Too Soon to Panic

The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic memoir, A Handful of Summers.

Gordon Forbes played for the South African Davis Cup team in the 50s and early 60s and returned to the circuit as a writer and observer. In 'Too Soon to Panic' he takes the readers behind the scenes at the big tournaments – Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows; Germany, Spain and Italy – and introduces them to many of tennis's most extraordinary and dynamic characters, including Mark McCormack, Rod Laver, Jim Courier and Andre Agassi.

Crammed with riotously funny anecdotes and vivid evocations of the innocence and camaraderie of the game in Forbes's day – when tennis as still a gentlemanly, amateur and often rather ramshackle affair – and insightful observations on today's glamorous game – where money reigns and sheer strength sometimes seems to conquer skill – Forbes explores the remarkable changes that have come over the sport in the last forty years.

Gordon Forbes emerged from South Africa in the '50s to the high life of what then passed as the international tennis circuit. He achieved his real notoriety off the court, though, with his rollicking 1978 cult standard, A Handful of Summers, an annal of that life. In Too Soon to Panic, he's finally loaded up his second serve. Forbes has certainly lost none of his good humor in the intervening years, even if the game he writes so knowingly about has. Still, with a raconteur like Forbes lending his wit to the proceedings as he lobs anecdote after anecdote, the net result is another ace.