Sidney Wood was the youngest man to win Wimbledon – and the only one who did not have to play a final – in 1931, at age 19 (Boris Becker became a 17-year-old Champion in 1985). Sidney was also the tournament's youngest male competitor at age 15. He was a top US player throughout his decades-long career and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1964. After his death in 2009 at the age of 97, his son David gathered Wood's notes for a memoir, then organized and annotated them into The Wimbledon Final That Never Was...

Brown's protagonist and narrator, Slow Smith, is one such player. Or, at least, he was. Shaken by a car accident that left him unscathed but put his wife in a coma, Smith abandons the Tour and his long-time doubles partner, Kaz, until his old coach Manny comes to encourage him to return to play. As the book develops, we learn more about Slow's history, which revolves around the coach, the coach's wife, Katie, Slow's wife Anne, and Kaz. These four people seem to have been the only constants in Slow's mobile world, besides tennis. As events develop, we see how the bond among these characters drives them to love and betray each other in different instances.

The novel is not about tennis. It's about human relationships and how they shape our psyche and our life choices.