You may never have played tennis or watched it, but Phillips beautifully describes the experience of loving it. His exegesis might stand in for any fan’s love of any sport. -Lynne Tillman, Bookforum

In The Circuit, the award-winning poet-and Paris Review sports columnist-Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it’s divided into four seasons, each marked by a final tournament: the Grand Slams. Phillips charts the year from winter’s Australian Open, where Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal renewed their rivalry in a match for the ages, to fall’s U.S. Open, when Maria Sharapova returned to the game as only she could-by shocking the world. Along the way, Phillips paints a new, vibrant portrait of tennis, one that captures not only the emotions, nerves, and ruthless tactics of the point-by-point game but also the quicksilver movement of victory and defeat on the tour, placing that sense of upheaval within a broader cultural and social context.

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For readers of John Jeremiah Sullivan, William Skidelsky, and Raymond Arsenault
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A Finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing