Sport of Kings

Sport of Kings: Elite Performance, Sovereignty, and Autonomics in the Game of Hands

In 12th-century France, a game developed that was played with a palm of the hand in monastic cloisters. It was so challenging, strategic, and addictive, and the wagers that accompanied its play so problematic that bishops began to publish condemnations against it, as it turned their ordinarily obedient, and mild-mannered monks into boisterous and competitive gamblers, shouting profanities. This is the illustrious origin of the sport that we know as tennis.

Over the past 25 years, the professional men’s game has entered a Golden era, with the simultaneous careers of three of the greatest players the sport has ever known. Tennis, which became known as the Sport of Kings sometime in the 14th century, requires a unique combination of physical strength, finesse, tactical awareness, and mental fortitude. To arrive at elite levels of gameplay is nearly impossible without mastery of Self.

In this rollicking collection of essays, connection phenomenologist Natureza Gabriel brings his unique blend of passion and lyrical intensity to the sport he has played since youth. A competitive tennis player as a youngster, he stopped playing for 27 years, returning four years ago, having missed the entire career of Roger Federer, unarguably his favorite player ever.

Yet as the sport continues to increase in global popularity, with each Grand Slam tournament drawing a larger crowd than the last, a new generation of young stars, led by the Spanish phenomenon Carlos Alcaraz, is bringing an unparalleled mix of joy, power, and tactical deftness to the game. Gabriel argues that tennis is a unique vehicle for teaching us about sovereignty, self-mastery, and the ability to precisely manage autonomic balance at high intensity. The learnings here are relevant for anyone seeking an elite level of performance, and self mastery, be their forum the tennis court or the boardroom. Join Gabriel as he holds court in

Sport of Kings.

With surgical deftness, Gabriel inhabits the makers of the modern world, the authors of our contemporary landscape of alienation. Thrumming with the yearning for home, these are fictions that strain against all of the ways we have been exiled from our deepest selves.

Shipping only in the United States. Apologies, but we cannot ship this book internationally.