For anyone who is interested in my writing, here are links to free versions of all of my books. Just tap the book title to access a free PDF file on Google Drive.
Little Green Book of Tennis (3rd edition) A new 2023 digital-only version of the Little Green Book edited to only tennis related writing, including some new chapters from the past few years. You can also download the3rd edition— a revised edition. Play is Where Life is is the first book I wrote.
Em Ole Coaches Lessons learned from my family, friends, and colleagues over my career. This book is a personal collection of insights from some of my favorite people.
A Level of Thinking A collection of essays on a wide variety of subjects including sports, politics, and American culture.
Helping A collection of essays on tennis and coaching, many of which are posted here on the blog. The second half of the book chronicles the impact of international players on college tennis.
Thanksgiving A collection of personal thoughts, stories, and pictures. Many of the essays were also posted here on my blog.
Nearly Fifty For almost fifty years, my closest friends gathered once a year for a men’s weekend. This book collects some of my favorite stories and pictures from this tradition. If you would like a copy of this book, please email me.
Fleming will forever be remembered as the Newsweek reporter who was photographed after being severely beaten in the Watts riots of 1966. In this memoir, he recounts the long road that led to his reporting on race relations and the incendiary social issues that exploded that day. He was born in 1927 in a poor, bleak North Carolina community and raised in an orphanage when his mother could no longer afford to take care of him. Fleming left college early to begin life as a reporter with a small-town ( WILSON, NC ) newspaper, covering the police beat with a cynical police chief who mistreated blacks. It was Fleming’s first hint that, having grown up in an orphanage, his sympathies were with the underdog. He went on to cover the turbulent racial changes in the South, including James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers. In this stunning memoir, Fleming offers the perspective of a poor white boy witnessing the racial turbulence that changed the U.S. Vanessa Bush
Review “A harrowing and brutally honest account of Fleming’s experiences on all sides of the civil rights battle.” — Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2005
“A rich and absorbing book, a window into a time and place that defined America.” — Washington Post Book World, June 12, 2005
“Incredibly rich in history, in bravery and brutality, Karl Fleming’s Son of the Rough South is so beautifully written.” — Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies
“It makes for a tense, harrowing, utterly gripping journey.” — Newsweek, May 23, 2005
“Karl Fleming knows how to tell a story.” — Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis
“Their story will take the reader on a trip not soon forgotten of spirits unwilling to be broken.” — San Antonio Express-News, June 19, 2005.
“a vivid, often painful memoir…” — David Halberstam
“offers vibrant portraits of the most harrowing incidents of [the civil rights]…” — Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005
…recovers for us a brace period of our recent history, and delivers it with all the sharp…edges perfectly intact. — Barton Chronicle, October 2005
FFFlemingsssssssss craft soars to a level of artful elegance with blunt, unsentimental language full of casual grace notes — The Nation, August 15 and 22, 2005.
JACK SMITH ON DJT FRAUD PER JAN 6 ASSAULT ON CAPITOL ( EXCERPTS )
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Mr. Smith said, according to the transcript.
And Mr. Smith appeared intent on making another point: that he was unfazed by Mr. Trump’s vow to prosecute him.
“I am eyes wide open that this president will seek retribution against me if he can,” he said.
According to the transcript, Mr. Smith pushed back hardest when Republicans suggested Mr. Trump’s public statements after the 2020 election were protected under the First Amendment.
“Fraud is not protected by the First Amendment,” he said in the interview.
“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case,” Mr. Smith responded.
“He was free to say that he thought he won the election — he was even free to say falsely that he won the election,” Mr. Smith said. “But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly 19 false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function.”
There are two links below. One is to an interview with Coach Calipari, the second is second is with David Benjamin of the ITA (Intercollegiate Tennis Association.) Both have segments with comments on international athletes in American college sports. To access those comments scroll to minute 8:38 with Coach Calipari and beginning at minute 53 to minute 60 ). David Benjamin gives an accurate and fair summary of this conundrum.
Coach Calipari :
Coach Benjamin:
****************************
Once I questioned my own persistence to a respected professional. His adamant response was “… worth the effort? You’re damn right it is worth it. It’s our children. Child advocacy !”
*********************
I have fought this imbalance since 1970. Look the recent blog articles and the books I have written. But I’m about “out of gas”. I am firing me last bullets. And I write this hoping some younger tennis enthusiasts will jump in the fray.
The second half of HELPING deals with this issue. TP
Here are random comments from HELPING ( and elsewhere ) :
******************
August 5th, 1999 From TENNIS WORLD by Beth German:
“The NCAA is also to be blamed for not keeping tennis specific numbers. It is impossible to find out how many international players take roster spots, scholarships or Graduate from college.”
***************
REDSHIRT (Definition of an athlete staying out of college competition for a year to develop one’s skills and extend one’s period of playing eligibility: He redshirted last season.
Most humans max out physically at about age 27 or 28, College freshmen start college at 17 or 18.
Aspiring professional tennis players have long been advised to not go to college.
A new scenario has emerged!
Very few make the top 200, who about break even, The conditions are often horrible, lonely and disappointing. One fine college player after trying the pro circuit said ” I got tired of eating mayonnaise sandwiches. You need about 3/4 years to develop physically”.
The galloping allure of American College Tennis is attracting more and more, better and better potential pro players, who are betting on a different developmental arena.
College tennis is becoming the minor leagues of International tennis. 2024 was ample proof that that day is already here. And why not? Annual expenses? That is up to you. Great facilities and coaching, schedules featuring high quality match play. Fine practice partners (a team full ), not to mention a free college education. That most often is worth more than tennis.
And don’t forget- Pro tennis expenses come after years of very similar amounts of annual costs to be in the hunt.
The KICKER–The portal and likeness monies will make very lucrative possibilities for the best borderline international players. True too of the very top Americans. But only a few. Already the first year rumor mill is adrift with wildly questionable numbers and propositions being floated.
THE BAD NEWS IS A LOT OF FINE AMERICAN ASPIRANTS WILL BE IGNORED, And the same is probably true of many “global ” sports. Basketball, golf, soccer, volleyball, track and field are right behind. Tennis just got there first. See NEXT PLEASE (https://wordpress.com/post/littlegreenbookoftennis.com/6105 ).
********************
Currently college coaches go after the best players . Pretty simple. Earlier the players came from the student body. Then they recruited areas, then statewide, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Now we are attracting elite players world wide. Is Mars next?
We have created a pathway only possible for the very best and richest, What about the majority of our kids?
From Wayne Bryan (Father to Bob and Mike )
One foreign player per team?— fine —helps international good will and is a nice broadening experience for the guys on the team — six foreign players?! — I say the emperor has no clothes. I say burn it down and start over again. Time for a revolt. Carthage must be destroyed! I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in getting this elephant in our American living room removed. I have made speech after speech to coaches and parents in this country and they are 100% behind me and I’ve spoken to the college coaches national meeting in Florida on three occasions in recent years and I’ve hit this topic as hard as only Wayne Bryan can — to no avail.
****************
Want the best rationale for scholarships from the #1 sport world wide-soccer? Fact: Our men have never won the World Cup. With the advent of Title IX in 1970 our USA women have won three times! The 23 woman roster this time featured all women with college play and college scholarships. I was asked where the Olympic training camp for women was by a colleague from Elon University. Reply: Thirty five miles east. (Six of the twenty three had played for Anson Dorrance’s UNC Tar Heels.) 7. Change comes fast. In 2015 Duke’s women’s golf team finished 2nd in the NCAA. It was on NATIONAL TV. The BLUE DEVILS roster housed no American women. Coaches depend on winning to keep their jobs. I’ll guarantee young women golf coaches made note of Duke’s roster. (And how many good young Asian players are coming along). While this may be new to some it is not to many, myself included. In 1970 the NAIA voted down a “one only international can play in the NAIA Nationals” rule. A grizzled old coach stood and predicted, “… if you allow this, in about two years a Texas team will bring in an all Mexican team and it’s all over!” He was wrong. The next spring Mercyhurst College (PA.) produced the team winner consisting of six “freshmen” from Finland.
*****************
Isn’t it about time some of our organizations screw up their courage and use their time, money and efforts to make these facts available to American parents and players.
*******
What legal statute keeps us from taking care of Americans first. What does the legal term “state actor” mean to this issue.
*******
What is not included in the column is the enormity of American college tennis scholarship aid given to international players.
*************
YOU KNOW BETTER THAN I WHAT IT COSTS AN AMERICAN TO COMPETE AT THE ELITE LEVEL. THERE ARE ONLY TWO MAJOR WAYS TO RECOUP PARENTAL/FAMILY INVESTMENT: 1. PRO TENNIS (IN NC ONLY ISNER, WILKISON, AND SADRI MADE ANY LIFETIME $) AND 2. COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS. THE RISING COST OF HIGHER EDUCATION MAKES SCHOLARSHIPS MORE VALUABLE AND MORE APT TO AFFECT THE CHOICE OF SCHOOL AND SPORT TO PURSUE.
**************
2016JUNE 25, 2016 by ETHOMASPARHAM
“International players ruled the ( NBA ) draft There were 14 international players selected in the first round of the 2016 Draft,
14 BUMPED AMERICANS. HOW MANY KIDS ARE BOUNCING THE BALL WHO WILL RUN INTO THIS EVENTUALLY.
**************
There are a growing number of coaches who may not disagree with financial need aid only. What if we gave financial aid to our poor tennis players? Isn’t it intended for our needy? I’d rather have financial help for our needy kids than foreign aid given in the name of diversity. You can be guaranteed that if the scholarship money disappears, so will many international tennis players.
************
I wonder how many Athletic Directors silently came to a conclusion similar to this? 1. All sports are counted in the standings for our ‘Conference Cup’? 2. We are in a conference with four good tennis teams with all foreign teams and we give 8 girls and 41/2 boys grants to internationals. 3. I can find a better place for that size of budget.
***************
by Richard Hoffer
You might not notice it in the so-called revenue sports, football and basketball, which are the games that U.S. athletes are most keenly interested in (although 35 foreign basketball players dotted the rosters of teams in the men’s NCAA tournament this year), but in sports like golf, soccer, swimming. tennis and track and field, the college scene is decidedlv international. For instance: In last week’s NCAA tennis championships 33 of the 64 players in the men’s singles draw were foreign. An American, Mark Merklein from the University of Florida, was the winner, but the other three semifinalists all came from overseas. • The winning team at last week’s NCAA women’s golf tournament, Arizona State, included on its roster the top junior players from France, Mexico and Sweden. • Sixteen of the 31 swimmers on this year’s Arizona State men’s team were foreign, as were 12 of the 25 male swimmers at Nebraska. • The University of New Mexico’s men’s and women’s ski teams, which together had 22 members, were dominated by 19 athletes from other countries. •When Track & Field News previewed the NCAA track championships, which begin this week in Boise, Idaho, of the 168 men it predicted would score points, 54 were foreign-born, as were 43 of the 152 women. It’s not just the big schools that are searching for talent abroad. For one example, of the 17 tennis players on the men’s and women’s rosters at Northeastern Louisiana this season, only two listed a hometown in the U.S. (They were Nhut and Anh Diep, of Houston.) Likewise, Barber-Scotia College, a historically black school of 400 students in Concord, N.C., had an all-Nigerian tennis team that was ranked nationally in the NAIA. All this importation of talent is done by certain schools to stay competitive. Ask why NCAA track and field qualifying standards are nearly as high as those of the Olympics, and Alabama track coach Doug Williamson will tell you, “It’s these young people [read: foreigners] who have elevated the level of competition.”
********
Pick a school, google men’s tennis . Tag the roster and see for yourself. Just recently I researched the total rosters of Division 11’s top six men’s teams. Of 63 players on the combined rosters, 62 were international.
Kudzu–it spread like kudzu from 1970 t0 1980. All levels, men then women, small to largest.
**************
Is this right? I wondered. Soon it moved to other world wide sports. Everyone in our area is a basketball expert. I wrote of all sports to:
Mr. Rudy Washington, Editor-in-Chief The BCA Journal (BLACK COACHES ASSOCIATION) P. O. Box 4040 Culver City, CA 90231-4040 Dear M.r Washington: I’ve coached college tennis for 30-plus years and I have been dismayed by the preponderance of international players who have usurped many tennis scholarships from American youngsters. There seems to be a trend toward this in basketball. Has the BCA addressed the danger to American student athletes this poses, in particular college basketball. Should there be a limit to this? If your Journal has addressed this issue, please let me know. It seems basketball is a game that this should concern. ETP:1h Sincerely, Tom Parham Men’s Tennis Coach March 9, 1998
***************
This cropped up for me in 1970. Tennis has lost scholarships, choice of schools, team opportunities, winning, the quality of player abilities, gained student debt, coaching and teaching jobs, and on and on.
Calipari spotlighted current similarities with American college basketball. Any international sport has the same potential ( track, soccer, golf, volleyball,).
And, like flypaper, he has attracted to his side a coterie of retainers who fit the same psychological profile: warped fanatics like Stephen Miller or Robert Kennedy Jr., conscienceless grifters like J.D. Vance, without exaggeration some of the very worst people in America. His followers, likewise, the 30-plus per cent of Americans who still, after the unceasing chaos of the last year, tell pollsters they approve of his “performance,” share many of the same traits. To them, he represents revenge on the people who have been looking down on them all their lives, as he does liberation from all restraints, legal, ethical or customary.
Cancel the National Center for Atmospheric Research ? Bet Humanity ?
It “supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes — the largest community climate model in the world,” she wrote, adding, “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Mr. Trump routinely mocks climate change as a hoax and his administration has labeled virtually all efforts to study climate change, reduce the level of dangerous greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or protect communities from the impacts of global warming as “alarmism.”
The governor, a Democrat, said that while she had struggled with the church’s position on the measure, she had come to believe that the issue was not about shortening life “but rather about shortening dying.”
“I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life,” she continued.
She added, “I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be.”
A new book, THE GREAT CONTRADICTION ( The Tragic Side of the American Founding ) by Joseph J. Ellis , is additional support. In a word, both point out the blind eye we have turned concerning Slavery and the treatment of Native Americans.
Last night I watched THE LAST CLASS. It goes on the list. Pat Conroy once said, “…if anything is more important than good teachers I wish someone would tell me what it is before I die.”
Robert Reich is a giant of truth. Should one be interested in the truth–listen to him.
The Little Green Book of Tennis 