Which Way To The Finals, Please?

About the Book

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“Which Way to the Finals, Please?” is a collection of Axel’s tennis poems, written over a period of 50 years and illustrated with line drawings cartoons by the author. These poems are about the joys, follies, and frustrations of those who play the game or are otherwise attached to it. Anyone who has ever entered a tournament will recognize and identify with the thoughts and feelings expressed in the title poem and “Club Tournament”, and in “Small Talk”, “The Comeback”, “The Dropshot”, “Foreplay”, Statistics”, “Tactical Thinking”, “Pep Talk”, “Duck, Please - Here Comes Another One”, and “On Sportsmanship”. The eternal hope and optimism that mark the beginning of each new year are captured in “Early Season Reflections,” “This is the Year,” “The Optimist,” and “Squash, Anyone?;” while “Youth vs. Experience” (see below), “Confessions of a Senior Player,” and “My Club Career” muse about the decline in on-court success that comes with age. The difficult task of ranking players based on the season’s results is captured in “Ode to a Ranking Committee” and “Why Can’t the Players Cooperate?”; and the whimsical humor in “The Tale of Elmo Hatch”, “The Sportsman,”, and “How Can Anyone Play Under These Conditions?” brings each of these to a dramatic conclusion. The equipment and attire of the game are given tongue-in-cheek treatment in “The New Racket”, ”The Sneakers”, “My Bag”, and “Tennis Economics”, and tennis balls as objects of love and hate in “Ode to a Tennis Ball” and “The Tennis Ball”. Tennis Camps are the subject of “The Plot” and “Return from Tennis Camp”. Tennis expertise is lampooned in ”Sic Transit Gloria;” the conventions of the game are spoofed in “Lament,” “Just Go Ahead and Serve, Why Don’t You?”, “Extra Power, Anyone?”, and in “Formula for Success”, “ Survey”, and “My Coach” (see below); and the game itself comes under scrutiny in “Tennis Simplified”, ”Sonnet from the Courts”, “The Scale”, “Insights”, “Obstacles”, and “There’s more than Tennis to Tennis.” `”Songs for Tennis Players” couples some familiar melodies with new, tennis-related lyrics, and “Fables for Tennis Players” describe several tennis-playing characters in limerick form, each with a moral. Finally, “Tribute” pays homage to those who do not take tennis all that seriously. This light-hearted collection of tennis poems - the only one of its kind in the literature of the game - will bring smiles and a recognition of some familiar situations to its readers, and makes a perfect gift for the tennis players and enthusiasts in your life.

About the Author

Axel Kaufmann’s association with tennis has been life-long: as club member, sectionally-ranked player from junior to senior categories, official, Architect of indoor and outdoor clubs, Chairman of USTA Facilities Committee, author of tennis magazine articles, co-producer of an instructional tennis film, and founder of tennis/now, a teaching facility in the Boston area, where he resides.