45 Love: My Yearlong Quest to Fulfill a Lifelong Dream in the Sport of Tennis
By Ray Krueger
“Ray Krueger’s story – that of a 275-pound teenager who fears leaving his own home for fear of running into his own father, but goes on to become an elite, top 20 tennis player in the 45-and-over age division – veritably glows with the incandescent passion that enables some lucky souls to experience participatory sports as a glorious, life-shaping and transforming experience. The weekend warrior is alive and well and in good hands with Krueger!”
–Peter Bodo, author of THE COURTS OF BABYLON and THE CLAY RAN RED
An out-of-shape 275-pound teenager goes on an athletic journey that ends up at the highest level of tournament tennis nearly 30 years later.
One of the marketing campaigns for tennis has called it a sport for a lifetime. This is a diary of a life as defined by a sport.
Ray Krueger, an editor at the New York Times, spends a year on a quest for the best possible ranking on the 45-and over national tennis circuit while balancing a career in jeopardy and a life spent looking for validation in a sport that may have saved his life. The journey starts as an overweight 17-year-old obsessed with watching and chronicling sports in notebooks as a wannabe sportswriter/editor. Krueger decides to get into the game. His sport: tennis. Separating for the first time from his broken home and his long departed alcoholic father and emotionally damaged mother, Krueger begins a quest that leads him through the lowest levels of recreational tennis to training as a serious athlete and competing in tournaments all over the country. Along the way, the sport gives him structure, a support system and even a wife. The dedication and devotion that he finds in his yearlong (and lifelong) tennis quest also guides him through the toughest year of his professional life. On the court, Krueger deals with fellow obsessives in addition to dilettantes, media masters of the universe, former world ranked players and mental cases, only some of which have been officially diagnosed as such.
The year on the 45-and-over circuit outlines the physical, mental and emotional challenges and rewards inherent in trying to achieve a goal, and shows when the goal may also hide the real reasons for working so hard to achieve it.
You can purchase the book online from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/45-Love-Yearlong-Lifelong-ebook/dp/B007GBOQ9C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1345250895&sr=1-1&keywords=45+love.
eBook formatting by Shelley Glasow Schadowsky.