Higgins's opus a real labour of love

On Tennis:Tom Higgins was born in Longford in 1948, was educated at Cistercian College, Roscrea, and Terenure College in Dublin. Given that background, you might ask, why the Sligo Institute of Technology lecturer would not write a tome on the history of Irish rugby (with due deference to Edmund van Esbeck) rather than what may be the biggest and most comprehensively collated book ever bound on the sport of tennis - The History of Irish Tennis. The answer is love, of course.

Higgins's three-volume magnum opus is a sprawling book that required a pack mule to carry home. It is the type of publication on which the BBC spoof science programme Brainiacmight do a piece running along the lines of "Imagine if you were living in the Middle Ages and were coming home from the library and you were attacked by a gang of bandits. Would you get most protection from carrying (a) the Oxford English Dictionary(b) The Book of Kellsor (c) The History of Irish Tennis? The Brainiac team would then strap the books to the chest of a mannequin and shoot a catapult, a longbow and a crossbow to see which book, when struck, would save your life. They would then recommend to book out the History of Irish Tennis from the local library.

It begs to be opened. It demands that every page is turned because you never know what you're going to get when you prise the pages apart. Anyone involved in tennis - or even associated with other sports, because the cross pollination is vast - are likely to find at least one dozen people mentioned with whom they are good friends, two dozen they know well, three dozen they meet occasionally, four dozen they recall talking to at a club barbecue and five dozen they recognise in the photographs.

Where do you start with such a monster?

In the middle, of course, and work towards the beginning and the end. This is a book to randomly open, not to be read from beginning to end, but to be left on the coffee table for all and sundry to flick through. Everywhere are small points of social history, reminders of bygone days, unusual points of interest.

On page 501, the Irish Lawn Tennis Association (now the zippier Tennis Ireland) were told in May, 1974, that they had received an anonymous sponsorship of £250 towards the cost of sending the Federation Cup team to Naples. Amateur days.

On page 12, we get a rundown of the entertainers who like to hit the fluffy yellow ball. The Irish tenor of international repute, the late Frank Patterson, was an enthusiast, as was Percy French, who was a member of Boyle LTC and played as a student of Trinity. Cliff Richard, we all know, enjoys hanging out around debenture lounges at Wimbledon, but it was Elton John who was playing a game of tennis in his pad in the south of France when a phone call took him away from court to inform him that he needed a pacemaker.

More hip to the youth wing of the game, Westlife's Mark Feehily was an "exceptional tennis player as a youngster", while radio and television jocks Ryan Tubridy and Pat Kenny are said to be part of the tennis brethren.

Even the captions are personalised. On page 1,749, there is an attractive photograph of Rachael Rhatigan bearing the logo "West of Ireland Singles champion, with the coolness of Borg and the determination of Seles". Unquestionably so, because you know, with certainty, that the author knew this player's game first hand.

This is a love story with the sport, and like most love stories has its ups and downs. It strays sometimes and becomes infatuated and occasionally wanders off from the straight and narrow. The attraction to the sport is so great that the book love-bombs it in all directions. There are page captions entitled "Fund Raising" and "Club AGMs" and "Dancing and Romancing".

The book goes down many paths but always returns. How many you want to follow is up to you. But no doubt this has been a massive, seven-year undertaking for the author, full of enthusiasm and vigorous research.

It occasionally falls because it cherishes everything, tries to please in every aspect and therefore loses a central narrative line.

It is massively ambitious and, if looked at as one essential thing, then it successfully pulls together and illustrates exactly what Irish tennis is and has been all about. It is not just hitting the ball over a net but much, much more. It's about lives and occasions and history and people. This is the book's great success.

There are four pages of bibliography, three pages of densely-packed acknowledgments, a three-page introduction, 1,770 pages in between, hundreds of photographs and, rather sweetly, the book begins on page one with the line, "Without elaborating . . ."