Rackets, Rivals -- and Regrets

I texted my friend Greg to see if he could fly in for the premiere of "Chris & Martina: The Final Set" at the Tribeca Film Festival next month but sadly he's got other plans. I later told him I was re-reading the book about their famous rivalry -- Greg and I first met when we had to play against each other in a club tournament in 1980! -- and mentioned how I don't remember any of the "new" details I had first learned in 2005. (Does anyone else seem to forget most of what they read? He -- and Damian -- ended up concurring, so I felt a little better.)

After finishing, I moved on to the imported Steffi Graf book my brother Bill had gotten me for Christmas some 30 years ago, which I feel like I had only skimmed at the time. 

Nothing monumental, other than finally confirming to me that her gross father had not, in fact, fathered a child out of wedlock plus the grim realization that in addition to sexy race-car driver Michael Bartels (above), Fräulein Forehand had also dated dreamy German tennis pro Alexander Mronz, who reached the round of 16 at Wimbledon in 1995. 

Andre Agassi is clearly Steffi's Aristotle Onassis, because how else do you explain trading in either of the other guys?

Side note: If Steffi had wound up with Mronz, her brother-in-law would have been sports and events manager Michael Mronz, seen above on the left with his longtime partner, Guido Westerwelle, who served as foreign minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and as Germany’s vice-chancellor from 2009 to 2011, becoming the first openly gay person to hold either post. Westerwelle attended Merkel’s 50th birthday party in 2004 with Mronz, marking the first time he attended an official event with his partner. (Sadly, he died in 2014 after a battle with acute myeloid leukemia.) 

My Roland Garros program from my 1987 trip to the event can be seen above

This prompted Greg to send me a photo of his tennis book collection, below, and me to send mine in reply. Although we both have a number of good ones -- note the two YA Tracy Austin books I may have pilfered from the Rhodes Junior High School library and the WTA media guides that changed my young life -- it got me a little blue remembering that I had been offered Bill's sizeable tennis library after he died in 2017 but I wasn't thinking straight -- and lived in a much smaller third-floor walkup -- so demurred. How I wish I could go back.

On Greg's shelf I spy an Evonne Goolagong book I would love to check out, as well as John McEnroe's "You Cannot Be Serious," which is on my list as I want to hear his side of things after reading what Tatum O'Neal had to say about him in "A Paper Life." 

Please tell me which tennis books I should be adding to my collection in the comments!