The Best Tennis Books Every Player and Fan Should Read
Some tennis books teach you how to play. Others make you understand why someone would spend half a lifetime chasing a yellow ball around a rectangle.
The best ones do both.
Tennis has produced unusually good writing because the sport gives writers plenty to work with: pressure, solitude, rivalry, obsession, tactics, parents, coaches, spectacular success and equally spectacular failure.
And sometimes the most interesting part begins after the final score.
We selected 15 of the best tennis books for players and fans, ranging from famous tennis autobiographies to books about the mental game, match strategy, history and life on the professional tour.
This isn't simply a list of books with a tennis racket on the cover. Some are here because they tell extraordinary stories. Others can genuinely change the way you approach your next match.
Best Tennis Books at a Glance
Book
Author
Best for
Open
Andre Agassi
Best tennis autobiography
The Inner Game of Tennis
W. Timothy Gallwey
Mental game
Winning Ugly
Brad Gilbert & Steve Jamison
Match strategy
Rafa: My Story
Rafael Nadal & John Carlin
Elite mentality
A Terrible Splendor
Marshall Jon Fisher
Tennis history
String Theory
David Foster Wallace
Tennis writing & culture
The Master
Christopher Clarey
Roger Federer fans
Essential Tennis
Ian Westermann & Joel Chasnoff
Improving your game
Levels of the Game
John McPhee
Classic sports writing
The Art of Doubles
Pat Blaskower
Doubles players
The Circuit
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Life on the pro tour
Unstoppable
Maria Sharapova
Competitive mentality
Days of Grace
Arthur Ashe & Arnold Rampersad
Sport & society
A Handful of Summers
Gordon Forbes
Old-school tennis
All In
Billie Jean King
Tennis history & equality
If you only want three books to start with, choose Open, The Inner Game of Tennis and Winning Ugly. They cover three very different sides of the sport: the person behind the player, the mind under pressure and the tactics required to win.
1. Open — Andre Agassi
Best for: tennis fans, parents and anyone curious about what professional tennis actually feels like.
If you read only one tennis autobiography, "Open" is difficult to ignore.
Andre Agassi won eight Grand Slam singles titles and reached world No. 1. Yet the central tension of his autobiography is startlingly simple: one of the world's most famous tennis players had an extraordinarily complicated relationship with the sport that made him famous.
The book follows Agassi from an intensely tennis-focused childhood through his rise to stardom, struggles, fall in the rankings and eventual comeback. His publisher describes it as much more than a memoir of elite tennis: Agassi writes candidly about his upbringing, fame and his often troubled relationship with the game.
What can tennis players learn from Open?
The interesting lesson isn't how to copy Agassi's return.
It's what happens when talent, motivation, pressure and identity stop moving in the same direction.
For parents of junior players, that makes parts of Open particularly thought-provoking. A child can be extremely talented at something without experiencing that talent in the way adults around them expect.
And for adult players?
It is a useful reminder that your relationship with tennis matters. Improvement is important. Enjoying the process matters too.
Read it if: you want the most human book on this list rather than a technical tennis manual.
2. The Inner Game of Tennis — W. Timothy Gallwey
Best for: players who look great in practice and somehow become a different person at 4–4 in the second set.
You know the feeling.
Your forehand worked perfectly ten minutes ago. Then the score became important.
Suddenly you're thinking about your wrist. Your grip. Your follow-through. The double fault from two games ago. Your opponent. The wind. Your coach.
Congratulations: you're no longer simply hitting a tennis ball. You're negotiating with your own brain.
That is the territory of "The Inner Game of Tennis".
First published in 1974, Gallwey's book became influential far beyond tennis. Its central ideas concern attention, self-doubt, anxiety and learning to perform without constantly interfering with skills your body already knows. A 50th-anniversary edition appeared in 2024.
Why is The Inner Game of Tennis still relevant?
Because rackets have changed.
Tennis technique has changed.
Sports science has changed.
The ability to sabotage your own forehand at break point has proved remarkably durable.
Gallwey's point isn't that technique doesn't matter. Rather, constantly giving yourself instructions can sometimes interfere with execution.
A player occasionally needs another technical cue.
Sometimes they need less noise.
Coach's Take
If your stroke is reliable in training but collapses under pressure, adding another five technical thoughts may not solve the problem.
Learning where to place your attention can be just as important.
Read it if: overthinking is one of your toughest opponents.
3. Winning Ugly — Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison
Best for: club players who are tired of saying, “I played better, but somehow I lost.”
Beautiful tennis and winning tennis aren't always the same thing.
Brad Gilbert built an elite career without possessing the kind of effortless-looking strokes that normally end up in slow-motion compilations.
His great strength was elsewhere: understanding matches.
That is what makes "Winning Ugly " fundamentally different from "The Inner Game of Tennis".
Gallwey asks:
What is happening inside your head?
Gilbert asks:
What is happening on the other side of the net — and why aren't you doing something about it?
The book focuses on competition, preparation, reading opponents and finding practical ways to improve the odds of winning rather than simply making strokes look better. It remains a fixture in contemporary “best tennis books” lists.
What can recreational players learn from Winning Ugly?
A lot.
Club tennis is full of players who spend months trying to make their forehand prettier while barely thinking about:
what their opponent dislikes;
where they serve on important points;
how they start return games;
which patterns are actually winning points;
when momentum changes.
You don't receive extra points because your backhand looked better.
Tennis remains inconveniently attached to the scoreboard.
Coach's Take
This may be the most immediately practical book in the first three.
You don't need to rebuild a stroke to start observing an opponent.
Once players begin seeing tennis as a sequence of patterns and decisions, rather than simply a succession of shots, matches tend to look very different.
Read it if: your technique is reasonable but your match results don't reflect it.
4. Rafa: My Story — Rafael Nadal and John Carlin
Best for: readers interested in competition, discipline and the psychology behind one of tennis's most recognisable champions.
Some players are remembered for a stroke.
Rafael Nadal is remembered almost as much for an attitude.
That makes "Rafa" interesting before we even get to the forehand.
The obvious temptation is to reduce Nadal's career to “mental toughness”. But that expression is used so often in sport that it can stop meaning anything.
A better question is:
What does competitive discipline actually look like from inside a player's life?
"Rafa" explores Nadal's development, family environment, routines and perspective on major moments in his career.
For a recreational player, the useful part isn't learning to behave like Rafael Nadal.
You can't.
It is noticing how elite players build routines around things they can control.
Read it if: you're fascinated by the difference between wanting to win and knowing how to compete.
5. A Terrible Splendor — Marshall Jon Fisher
Best for: readers who think tennis history starts with Borg, Federer or Serena Williams.
Here's a tennis match with rather more at stake than your Sunday club ladder.
In 1937, American Don Budge and Germany's Gottfried von Cramm met in a decisive Davis Cup contest at Wimbledon against the increasingly dark political background of pre-war Europe.
Marshall Jon Fisher uses that match as the centre of "A Terrible Splendor". Penguin Random House describes the encounter as world No. 1 against No. 2, America against Germany, with the political circumstances surrounding von Cramm and Nazi Germany forming an essential part of the story.
This is why it belongs here.
Tennis history isn't simply:
Federer → Nadal → Djokovic → Alcaraz → Sinner.
The sport existed through wars, political upheaval and completely different ideas about what an athlete should be.
Read it if: you like history as much as tennis.
6. String Theory — David Foster Wallace
Best for: tennis obsessives and readers who appreciate literary sports writing.
Not every great tennis book needs to tell you where to stand on second serve.
David Foster Wallace approached tennis as a former competitive junior player, fan and writer fascinated by what happens when extraordinary athletic ability becomes almost impossible for an ordinary spectator to comprehend.
"String Theory" collects five of his essays on tennis and was published as a collection by Library of America in 2016.
This is the book for someone who watches a professional rally and occasionally thinks:
How are human beings doing this?
Is it useful for your game?
Not in the usual sense.
You probably won't finish it with a new return strategy.
You may finish it noticing professional tennis differently.
Read it if: tennis is part sport, part culture and part obsession for you.
7. The Master — Christopher Clarey
Best for: Roger Federer fans.
Roger Federer never published the conventional career autobiography many fans might expect.
"The Master" is one of the strongest alternatives.
Christopher Clarey covered international tennis for more than three decades and followed Federer throughout his career. The revised biography draws on extensive reporting and access to Federer and people around him, and covers his journey from an emotional young player to one of the sport's defining champions.
For readers in Switzerland, of course, there's an extra dimension.
Federer isn't simply a tennis champion. He became inseparable from the international image of Swiss tennis.
What makes the Federer story interesting?
We remember the finished product.
Fluid movement. Early ball striking. Variety. The one-handed backhand. Tennis that sometimes looked suspiciously easy.
The development was considerably less effortless.
That's a useful lesson for recreational players too.
Watching a great player at the end of the process can make excellence look natural. We rarely see the thousands of corrections that came before it.
Read it if: Federer is your favourite player — or you're interested in how exceptional talent is developed rather than simply discovered.
8. Essential Tennis — Ian Westermann with Joel Chasnoff
Best for: recreational players who actually want to improve their tennis.
Some tennis books belong beside your bed.
This one could reasonably end up in your tennis bag.
"Essential Tennis" covers strokes, movement, strategy, mental skills and the process of improvement. Its author Ian Westermann built the Essential Tennis coaching platform before turning that approach into a book.
What makes it useful for adult players?
Adults often approach improvement backwards.
We notice the result:
My forehand went long.
So we immediately try to fix the forehand.
But the missed ball may have started much earlier — positioning, preparation, spacing, movement or reading the incoming ball.
Coach's Take
A book can help you understand tennis.
It cannot watch you hit a forehand.
Instructional books are useful when they give players better questions to ask on court. They become less useful when every paragraph produces another technical thought during the swing.
Use books to understand the game.
Use practice to turn that understanding into something your body can repeat.
Read it if: you enjoy understanding why improvement happens rather than simply collecting stroke tips.
9. Levels of the Game — John McPhee
Best for: readers who love tennis, psychology and exceptional sports writing.
Can one tennis match tell you something about two entire lives?
John McPhee apparently thought so.
"Levels of the Game" centres on a 1968 match at Forest Hills between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. McPhee follows the tennis point by point while exploring the very different backgrounds and attitudes that shaped the two players.
The premise sounds narrow.
The result isn't.
Tennis is unusually revealing because players cannot disappear behind a team.
Attack or defend?
Go for the line or give yourself margin?
Come forward or retreat?
What happens after you miss?
What happens after you become nervous?
Two people can stand on the same court, under the same scoring system, and experience an entirely different match.
Read it if: you want a tennis book that feels closer to literary journalism than a sports manual.
10. The Art of Doubles — Pat Blaskower
Best for: club players who regularly play doubles.
Doubles has a strange problem.
A lot of people play it.
Far fewer people actually learn it.
Four singles players walk onto a court, stand roughly where they think they should stand and hope teamwork will somehow emerge.
Sometimes it does.
Often it doesn't.
"The Art of Doubles" treats doubles as its own game. Blaskower covers positioning, communication, poaching, formations, shot selection, partner compatibility, offence and defence, with diagrams, checklists and drills.
Coach's Take
Watch recreational doubles and you'll often see players watching the ball.
Watch a good doubles team and watch the players without the ball.
That's where much of the difference lives.
Read it if: you play doubles every week but have never really studied doubles.
11. The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey — Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Best for: fans who want to understand what a year on the professional tennis tour feels like.
A tennis season is odd.
There is no single stadium. No home ground. Hardly any pause.
Melbourne becomes Paris. Paris becomes London. London becomes New York, with dozens of stops in between.
"The Circuit" follows the professional tennis tour through the remarkable 2017 season.
This is less a biography of one player than a portrait of professional tennis itself.
Television compresses the tour into matches.
The real tour also means travel, recovery, changing surfaces, changing continents, ranking pressure and the strange rhythm of winning one tournament only to begin another.
Read it if: Grand Slam fortnight is never quite enough tennis for you.
12. Unstoppable: My Life So Far — Maria Sharapova
Best for: readers interested in ambition and the less comfortable side of elite sport.
Maria Sharapova's career did not lack plot.
She moved from Russia to the United States as a child, won Wimbledon at 17, reached world No. 1 and won five Grand Slam singles titles.
Her memoir follows that development alongside the setbacks and controversies of a fiercely competitive career.
What makes it particularly interesting beside "Open" and "Rafa" is the difference in personality.
Elite tennis does not manufacture one type of champion.
Agassi, Nadal and Sharapova approached the sport very differently.
And that's worth remembering when coaching, too.
There is no single psychological template for becoming good at tennis.
Read it if: you prefer sports autobiographies with ambition, conflict and a strong competitive personality.
13. Days of Grace — Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad
Best for: readers interested in tennis beyond trophies and rankings.
Arthur Ashe's significance extends far beyond his results.
He was a major champion, but also a prominent activist and public figure whose life became connected to questions of race, social justice and HIV/AIDS.
"Days of Grace" reflects on that much wider life. Its publisher describes Ashe not only as a tennis champion but as a social activist, and the memoir became part of his legacy after his death in 1993.
This is not the book to choose if you want three drills for your second serve.
It belongs here for another reason.
Sport doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The people who play it carry their society, history and experiences onto the court with them.
Few tennis lives demonstrate that more clearly than Ashe's.
Read it if: you're interested in what a sporting life can mean after the scoreboard stops being the most important part.
14. A Handful of Summers — Gordon Forbes
Best for: tennis romantics who wonder what the tour was like before modern professional tennis became a global business.
Imagine high-level tennis without today's enormous stadiums, social-media teams, recovery departments and meticulously organised player entourages.
Then make it funnier.
Gordon Forbes played Davis Cup tennis for South Africa and wrote about travelling through the amateur tennis world of the 1950s and 1960s.
Why include an older, less obvious book?
Because a list called “best tennis books” becomes boring very quickly if it simply repeats the same famous five titles found everywhere else.
And tennis had a fascinating culture before the modern Open Era.
Forbes lets you visit it.
Read it if: you enjoy tennis history but would rather hear the stories in the clubhouse than read a textbook.
15. All In — Billie Jean King
Best for: readers interested in tennis history, equality and how one athlete can change a sport beyond the baseline.
Some tennis players win matches.
A smaller number change tennis itself.
Billie Jean King belongs firmly in the second group.
In "All In", King recounts her playing career alongside the personal and social battles that surrounded it. The autobiography covers her famous Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs, her role in the development of women's professional tennis and her long involvement in campaigns for equality.
That makes "All In" different from a conventional champion's memoir.
The interesting question isn't simply:
How did Billie Jean King win?
It's also:
What did she believe tennis could become?
Modern players take many parts of professional tennis for granted. Reading King is a reminder that sporting structures don't simply appear. People fight to change them.
What can younger players take from it?
Perspective.
Winning matters enormously when you're standing on court.
But a sporting career can ultimately become about considerably more than the matches you won.
Read it if: you're interested in the point where tennis, personality and social change meet.
MVTA Coach's Shelf: Three Books We'd Start With
Fifteen books is useful.
Fifteen books is also quite a lot when you were simply looking for something to read this weekend.
So if we reduce the entire list to three books from a player-development perspective, we'd start here.
1. The Inner Game of Tennis
For understanding what pressure, attention and overthinking can do to skills you already possess.
Take onto the court: notice where your attention goes after an error.
2. Winning Ugly
For understanding that tennis isn't a stroke competition. It is a problem-solving game with another person inconveniently trying to beat you.
Take onto the court: identify one pattern your opponent dislikes and see how often you can create it.
3. Open
Not because it will improve your forehand.
Because players — particularly young players — are people before they are tennis projects.
Take onto the court: remember that sustainable improvement requires a healthy relationship with the game.
Best Tennis Books by Category
If you're still not sure where to start:
Best tennis autobiography:Open by Andre Agassi.
Best tennis psychology book:The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey.
Best tennis strategy book:Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison.
Best book for improving your tennis:Essential Tennis by Ian Westermann with Joel Chasnoff.
Best doubles tennis book:The Art of Doubles by Pat Blaskower.
Best Roger Federer book:The Master by Christopher Clarey.
Best tennis history book:A Terrible Splendor by Marshall Jon Fisher.
Best tennis literary writing: start with Levels of the Game or String Theory.
Best book about tennis and social change:All In by Billie Jean King.
This category-based structure is deliberate: current high-ranking competitors increasingly help users choose by intent rather than simply presenting a numbered list.
Can Reading a Tennis Book Actually Improve Your Game?
Yes — within limits.
A good tennis book can help you understand:
why you make certain decisions;
how match strategy works;
how attention changes under pressure;
what effective practice should look like;
how positioning and patterns affect points;
how professional players think about competition.
What it cannot do is see you.
A sentence cannot tell whether your forehand problem comes from grip, spacing, preparation, contact point or footwork.
That's where coaching and feedback matter.
The useful relationship therefore isn't:
book or coach.
It's:
understanding + practice + feedback.
A book can change how you think about a problem. A good coach can see whether that idea actually applies to your tennis.
Want to Put It Into Practice?
Reading about tennis can help you understand what might make a player better.
Coaching helps identify what you actually need.
At MVTA Tennis Academy in Switzerland, we work with adults, children and juniors at different levels, turning ideas about technique, tactics, movement and the mental game into skills that can be used when there's a real opponent on the other side of the net.
And you certainly don't have to finish all 15 books first.
What Tennis Players Can Learn From Reading About the Pros
There is another trap worth avoiding.
You read about Nadal's routines.
You watch Federer's forehand.
You learn how Agassi returned serve.
Then you decide to become all three by Saturday morning.
Probably not.
Professional players are useful examples, not templates.
A recreational adult doesn't have Federer's movement, Nadal's training history or Agassi's timing. Nor should a junior player's natural game be rebuilt simply to resemble whichever professional happens to be No. 1.
The more useful question is:
What principle can I take from this player?
From Federer, perhaps it is taking time away from an opponent.
From Nadal, commitment and repeatable routines.
From Agassi, early recognition on return.
From Gilbert, observation and tactical problem-solving.
That's a much more productive way to learn from professional tennis.
And it's one reason tennis books are so enjoyable: they reveal how very different players solved the same game.
FAQ About Tennis Books
What is the best tennis book to read?
There isn't one choice for every reader. Open is our starting recommendation for a tennis autobiography, The Inner Game of Tennis for the mental game, Winning Ugly for match strategy and Essential Tennis for players primarily interested in improving their game.
What is the best tennis autobiography?
Open by Andre Agassi is an excellent place to start. Rather than simply recounting tournament results, it explores Agassi's childhood, relationship with tennis, fame, personal difficulties and professional career. The book remains prominent across current tennis-book recommendations as well.
What is the best tennis book for the mental game?
The Inner Game of Tennis remains one of the most influential choices. Its longevity is notable: a 50th-anniversary edition was released in 2024.
What is the best tennis strategy book?
For competitive recreational players, Winning Ugly is an obvious starting point because its focus is on competition and tactical problem-solving rather than simply stroke mechanics. It remains one of the recurring selections in contemporary tennis-book guides.
What is the best tennis book for beginners?
For an adult interested in practical instruction, Essential Tennis is a strong modern option because it looks broadly at improvement rather than focusing on one stroke.
What is the best book about Roger Federer?
Christopher Clarey's The Master is a strong choice for a full Federer biography. Clarey covered international tennis for decades and had extensive access to Federer and his circle.
Are there good books for doubles players?
Yes. The Art of Doubles by Pat Blaskower is specifically built around doubles and covers positioning, partner communication, poaching, formations, shot selection, drills and tactics.
Which tennis books are good for parents of junior players?
Open is valuable for thinking about the relationship between talent, parental ambition and a child's experience of sport. The Inner Game of Tennis can help parents understand why constant instruction is not always the answer. Neither should be treated as a parenting manual, but both can provoke useful questions.
From Reading About Tennis to Playing It
A great tennis book can change the way you see the game.
The Inner Game of Tennis may make you notice what happens in your head under pressure.
Winning Ugly can make you pay more attention to patterns and opponents.
Open shows just how complicated the relationship between a player and the sport can become.
But eventually, there's only so much tennis you can play from an armchair.
The real game begins when you step onto the court.
At MVTA Tennis Academy, we welcome adults, juniors and children who want to learn, improve or simply enjoy playing tennis more.
You don't need perfect technique.
You don't need years of experience.
And you certainly don't need competitive ambitions.
Perhaps you're picking up a racket for the first time.
Perhaps you already play regularly but feel your progress has stalled.
Maybe you want a more reliable serve, cleaner groundstrokes, better movement or a clearer idea of what to do during matches.
Or perhaps you're looking for the right tennis environment for your child.
Good coaching starts with the player in front of us — their level, goals, movement, technique and natural way of playing.
We offer tennis training for adults, children and juniors, from complete beginners discovering the game to experienced players looking for the next step.
Bring the ideas you found in the books.
Bring the forehand that occasionally has ideas of its own.
Bring the second serve you don't entirely trust at 30–40.
We'll meet you on court.
Explore our tennis programmes and find the training that suits you.