RaveBookforum\"The Circuit is a tennis romance, and unique. Phillips knows the love. He is a sportswriter and poet, and remarkably, because tennis love isn’t easy to explain, he has found the right supple, sometimes tactile, and tender language for it ... As if writing a mystery, Phillips keeps his tour story suspenseful. He develops each player as a character in the greater game—that is, their lives—and, through the narrative, also tracks their hopes, travails, luck, failures, their tennis magic. He knows and assesses the players very well, gleaning, to my mind, their tennis souls ... You may never have played tennis or watched it, but Phillips beautifully describes the experience of loving it. His exegesis might stand in for any fan’s love of any sport.\
