cover image Too Soon to Panic

Too Soon to Panic

Gordon Forbes. Lyons Press, $24.95 (340pp) ISBN 978-1-55821-566-5

Former South African tennis star Forbes (A Handful of Summer) writes less about the game of tennis than about the places where it is played and the ambiance of each, subjects on which he is both sensitive and articulate. His favorite cities are Paris, where he is still caught up in the mystique of the City of Light, and London, the center of the universe for a colonial raised by a nostalgic Briton; he enjoys Rome and is more than slightly ill at ease in New York, where the pace overwhelms him. His reminiscences range from his youth in the 1940s, through the 50s and 60s, when he was an internationally ranked player, to his career as a businessman and his current status as an observer of and commentator on the sport. Looming large in this memoir is Forbes's former doubles partner Abe Segal, an urban Jewish compatriot, earthy and outspoken, whose presence enlivens the text and who once told the author a few days before a match, ""It's too soon to panic"" (after which, Forbes claims, he himself began to play better). Forbes dedicates the book to his late sister, Jean, the wife of his ex-teammate Cliff Drysdale; her sudden disappearance may explain its somewhat wistful tone. (May)