Asked if his new book will upset people, Richard A. Hillway answered immediately in the affirmative.
“Yes, oh yes,” he said. His co-author, Robert T. Everitt, nodded.
Their book is not about any of the typical inflammatory topics in sports: no cheating, no greed, no steroids. Instead, it’s about in what order which people started playing tennis in the 1870s.
The topic, however esoteric, has been a point of contention for those who think they have a claim to having been first, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Leaving no stone unturned in the search for answers and verifications of those answers, Hillway and Everitt’s book, “The Birth of Lawn Tennis,” weighs in at around seven pounds, replete with lush archival images from the earliest days of the sport, and the many similar games that preceded it.