Book Club: You Can't Be That Serious

This week, TENNIS.com editor Kamakshi Tandon and I are discussing  John Newcombe's Bedside Tennis, a collection of anecdotes and observations by the legendary Aussie player published in  1983.

Hi Steve,

This is probably the most offbeat book we've done so far, so it goes without saying that I picked it. It's a slim little volume (87 pages in largish type) with a lighthearted feel and some entertaining illutrations; nice for winding down the Australian Open.

I've always thought it was a pretty obscure book, but maybe that’s just geographic bias: there were four volumes in that used-books store in Melbourne I mentioned here.

[Incidentally, I couldn’t post in the comments section during the Australian Open, so here's a belated answer to the question about which books I bought: My Game by Lew Hoad, because where else am I ever going to come across that again; Aces and Places by Harry Hopman, ditto; and the aforementioned Lawn Tennis for Beginners.

Among the books I picked up and put back: The Story of the Davis Cup by Alan Trengrove, because it weighs more than the Cup itself; and Pat Cash's autobiography – I couldn't even remember whether I'd read or not (I had), so how good could it be?]

Anyway, Bedside Tennis is quite a change of pace from the pretty intense edition of the Australian Open that just went into the books, primarily because it doesn’t take itself that seriously. How would some of Melbourne’s memorable moments have been different if we’d been to transplant some of that tone?

• For Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic: How to have a public feud

Things definitely weren’t buddy-buddy out there when these two played in Melbourne. Djokovic’s (semi) tongue-in-cheek comments were passed off as bravado and Federer, who called him out last year on faking injuries, had a slight edge to his pre-match remarks as well. Fun for us, guys, but you could have made it more fun for yourselves:

- For Serena Williams: How to disarm the 'haters'

All right, everyone hates you. Or at least, they lament your failures and praise your successes, which is the same thing as hating you because otherwise they’d surely praise you all the time no matter how you did. I mean, what’s the world coming to if even your 300,000 closest acquaintances can’t love you unconditionally?

The Melbourne crowds might have cheered you this time around, but it doesn’t mean anything. Remember how they booed you when you took those injury timeouts against Clijsters in 2003? Come on -- what’s a measly nine minutes among friends? What can you do with people like that?:

For Andy Roddick: How to lose to someone 13 times

For Marat Safin: How to follow tradition

Marat, don’t torture yourself. You are who you are. After all, your predecessors risked the gulags so you could squander your talent in freedom. Why should their suffering have been in vain?

Note: The Chinese federation might also find this pertinent.

What do you think, Steve? Would players find it easier to take the game seriously if they took themselves a little less seriously?

Kamakshi