Lacoste on tennis

Genuine first edition published on 21 June, two months before the American edition, one of a few luxury copies, not advertised and reserved for the author.

Publisher's full dark green shagreen binding, spine decorated with a gilt fleuron, gilt title stamped on the first board, gilt fillet border, marbled endpapers.

Rare and precious presentation copy handwritten signed inscription from René Lacoste to the “Bounding Basque”: “à Jean Borotra avec toutes les amitiés de l'alligator, René Lacoste” “To Jean Borotra with very best wishes from the alligator, René Lacoste”.
Proud of his famous reptile symbol, René Lacoste will make it the logo of his line of sporty and smart polo tops created in 1933, which have since become a world reference for luxury sportswear.
Very beautiful copy.
In the 1920s and 1930s, René Lacoste, Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon and Henri Cochet dominated world tennis and achieved, in singles or in doubles, more than 40 victories. The elegance of their game, as much as their pugnacity, earned them the title of “Four musketeers” and, what is more, each of them was given an honorary pseudonym referencing their particular talent.
“Toto, the doubles man” Jacques Brugnon's alias, “The Magician” Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra, known as “the Bounding Basque” and finally René Lacoste, “the alligator,” to this day remain tennis legends, whose sporting achievements, in jackets and flannel trousers, are still unrivaled. In 1976, they were the first French to be admitted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, until then exclusively reserved for American champions.
More than a sporting collaboration, it is a deep friendship that will unite the four men for their entire lives, despite the social and political disruptions of the twentieth century.
As such, in 1942, arrested by the Gestapo, Jean Borotra is deported to the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. Faithful to Dumas' motto for the Musketeers, “One for all and all for one,” René Lacoste, an expatriate, solicits the help of the king of Sweden, a tennis fan, and, thanks to this unexpected intervention, obtains his friend's transfer to Itter Castle where prominent French figures and grand French general officers, such as Dalladier and Weygand, or Marie-Agnès de Gaulle, the General's sister, were held prisoner. After an extraordinary escape in 1945, the tennis player will help to free his fellow prisoners by leading the American troops to the castle.
In 1993, one year before his death, Borotra told the New York Times: “Being part of the musketeers was one of my greatest joys. We were marvelous friends.”
When in 1928 he published this story of their epic, René Lacoste, already appointed the best tennis player in the world, did not know that he and his friends were only at the beginning of their rise. No doubt thinking that his fragile health will not allow him to repeat his achievements, he concludes this masterful tennis lesson with a farewell to the sport: “I have for the time being, given up tennis”.
Thinking he has bowed out, he prints a few luxury copies for his friends, to whom the book is dedicated, and gives them – undoubtedly each of them – one of these unique copies bound in full crocodile skin color, thus immortalizing one the most unbelievable French sporting adventures.