Let’s face it, “colossus” is a seldom-used word, so it’s bound to grab one’s attention in a book about an athlete, especially one who made his fame in the genteel 1920s world of tennis. Be that as it may, Bill Tilden was the giant of his emerging sport, the top-ranked player for 10 straight years, the first American-born Wimbledon champion, and a seven-time winner of the US singles championship. Besides sharing the sports headlines with Babe Ruth, boxing’s Jack Dempsey, and golf’s Bobby Jones, he was a true Renaissance man who wrote more than two dozen fiction and nonfiction books and made numerous stage appearances. But in “American Colossus,” author Hornblum does more than cover the high watermarks of Tilden’s fascinating life. He also chronicles the tragedy that ensued after an incident with an underage boy that led to Tilden’s arrest and a seven-month prison sentence that sent his image and life spiraling downward.
Here’s an excerpt from American Colossus:
“Despondent over his decisive defeat in the 1919 National Championship, but excited by the prospect of being named to America’s Davis Cup team, Tilden decided his game – stroke by stroke – needed to be reexamined. This was especially true of his ineffective backhand; it needed a complete overhaul. The battering he took from the anemic-looking Bill Johnston was particularly troubling. Like a pebble in his shoe he couldn’t remove, the painful recollection of his subpar play exasperated him. The meek replies from his off wing were embarrassing; the feeble stroke had to be rectified, immediately. ‘The many errors off my backhand,’ he would one day write of that Johnston match, ‘lived clearly in my memory, and when the announcement of the challenge for the Davis Cup was made public, and it was intimated to me that I might go abroad with the team, I determined that if I went I would leave my old backhand in the United States and take a new one with me.’ ”
