A baseball and basketball player at Sherburn High School and Augsburg College, Jim Holden was, like so many high school tennis coaches in the 1960s and '70s, an unlikely candidate for a tennis coaching job. Nonetheless, without any real playing experience or knowledge of the game, he agreed to become the Northfield High School boys' coach in 1971. Despite some relatively lean early years, under Holden's guidance the Raiders made five state tournament appearances - finishing as high as third in 1978. In addition, he coached 1976 doubles champions Andy Ringlien and Tim Ross and fourteen individual state tournament entrants (nine in doubles and five in singles). And during a seventeen-year tenure his teams won 237 matches and lost just 82.

Wanting to give something back to the game he came to love, Holden, an English teacher in his day job, decided to honor Minnesota players and coaches by penning this book.

Now retired from a forty-year career in teaching, twenty-nine as a secondary English teacher and eleven as a professor of education at Gustavus Adolphus and St. Olaf Colleges in Minnesota, Holden still takes time to play tennis. In addition, as an avid fly-fisherman he has become acquainted with almost every trout stream in western Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota. He and his wife, Caroline, raised two children, Chris and Heather, both of whom played high school tennis for Northfield and went on to play college tennis. He and Caroline also enjoy traveling, reading, bird watching, walking in the woods, and indulging every whim of their seven lovely grandchildren.