A very warm welcome to longtime readers and new arrivals.
This is Christopher Clarey, and it’s time for me to take a deep breath and exhale slowly, just like they teach you to do before you hit a first serve.
This is a new space and place in my life, and we are off to a very promising start. Substack has named Tennis & Beyond a “Featured Publication”, and it is already the top tennis newsletter on the platform for both paid and free content. I have covered Roland Garros, Wimbledon, the US Open and the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells on site for our readers, and we already have thousands of subscribers from 109 countries and 49 U.S. states (come on Alaska!). The tennis community is truly global, which is one of the big reasons the sport has always held my interest as a writer.
For more than 30 years, I wrote full-time about tennis and global sports for the New York Times and its Paris-based sister publication The International Herald Tribune. It was a dream job, particularly if you can sleep on planes, and it took me to six continents, 14 Olympics, 10 Ryder Cups, nine world track and field championships, six soccer/football World Cups, four America’s Cups and above all, more than 100 Grand Slam tennis tournaments. That means I have literally spent four full years of my life watching tennis balls fly – or not fly – across nets at the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.
Each of us is free to decide whether that is four full years well spent. It certainly has my stamp of approval even if I could have done without Andy Murray’s 4:05 a.m. finish in Melbourne and would also have preferred quite a bit more serve and volley.
But on balance, I have been a happy sportswriter and a very fortunate man, and now it is time to pursue another dream. The international success of The Master, my best-selling biography of Roger Federer, gave me the opportunity to become a full-time author. I left the New York Times staff of my own free will in 2023 with nothing but gratitude to work on my next book, The Warrior, a biography of Rafael Nadal that has just been released to strong reviews. The Wall Street Journal called it “scintillating”.
As part of that move, I pitched my tent on Substack to open a direct connection with you, dear readers. I will continue writing here in large part on tennis, the game I know best, with an emphasis on the Grand Slam tournaments that continue to define players’ careers and legacies. I will offer behind-the-scenes perspective on my books, and as I have throughout my time as a reporter and columnist, I will also write about other themes and sports and provide some windows into my life away from the keyboard. The volume will fluctuate depending on whether I am deep into a manuscript, but the commitment and enthusiasm are real.
This will be tennis and beyond, and I invite you to join me on the journey by becoming a subscriber or, dare to dream, a paid subscriber, which will give you access to all my posts and material, including voiceovers, and the chance to interact with me about tennis and other topics through the comments section. For now, I am alternating paid and free posts, but the comments section is open only to paid subscribers. I check in there regularly and am delighted to see that we are building a knowledgable and respectful community.
Exhale complete. Time to hit the first serve! Thanks so much for being here.
CC
More about Christopher Clarey:
*More than 30 years as an award-winning tennis & global sports correspondent for The New York Times & as the chief sports correspondent & columnist for The International Herald Tribune from bases in France, Spain and the U.S..
*Author of The Master, a major biography of Roger Federer that was a New York Times bestseller & international bestseller published in 22 languages & was named one of the best sports books of the year by The Times of London, The Daily Mail, Booklist and others.
*Just released The Warrior, a major biography that goes deep on Rafael Nadal’s code and career and on Roland Garros, the dusty Parisian showplace where he redefined tennis dominance. The Warrior was called “scintillating” by The Wall Street Journal and “splendid” by The Daily Mail. It has also received positive reviews from The Financial Times, the Times of London, The Athletic, NPR, The Irish Times and Town & Country, which called it “a wonderful addition to the canon of great tennis books”. Kirkus Reviews said “it could serve as a model for other sports biographers”. Vogue called it “the definitive volume on the definite claycourt player of all time”. It has been published in English in North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia and India with editions in Italian, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish and French with more to come.
*Frequent TV, Radio & Podcast guest with hundreds of major media appearances, including CNN, NPR, ESPN & the BBC. Live match commentary for Eurosport, the BBC & Australian broadcaster SEN.
*Speaker & presenter with appearances at Williams College, Longwood Cricket Club, La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, the Yale Club, the San Diego Open, the American Club of Paris & the International Tennis Hall of Fame Legends Ball.
*Recipient of the Eugene L. Scott Award from the International Tennis Hall of Fame, a career prize awarded for “communicating honestly and critically about the game” and for “making a significant impact on the tennis world”. Previous winners include Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.
*Recipient of the David A. Benjamin Achievement Award, an annual prize from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, that honors a former varsity tennis player who has gone on to achieve “excellence in a chosen profession” and make a significant contribution to society.
*First place in the Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the breaking news category. Clarey is also one of the few to have received both the ATP’s Ron Bookman Award and the WTA’s Ted Tinling Award for media excellence in coverage of tennis.
*He and his wife Virginie are the proud parents of three grown children. Clarey attended Punahou School in Honolulu, Coronado High School in Coronado, Calif. and Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he played soccer, volleyball and tennis and majored in English and History. He remains an active tennis and platform tennis player, swimmer, skier, biker, hiker and body surfer, and was a longtime youth soccer coach.
