Why Tolstoy Took Up Tennis

Several years ago, while researching a book about trying to become a serious senior tennis player in my sixties, I happened upon a photograph on the Tumblr feed of The Millions, the online literary site. In the foreground, there stands an elderly fellow wielding a wooden racquet in his right hand. He has a white, Eastern Church patriarch beard. He is dressed for, I don’t know—a folk wedding? This, the caption explained, was Tolstoy. Across the net is a woman in an ankle-length caftan; is that his daughter and confidante, Alexandra? I wondered. And who is that to her left? And the man younger than Tolstoy, the author’s doubles partner, his face obscured by Tolstoy’s head—who is he?