Tennis books are notoriously difficult to sell. Tim Henman has dodged every plea to write the one about his career, Andy Murray's tome has been postponed for 12 months because his year was so unfortunately interrupted by injury and Brad Gilbert may be having a rethink about any reprint of his book, I’ve Got Your Back, upon the realisation that Murray had his (right where he wanted it).

And so when a tennis book leaps into the top ten in the New York Times bestseller list during its first week of publication, we know we have something special on our hands. One cannot recommend Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life (HarperCollins, USA, hardback, £16.99) by James Blake, the American professional, too strongly.

Here is a young man who would appear to have everything - a storied Ivy League education, good looks, increasing wealth, a dazzlingprofile, until 2004, when he is struck by one misfortune after another.

While practising in Rome - the kind of routine that tennis players go through every day of their lives – he ran headlong into a metal net post and broke his neck. Within ten weeks his father had passed away from cancer, then Blake suffered a form of shingles that “left half my face paralysed, messed up my balance and blurred my vision”. It could have been career-threatening.

“That’s when they started coming,” he writes. “What felt like a constant stream of friends from every corner of my life descended on my home in Fairfield, Connecticut, with one purpose: to cheer me up. They made me laugh at them, and when they saw my crooked grin, they made me laugh at myself. That’s when I realised how many deep, lifelong connections I had made. I try to make people laugh and be happy and they were all returning the favour.”

Blake is back, stronger, wiser and happier. Similarly, Scott Draper, the Australian who won the Artois Championships at Queen’s Club, West London, in 1998, has written Too Good (Random House Australia) about his fascinating career that was also interrupted by the shock of a loved one’s death, when his wife, Kellie, died after only two years of married life. After grieving, with liberal alcohol, he found solace in golf and has turned professional.