William Finger
Courting: A Tennis Memoir
The spec sheet
About William R. Finger
William (Bill) Finger grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from Duke University in 1969, he went to India as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In midlife, he completed a Masters in Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His first memoir, The Crane Dance: Taking Flight in Midlife (2016), was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He has been editor of a public policy quarterly, a consultant at the N.C. Legislature, and for the last 24 years before retirement, a writer and communications manager at an international public health organization. Since 1977, he has lived with his wife in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, where they raised their two children.
In Courting: A Tennis Memoir, we witness how a thread woven through our lives can serve as a spiritual home, a sanctuary for the psyche.
About
Courting: A Tennis Memoir
Tennis has served as a talisman for William Finger, offering a source of joy and escape from life’s challenges. In this memoir, Finger reflects on the physical and mental challenges of playing tennis at age seventy. After a thirty-year hiatus from competition, he immerses himself in workshops, lessons, and national tournaments.
Finger revisits his childhood tennis experiences and other haunts, recalling how tennis anchored him through the turmoil of the 1950s and 60s in Mississippi. His journey takes him back to Duke University for his college reunion, where he reflects on how the tennis team served as a refuge during difficult times, bouts of depression, and campus political upheavals.
Finger’s victory in the seventy-and-over state championships in Charlotte, North Carolina, marks his personal growth compared to matches at the same tournament site in his thirties.
In Courting: A Tennis Memoir, we witness how a thread woven through our lives can serve as a spiritual home, a sanctuary for the psyche.
