In the 2008 Wimbledon men's final, Centre Court was a stage set worthyof Shakespearean drama. Five-time champion Roger Federer was on track totake his rightful place as the most dominant player in the history ofthe game. He just needed to cling to his trajectory. So in the last fewmoments of daylight, Centre Court witnessed a coronation. Only it wasn'ta crowning for the Swiss heir apparent but for a swashbucklingSpaniard. Twenty-two-year-old Rafael Nadal prevailed, in five sets, inwhat was, according to the author, "essentially a four-hour,forty-eight-minute infomercial for everything that is right abouttennis?a festival of skill, accuracy, grace, strength, speed, endurance,determination, and sportsmanship." It was also the encapsulation of afascinating rivalry, hard fought and of historic proportions.Inthe tradition of John McPhee's classic Levels of the Game, Strokes ofGenius deconstructs this defining moment in sport, using that match asthe backbone of a provocative, thoughtful, and entertaining look at thescience, art, psychology, technology, strategy, and personality that gointo a single tennis match.With vivid, intimate detail, Wertheimre-creates this epic battle in a book that is both a study of themechanics and art of the game and the portrait of a rivalry as dramaticas that of Ali?Frazier, Palmer?Nicklaus, and McEnroe?Borg.