BOOKMARK: A Terrible Splendor by Marshall Jon Fisher

West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, writer Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor mimics John McPhee’s minor classic, Levels of the Game: while McPhee explores a single U.S. Open tennis match, Fisher focuses on a single Davis Cup match in 1937 between American legend Donald Budge and Germany’s Baron Gottfried von Cramm, the number one and number two players, respectively, in the world at that time.

Adding to its grandeur, the event took place on the hallowed lawn of Wimbledon’s center court, where the two players had clashed at the Wimbledon final earlier that same summer, with Budge winning easily.

While a dramatization of the match between these two tennis titans might have been enough for a book by itself, the real story here is von Cramm’s battle to appease the Nazis, who suspected the truth—like his idol Bill Tilden, the third player in all this, von Cramm was a homosexual.

While Germany wanted to use its greatest player for the glory of the country, von Cramm—whose longtime doubles partner Daniel Prenn was a Jewish refugee—was unsympathetic to the Nazi cause, not making things any easier for himself. Quite literally, von Cramm, the underdog, is playing the match of his life. [AUGUST 2009]

THE GOODS

A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary
Men, a World Poised for War, and the
Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played
By Marshall Jon Fisher
Crown Publishing Group