From the author of The Means and Ghosts of Manhattan Douglas Brunt turns to the world of sports with this latest: TROPHY SON – a compelling yet haunting glimpse into the lives of professional athletes; the burdens and sacrifices they bear.

Written with an insider knowledge of the tennis circuit, TROPHY SON explores a young man striving to find balance in his life, navigating moral compromises, performance-enhancing drugs, and the elusive lure of wealth and celebrity. From Wimbledon and the U.S. Open to the off-court life of elite players, Anton finds exhilarating highs and desolate lows as he searches for an identity apart from his achievements.

Anton Stratis, a tennis prodigy whose childhood is stripped away by an ambitious obsessive father who nurtures talent and resentment in his son.

“A tennis racket lurks in my earliest memories like a sick relative who had come to live with us . . . I had no sensation of milestones and the power to value a moment was never granted to me. My parents had the plan for my life from the moment my mother tested positive with me. . ."

The hard turn: When Anton was pushed to leave school after the eighth grade to play tennis full time and study some with a traveling tutor.

“I know I was born and I know that I’ll die. The in between is mine. “ – Eddie Vedder

Tennis prodigy Anton Stratis is the son of Pennslyvania parents- two former Olympic athletes. His dad obsessed beyond control is determined to make his son a star.

Anton’s parents met in the early eighties. She was an Olympic downhill skier. He an Olympic swimmer. His mom, a natural athlete. Not as intense as his dad.

In the average day he would spend seven hours on the court with this dad blasting tennis balls from a machine, then strategy, watch game film and train with weights. Then in the winter, they would rent a place in Florida with tennis courts to do the same year-round.

His dad, was a retired hedge fund manager and now his number one focus was his son’s game. By the time Anton was fourteen he was good enough to beat the crap out of decent college player— and his dad scouted out the places.

His dad taught him how to approach the court, taunt the players, bait them and then bait them into putting money on the line.

“A friendly game will ruin you. Play with adversity, with animosity. No friendly games.”

With all the drilling, this meant no friends. No normal childhood.

Tennis was about only hate and suffering.

Anton grew to despise the game.

His dad saw in him what he did not see in his (three years older) brother Panos. He thought Anton could handle the hate. He took the punishment and by twelve he had used it to become an elite junior player. By the age of fourteen, he was on the Penn campus to humiliate a Divison I college player.

Panos drove a Porsche 911 that cost their dad less than his tennis travel each year, so that was supposed to the balance. He liked his brother. They watched out for one another the best they could.

His dad never let anyone come to like him. He was trapped. His dad was ruthless. Obsessive. He even withheld water during the heat of the summer. Torture. There were no water breaks.

There was the beat me, love me. Over and over.

His dad would not tolerate slacking off, complaints, and no talking back. No kid stuff. He would not allow the expression of rage from Anton. His dad was his trainer and coach.

Through the torment, and grueling practice he developed a toughness, a knowledge that no opponent across the net could fathom his training, but it was all built on hate.

The only light he had was reading. If he could not go anywhere physically, he could take the journey with a book. From Hemingway, Faulkner, John Irving, Nelson DeMille, Dickens. Anton loved Dickens. Unfairness, unhappiness, suffering, heroes and villains—glimmers of hope at love and a way out. David Copperfield – the idea of being the hero of your own life.

The mandate was to succeed, win tournaments, be the best. But being the number one tennis player did not make Anton the hero of his own life. It made him the hero of someone else’s life.

“Being the hero of my own life is about something else, something internal. It’s about who has their hands on the steering wheel that’s inside me. It needed to be me and it never was then, and I didn’t understand that until much later.”

His game was not like Agassi, Rafter, McEnroe, Federer; however, he liked them. His game was more like Marat Safin. His dad said he was unique.

There would be no distractions from girls, friends, or outside influences. He did what he was supposed to do.

His whole world was small. The only thing of value was winning at tennis and losing was Armageddon. Losing was trauma. His dad was more invested in tennis that Anton. A loss to an inferior player would not be tolerated.

“Some parents feel their position of unconditional love permits unfettered abuse. They can rationalize self-forgiveness for harsh treatment because parenting is an obligation and only the parent can do certain things. . . “

From triumphs, failures, to the highs and lows. The dramatic rise through the intensely competitive world of professional tennis. From abuse and performance-enhancing drugs pushed by a domineering obsessive father pushing a son to exceed at the expense of his own happiness.

The author pulls the reader into a world filled with conflicts and struggles of a young boy, through his teenage years to adulthood, the pro-circuit and Wimbledon. A strife for happiness, self-fulfillment, and pressure to succeed.

Some may find some similarities with Stratis’s father resembling Andre Agassi’s, an overbearing former Olympic athlete and immigrant.

As in Open (highly recommend) his autobiography— Agassi reveals off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his great achievements in a sport he had come to resent.

From the author:

“Trophy Son” was inspired by how childhood sports have changed since his youth to become highly specialized and competitive, as the pressures on athletes trickle down from colleges to high school to youth sports, adding incentives for them to try performance-enhancing drugs.


An engrossing tale for anyone who loves the game of tennis, and a cautionary tale for parents who utilize pressures and tactics to push a child in our overly social and achievement-obsessed society of perfectionism. Well done!

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an early reading copy. Cover Love. Also purchased the audiobook narrated by Dan Bittner for an engaging performance.

JDCMustReadBooks

Disclaimer: I’d like to disclose that I received a free copy in order to write this review.

Overall thoughts
I’d like to start off by saying that I’m incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed Trophy Son. While I don’t know much about the sport myself, besides playing a couple of times when I was younger, I have little understanding of how the pro circuit works. Thankfully, the author has written this novel in a marvelous way that allows readers (even those with no knowledge like myself) to understand the world of professional tennis, and to connect with some of the struggles that an athlete in that situation might be dealing with. There are two major aspects of the novel that I disliked. Firstly, I don’t like the somewhat forced, obsessive, and somewhat clichéd way in which the protagonist ends up in a relationship with a woman. Secondly, related to my previous complaint, parts of the ending are a bit predictable and clichéd. As a whole, however, I’d be inclined to rate the book highly with 4 out of 5 stars. After all, I really did enjoy reading it. For those interested in getting a more detailed analysis on how I arrived at my conclusion, please read below, though beware that there might be some minor spoilers here and there.


Plot, themes, and characters

As the short blurb of the book implies, the novel follows the story of young Anton and his experience in becoming a professional tennis player. We as readers get to follow our protagonist since he was a very young kid, being formed and trained by his parents (which have both participated in the Olympics) into becoming a great tennis player. Through his earlier years, his training and coaching were solely performed by his father. Even though his father had competed in the Olympics for swimming rather than tennis, he still tried to instill into Anton the mentality, habits, and determination that someone needs to have in order to become a successful athlete. During Anton’s teenage years, it is decided to hire a coach with more experience in tennis so he can help Anton succeed in his parents’ dreams and desires for him. Thanks to this coaching, we see Anton transition from a young tennis prodigy to eventually being ranked as the number one tennis player in the world.

As one can imagine, due to the constant presence of his father during his formative years as a player, family dynamics become an important aspect of the book. His father not only coached him as a kid but later became part of his team, even when Anton started competing internationally. Due to their wealth amassed and his retirement, his father could afford the luxury of traveling the world while Anton entered tournaments all across the world. Due to the behavior and training method that his father decided to follow, Anton grew up with a quite strict schedule and limited approved activities. In fact, it is mentioned that he even stopped attending regular school so that he could spend more hours of the day training with his father. As with all other teenagers, as Anton grew, he came to have a rebellious phase (though perhaps not in the same way as normal adolescents) and started doing things without his father. This eventually led to him kicking his dad out of his team. His father is not the only member of his family, however. His mother also played a role, albeit an arguably smaller one, at least explicitly. His mother believes that his father is the one that knows best when it comes to his training, and decides to take a more hands-off approach. For this reason, as Anton grows, he gets more distanced from her. Despite her distance from Anton, his mother does sometimes intervene, as is the case when Anton starts dating. His father is against it, but his mother encourages him to continue with it. The last family member is his brother, Panos. While his parents also attempted to influence him into becoming an athlete, he gave up early and refused to fulfill their dreams.

This refusal on Panos’ behalf caused their father to focus solely on Anton. In fact, while his dad was still training Anton in their backyard tennis court, his father grew hedges around the court to make sure that Anton couldn’t see anything beyond it so he could remain focused. This leads to another important part of the novel, which is the mental isolation and other psychological themes that are mentioned throughout the story. The level of isolation that tennis requires is brought up several times. At some point, Anton brings up the idea that once a tennis player is out in the court, he stops being just a player. Once he’s out on the court, he also needs to play the role of trainer, confidant, and coach. Tennis players don’t have the same access to strategists or other team members like in other sports. They’re on their own. To enforce this mentality, Anton’s father nearly caused him to be socially reclusive. His only way to escape and to entertain himself seems to be through reading. Despite of this, he still feels a lack of mental stimulus outside of tennis, which causes him to develop somewhat of OCD tendencies which make him count things all the time, though Anton himself admits that this is mostly out of boredom. However, the lack of socializing certainly plays a role in Anton, which is even more evident towards the end of the book. During the second half of the book, when Anton starts thinking about retirement and his life after tennis, he also starts realizing that he’s missed out on a lot of social developments. He starts noticing this as he starts being friendly with the players in the circuit and with other celebrities. When he starts dating, he notices that he is just now learning how to behave as a person outside of tennis. Anton expresses that he is learning at 22 what he should have learned when he was younger.

Of course, this latter sentiment is just but one of the many struggles exposed that professional athletes have to deal with. One of the other issues is that in a lot of cases, people seem to care more about his athletic progress and achievements, rather than his actual being. This is particularly noticeable when he’s talking to his first therapist, whom Anton blames of simply working for his father and pushing towards his father’s agenda rather than helping Anton as a person. It is shown that this kind of behavior can be quite problematic with athletes, or at least in the case of Anton since he himself doesn’t even know if he wants to commit to the sport in the first place. This amount of external pressure and expectations set on to him cause Anton to lose confidence in himself several times, overcoming them differently and for different reasons at different points in time.

The last topic that I’d like to address in this section is that of the sport itself, the level of competition, and the consequences. Throughout the novel, we get to learn more about how the world of tennis operates and how it has changed over the years. In particular, this evolution seems to have been more important due to the technological developments in the strings and rackets used. There are several notes on how the sport has evolved. Naturally, as in other sports, there are different techniques and playing styles. Through the encounters and matches that Anton is involved in, we get an understanding of the differences between these techniques and styles, and how different players adapt to different situations. Furthermore, we also get to see the structure of the competitions themselves. It is stated that tennis has a very long season, lasting 11 months of the year with only the month of December as a break. This causes players to seek ways to get faster recovery and get more endurance. Throughout the book, we learn of means and methods that players use stimulants, drugs or other banned substances to help them in these aspects. In some cases, we even learn the consequences of getting caught, and the power that some players have to negotiate in case, they get caught. Lastly, the level of competition changes as one is climbing the ranks. The higher one gets, the harder it is to climb. And once a player reaches the summit, it can be quite lonely, so to speak, with fierce competition. Anton expresses that one loss on a given day could mean a change in the top five, depending on how close they are in points. This can increase the level of pressure that the players have to face.


Use of language and narration

The novel is narrated in a first person perspective, which I believe fits the nature of the story quite well. In this case, the narrative helps readers to connect with the protagonist and to understand his dilemmas, struggles, thoughts, and emotions, among other things. The language used throughout the novel is incredibly easy to follow, even when describing the elements that are unique to the sport. The fast pace of the story helps the interest stay alive for those that are not as knowledgeable or interested in the sport. Lastly, the language also reflects the growth that the character has since it is observable how his feelings and thoughts evolved thanks to his different experiences.


Recommendations and suggestions for further reading

I’d recommend this novel to anyone that is interested in tennis. However, I’d also recommend this book to those that want to get a better understanding of the hardships of becoming a professional athlete, be it the mentality or schedule that they hold, or the tax that it has on their relationships with the outside world. I’d also recommend this book to those that are looking for a quick-paced, easy and entertaining read. Unfortunately, since I don’t usually read books related to sports, I don’t have a lot of recommendations. From the top of my head, my only recommendation would be for those that want to read another novel that focuses on the relationship between a father and his son, though in a very different context. My recommendation, in that case, would be The Road by Cormac McCarthy.


I would like to thank the publisher for the chance of reviewing this book, and to those of you who read my review. Happy reading!

"An elite athlete must have a willingness to suffer. There's the endurance training through thresholds a physical pain. There's also the mental and emotional sacrifice to narrow the world. A willingness to suffer is either born in us or beaten in early".

It helps to like TENNIS if you choose to read this book ---which I do!!!!!
To say there is not descriptions about 'tennis' itself - intensive training- matches -and tournaments -etc. would be misleading.
A tennis tour is brutal. December is the only month off. Eleven straight months of pounding, hours a day, every day, tournament after tournament is the lifestyle of the elite tennis pros. Toss in a few flights to Australia and around Europe--living in hotel rooms-add a psychiatrist-physical trainer- an academic tutor if under age - no friends- no parties - drinking or girls who might distract --and a father who's entire being is dominated by the 'one-on-one' correlation between his-'Dad's" - happiness and his sons winning so that 'he' - Dad -could be very happy. Yep: ALL AROUND BRUTAL!!!!

I inhaled this novel in one big yummy gulp! I enjoyed reading about Anton Stratis's life. I'm not a masochist. I don't get gratification by another persons suffering, unhappiness, physical pain, humiliation, or imposed abuse by others -- father's/coaches pushing -not allowing a drink of water until they say so ....etc. However, this story was genuinely intellectually rigorous, emotionally engrossing, and I just never once wanted to put it down. Anton never came off as a victim. As he grew from a little boy - from even around age 9 and up - we see him begin to search out his own voice - his own identity - but that's different than being a whiny.
We learn early from Anton ---that for him winning never felt as good as losing a match felt as bad. His reason was when he was winning a game, those wins were for someone else. When he lost a game, those losses were all on him.

Anton was a pro tennis player. We take the journey with him as he tells us about his life story with tennis.....eating, living, breathing, every moment of his life - his driven purpose was to be the top #1 Pro tennis player......However, his willingness to suffer --- was 'planned' for him before he was even born. Both his parents were in the Olympics. His dad for swimming- his mother for skiing......Anton 'was' gifted at tennis - but without his dad directing every move he made, his choices may have been different.

Not yet 18 years of age, people all around him were talking life altering-drugs. In order to go Pro - which is what was about to happen -his dad & coach decided he needed to take steroids. An advantage in in tennis game ( if not caught). The trade off was putting crap into his body.

A favorite minor supporting character in this story is Anton's older brother, Panos.
Anton marveled at his older brother. He loved everything about him. He was fun and easy going - and he made life look naturally enjoyable. Panos love his younger brother Anton -- really loved 'him'.... and not just because of his tennis playing.

A sad moment in this story for me ---which should have been a happy one --( and it still was in some ways), was when Panos was getting married to this great girl he had been living with for six years. By this time, Anton, was a big name -- but Anton had put some distance between he and his father -- so at the wedding -Dad was 'most' happy to see Anton. Dad wanted to make sure that Panos and his bride Kristie didn't Hog
the limelight from Anton at their 'own' wedding.
"Panos took it in the same relief and sadness as he always did. It hurts not to be chosen by your own father, but to be chosen is worse. Panos preferred to be orphaned. Which was a strong motivator to marry and have a life with Kristie".

There were simply many things I enjoyed about about Douglas Brunt's novel.... so much so that I want to read another book by him.....
The writing came alive. I could visualize crowds hollering, screaming in the stands at Wimbleton. I could imagine watching at home on TV and noticing when control of a match passes from one player to the other: It was all very visual to me.
I enjoyed little side stories --- Anton's sexual development-his fear of American girls from having been hurt. ...His new found enjoyment of Eastern European women.....
I was cracking up after a 'morning' of great sex with a Russian woman - between eating an energy bar- she says to Anton, "Now ve svim, Anton"! And.... I enjoyed Anton's relationship with Ana --( his girlfriend and actress). I liked his 2nd therapist:
Peter Minkoff......
AND ....... ......... ....... A READERS FAVORITE: Our Tennis star was a READER!!!!
Anton enjoyed Charles Dickens, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Don Delia, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, etc etc.

One of Anton's favorite quote ---is repeated twice in the story.....
from the book David Copperfield. The opening line is one that Anton thought about for many years growing up:
"Whether I shall turn out to be a hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else".

Douglas Brunt wrote an immensely interesting story! Worked for me!!!!!
Oh.... I also love the book cover --- I'd love a physical copy!!!! Anyone want to send me one? :)

Thank You St. Martin's Press, Netgalley, and Douglas Brunt ( I will read you again)

Douglas Brunt has again written a compelling tale. We are given a glimpse of a life not seen by many. In this telling of the life of a tennis phenom we seeing the comings of age, splintered family angst and ultimate self-actualization. This is a keeper.
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A while ago I read Megan Abbott's "You will know me" about a competitive gymnast and her family and these two books have a lot of similarities. The main one is that often parents are more competitive and ruthless than the prodigies they create. Trophy son does not have the suspense factor, but it gives the reader a deeper insight into the thoughts of a competitive tennis player and so does a better job at making the reader empathize. The struggle of Anton to become a "whole" person rather than a tennis prodigy, his search for a balance between his love for tennis and his longing for a slightly more normal life, his battle with his slightly unhinged father and the health sacrifices he has to make, all of this shows that the writer really knows what he is talking about. Next time I watch Wimbledon and see a young player on center court I will think of this book and maybe understand a little better what that world is like. A nice read about the "darker" side of top sports.