With the world’s eight best tennis players currently battling it out in London for the ATP World Tour Finals, we were reminded of this staggering essay by the late David Foster Wallace on Swiss star Roger Federer. It remains the best piece of sports writing I have ever read, just ahead of King of the World the peerless boxing book by New Yorker editor David Remnick. Anyone who has read Infinite Jest will know just how anatomically Foster Wallace understands the sport, and this thrilling piece of prose captures Federer at the very summit of his powers.
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Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.