the score. He wrote about the "kinetic beauty" of the game and how top-tier athletes are basically our culture's version of holy men.
He knew what he was talking about because he lived it. Sorta.
The "Near-Great" Junior from Tornado Alley
Before he was the guy who wrote Infinite Jest, Wallace was a "near-great" junior tennis player in Central Illinois. He wasn't a powerhouse. He was a "pusher." If you play tennis, you know the type. They don't hit winners; they just hit the ball back, over and over, until you get so frustrated you blast a forehand into the parking lot.
Wallace played in what he called "Tornado Alley." We're talking gale-force winds that would move a lob three feet to the left in mid-air. In his essay Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley, he explains how he used math and geometry to win. While other kids were trying to play "textbook" tennis, Wallace was calculating wind resistance and court imperfections.
- Rankings: At fourteen, he was ranked 17th in the USTA Western Section and 4th in Illinois.
- The Style: He called his game "grotesque." It wasn't pretty. It was about survival in a place where the air was trying to ruin your day.
- The Plateau: He hit a wall at fifteen. The other boys got "abruptly mannish and tall." Wallace stayed scrawny.
That failure is actually why his writing is so good. He understood the gap between being "regionally ranked" and being a pro. He knew that even the guys who lose in the first round of a qualifier are basically gods compared to the rest of us.
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The Michael Joyce Epiphany
In 1995, Esquire sent Wallace to the Canadian Open to cover a guy named Michael Joyce. At the time, Joyce was ranked around 79th in the world. To the casual fan, he was a nobody. To Wallace, watching Joyce practice was a "religious experience" of a different kind.
He realized that a "mid-level" pro like Joyce possesses a level of skill that is literally incomprehensible to a normal human. Wallace writes about how Joyce's eyes looked different—they had this terrifying, "ascetic" focus.
The essay, originally titled The String Theory (and later Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff...—yeah, it's a long title), destroys the myth of the "dumb jock." Wallace argues that to play at that level, you have to be a genius of a specific kind. It's not the kind of genius that writes novels; it's a "kinesthetic" genius where the body thinks faster than the brain ever could.
Federer as a Religious Experience
If there is one piece of writing that defines tennis David Foster Wallace, it's his 2006 New York Times profile of Roger Federer. It’s widely considered the greatest piece of sports journalism ever written.
Wallace describes "Federer Moments." These are those times when the jaw drops and you make weird noises that bring people in from other rooms to see if you're okay. He argues that Federer is "both flesh and not."
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Basically, Federer's play was a way for us mere mortals to reconcile ourselves with the fact that we have bodies. Our bodies usually feel heavy, clumsy, and prone to breaking. Federer's body, on the grass at Wimbledon, seemed exempt from gravity.
"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty."
That’s the core of it. Wallace wasn't interested in the "who won" part of the match. He was interested in the metaphysics of the sport. He saw the tennis court as a "grid" where human beings try to impose order on chaos.
The Dark Side: Why Tracy Austin Broke His Heart
It wasn't all worship, though. Wallace was deeply frustrated by sports memoirs. He wrote a famous takedown of Tracy Austin's autobiography called How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart.
His beef? Austin was a prodigy, a genius on the court, but her book was full of "mind-numbing" clichés. Wallace’s theory was that maybe you have to be a bit "blind and dumb" to be that good. If you thought about the sheer impossibility of what you were doing—like hitting a 120 mph serve into a six-inch box—your brain would freeze.
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The "gift" of the elite athlete, he argued, is the ability to not think at all.
Practical Takeaways for Fans and Players
So, what does all this David Foster Wallace stuff mean for you the next time you pick up a racket or turn on the TV?
- Watch the Practice Courts: If you ever go to a pro tournament, don't just sit in the stadium. Go to the practice courts. Stand five feet away from a pro hitting cross-court forehands. You'll hear the "hiss" of the ball and realize TV hides about 90% of the actual speed.
- Embrace the Geometry: If you're a recreational player, stop trying to hit "winners." Be a pusher. Use the wind. Aim for the "deep middle." As Wallace proved in the cornfields of Illinois, being a smart, "unimaginative" player beats a flashy, inconsistent one almost every time.
- Appreciate the Sacrifice: Being a pro isn't just about money and fame. It's a "monastic" life. For every Federer, there are a thousand Michael Joyces living out of suitcases, playing in front of twelve people, just to stay in the top 100.
Wallace’s tennis writing works because it treats the sport as art. It’s not just a game; it’s a "fugue-state" where you lose awareness of your limbs and become something more than yourself. Whether you're a fan of the "liquid whip" of a Federer forehand or just a weekend warrior at the local park, reading Wallace changes the way you see the lines on the court.
Next time you're on the court, try to find that "still point" Wallace talked about. Even if you're just hitting the ball back down the middle, you're part of that same geometric struggle.
If you want to read the source material, look for the collection titled String Theory or Both Flesh and Not. They contain the five core essays that changed sports writing forever. Start with the Federer piece—it’ll change how you watch the game.