Abramsky, Sasha. Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar. Akashic Books, 2020. Pp. 280. Acknowledgments, end notes, introduction, photographs, $25.95 hardback. Reviewed by Bob D’Angelo. Sasha Abramsky is not a sports historian. He is a journalist who has spent the past 25 years writing about politics, covering social…
By Robert J. Lake You’d have to been living under a rock not to have heard news of the stunning upset of Serena Williams by the Canadian 19-year old Bianca Andreescu in the final of the U.S. Open on September 7. Commentators and journalists rushed to remind their audiences that Bianca, whose Romanian parents immigrated…
Editor’s Note: “Sport in American History” is excited to cross-post Richard C. Crepeau’s “Sport and Society” column. This post was originally published on September 10, 2018. A full archive of his Crepeau’s columns can be found by clicking here. For several decades ABC Television’s “Wide World of Sports” opened with a video clip that illustrated what the announcer called…
By Robert J. Lake On the 16th August, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) approved a complete overhaul of the Davis Cup, the men’s international tennis championship dating back to 1900. A two-thirds majority among the 140 member nations approved the move to turn it from a competition involving several rounds of play throughout the calendar year…
Organized by Patrick Salkeld Starting August 27 and culminating on September 8, 2018, Serena Williams played in the 2018 U.S. Open. Williams faced Naomi Osaka in the Women’s Singles Final overseen by chair umpire Carlos Ramos on September 8. During the second set, Ramos “called a code violation for coaching” when he saw Williams’ coach…
Editor’s Note: “Sport in American History” is excited to cross-post Richard C. Crepeau’s “Sport and Society” column. This post was originally published on June 11, 2018. A full archive of his Crepeau’s columns can be found by clicking here. In a matter of four days from June 7 through the 10th, several championship level sporting events were decided. Beginning…
By Robert J. Lake No story more captivated the tennis world in 2017 than the resurgence of some of the sport’s biggest stars. As Nick Wells and Eric Chemi reported, the average age of the four finalists at the Australian Open in January was 34 years old; Roger Federer, 35, beat Rafael Nadal, 30; meanwhile,…
Gillmeister, Heiner. Tennis: A Cultural History. 2nd Edition. Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2017. Pp. xvi+599. Notes, bibliography, illustrated sources, index. $45 paperback. Reviewed by Robert J. Lake In 1997, when Heiner Gillmeister brought out his first edition of Tennis: A Cultural History, there was very little else on the market in terms of tennis history texts.…
By Robert J. Lake Anyone for tennis? It’s that time of year again when our favourite racket sport suddenly re-emerges as a fashionable and engaging spectacle. While other sports, notably the popular North American team-games of football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, alongside their equivalents in Britain, notably soccer, rugby union, rugby league, and county cricket,…
Sport in American History 