Giri Nathan ’13 Captures a New Tennis Rivalry in ‘Changeover’

On a recent evening at the U.S. Open, tennis fans filtered out of the nearby Queens subway station and made their way down the hot, wooden boardwalk toward Arthur Ashe Stadium. There, they met an unusual sight. Next to a folding table piled high with books, Giri Nathan ’13 posed for photos, chatting easily with passersby about Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men’s Tennis, an exploration of the developing rivalry between tennis players Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.

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This nontraditional marketing strategy at the tournament, which continues through mid-September, was inspired by Nathan’s memories of attending as a child. “I just had such a vivid memory of that boardwalk, this splintery, rickety boardwalk,” he says. “And it was so tied up with my memory of the U.S. Open over the years, I just thought that would be a cool place to try to promote the book.”

Nathan, who wrote for Deadspin before co-founding his own sports publication, Defector Media, five years ago, got the idea for his book from watching the now-legendary 2022 U.S. Open quarterfinals match between Sinner and Alcaraz. “The absurd athleticism and shotmaking they were showing in that match looked very unlike anything I was seeing between any other pair of players on the tour,” Nathan says. From that moment forward, he began following their careers more closely, gathering any information he could, slowly building the story that would become Changeover.

While promoting his book on the boardwalk, Nathan met several people who thought it was “too early” for a book about this particular tennis rivalry. The previous rivalry that dominated the sport involved players so monumental they’ve come to be known as the “Big Three”: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. But as their decades-long reign comes to an end, Nathan argues in Changeover, Sinner and Alcaraz have proven themselves more than worthy successors.

What’s more, Nathan sees value in writing at the start of a rivalry rather than waiting for its conclusion. “I think sports books tend to capture an era at its end,” Nathan says. “And there’s actually a lot of excitement and uncertainty and awkwardness and goofiness about the beginning of a player’s career.”

At Princeton, Nathan took writing professor John McPhee ’53’s popular creative nonfiction class. Nathan refers to McPhee’s Levels of the Game, about the tension between erstwhile tennis stars Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, as the “classic book about a tennis rivalry.” Nathan himself was drawn into tennis writing for its potential for character studies. “While they’re playing tennis, [players] are totally exposed. They’re not wearing helmets or pads or anything,” he says. “It’s a very open and vulnerable spectacle.”

Vulnerability and playfulness are at the heart of Changeover. Over his years as a tennis writer, Nathan observed players both on and off the court and discovered a strange split between the public perception of them and their true personalities. “I think a lot of fans, when you’re just watching on TV, you get this shallow narrative about a player,” Nathan says. He wanted to capture “more well-rounded, human portraits” of these tennis superstars.

This interest in human connection was another reason for Nathan’s “harebrained scheme,” as he puts it, to sell books on the U.S. Open boardwalk. “It can be very lonely to be a writer and not have that human interaction with people who are reading your work,” he says. “I thought it would be cool to have a more IRL, real life kind of interaction with readers.”

Despite some interactions with skeptics, Nathan found the experience wholly satisfying. “I would do that again in a heartbeat,” he says.