It's no Levels of the Game, of course, a fact Fisher acknowledges himself. But it's hard to imagine there ever being another Levels of the Game. But it is an absorbing account of an amazing tennis match. The first line is "July the twentieth, 1937, and Baron Gottfried von Cramm tosses a new white Slazenger tennis ball three feet above his head". The baron's opponent is the American Don Budge and the two players are from very different backgrounds: the aristocrat versus the hayseed, more or less.

This match at Wimbledon is part of the Davis Cup champion, which means that the other two opponents are the United States and Nazi Germany. Cramm is no Nazi, however. Being a gay aristocrat, the friend of Jews and artists and a sometimes vocal critic of his new government has brought him to the brink of being declared an enemy of the state.

The other major player, though he's not on the court for this match, is tennis legend Bob Tilden, an American who has become friends with the Baron and is coaching the German team. His own very interesting story is told in this book. Tilden was a big enough name in the first half of the twentieth century, and prominent enough in the American cultural landscape, it turns out, to earn a cameo in Nabokov's Lolita.