The library

As mentioned in previous sections, Gianni Clerici’s library is one of the most comprehensive tennis history libraries in the world. Together with the complete collection of Gianni’s publications, the Clerici Fund boasts remarkable completeness: the monographs, which were catalogued in September 2024, number over a thousand and are arranged in chronological order on the shelves of a spacious study room. More specifically, the most represented categories are as follows: over 250 tennis technique manuals, almost 200 biographies and autobiographies of players, 45 volumes of statistics, and 12 tennis encyclopedias. There is no shortage of curiosities: there are ten humorous and anecdotal books and six concerning one of tennis’s relatives, table tennis. There are also numerous tennis-themed novels, such as the famous Infinite Jest. by David Foster Wallace and Levels of the Game by John McPhee.

Magazines

In addition to the wide range of monographs, the Clerici Collection contains several years of specialist periodicals in the sector: starting with the oldest tennis magazine still in print (founded in 1929), Il Tennis Italiano, where Gianni took his first steps as a journalist in 1948; then moving on to World Tennis, a magazine founded in 1953 in New York City by Gladys Heldman, American tennis player and manager of the great Billie Jean King; its British counterpart is Lawn Tennis, founded in London in 1896 by the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) and published by Watkins and Osmond.
In addition to those already mentioned, here are some of the magazines that can be found in the Clerici Collection: Il grande tennis; Tennis de France; Tennis Club; Tennis Magazine (Matchpoint); Matchball; ITF; Super Tennis Magazine; Tennis Classic; Tennis Oggi; Tennis Championships Magazine.