Open

by Andre Agassi

  Thanks. I know.

  And I do know. I really do. But then I begin to lose. Not just lose, but lose badly. Weakly. Miserably. In Memphis I get knocked out in the first round. In Key Biscayne, first round again.

  Philly, I say, what’s going on? I have no clue out there. I feel like a hacker, a weekend player. I’m lost.

  The low point is at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. It’s not a tennis facility but a converted basketball arena, and barely that. Cavernous, poorly lit, it’s got two tennis courts, side by side, and two matches taking place simultaneously. At the same moment I’m returning serve, somebody is returning serve in the next court, and if his serve goes wide at the same moment mine kicks, we both need to worry about colliding head-on. My concentration is fragile enough without factoring in collisions with other players. I don’t know yet how to tune out distractions. After one set I can’t think and can’t hear anything but my own heartbeat.

  Also, my opponent is bad, which puts me at a disadvantage. I’m at my worst against lesser opponents. I play down to their level. I don’t know how to maintain my game while adjusting for an opponent’s, which feels like inhaling and exhaling at the same time. Against great players I rise to the challenge. Against bad players I press, which is the tennis term for not letting things flow. Pressing is one of the deadliest things you can do in tennis.

  Philly and I stagger back to Vegas. We’re discouraged, but a more immediate problem is that we’re broke. I’ve made no money in months, and with all the traveling and hotels, all the rental cars and restaurant meals, I’ve burned through nearly all my Nike money. From the airport I drive straight to Perry’s house. We hole up in his bedroom with a couple of sodas. As soon as his door is closed I feel safer, saner. I notice that the walls are plastered with a few dozen more covers of Sports Illustrated. I study the faces of all the great athletes, and I tell Perry that I always believed I’d be a great athlete, whether I wanted to be one or not. I took it for granted. It was my life, and though I hadn’t chosen it, my sole consolation was its certainty. At least fate has a structure. Now I don’t know what the future holds. I’m good at one thing, but it looks as though I’m not as good at that one thing as I thought. Maybe I’m finished before I’ve started. In which case, what the hell are Philly and I going to do?

  I tell Perry that I want to be a normal sixteen-year-old, but my life keeps getting more abnormal. It’s abnormal to be humiliated at the U.S. Open. It’s abnormal to run around the Spectrum worrying about a head-on collision with some giant Russian. It’s abnormal to be shunned in locker rooms.

  Why are you shunned?

  Because I’m sixteen and in the top hundred. Also, Nick isn’t well liked, and I’m associated with Nick. I have no friends, no allies. I have no girlfriend.

  Jamie and I are done. My latest crush, Jillian, another schoolmate of Perry’s, doesn’t return my calls. She wants a boyfriend who isn’t on the road all the time. I can’t blame her.

  Perry says, I had no idea you were dealing with all this.

  But here’s the topper, I tell him. I’m broke.

  What happened to the twenty grand from Nike?

  Travel. Expenses. It’s not just me on the road, it’s Philly, Nick—it adds up. When you’re not winning it adds up faster. You can burn through twenty grand fast.

  Can you ask your father for a loan?

  No. Absolutely not. Help from him comes with a cost. I’m trying to break free of him.

  Andre, everything will be fine.

  Yeah, sure.

  Really, it’s about to get so much better. Before you know it, you’re going to be winning again. Blink your eyes and your face will be on one of these Sports Illustrated covers.

  Pff.

  It will! I know it. And Jillian? Please. She’s small time. You’ll always have girl problems. That’s the nature of the beast. But soon the girl giving you problems will be—Brooke Shields.

  Brooke Shields? Where do you get Brooke Shields?

  He laughs.

  I don’t know, I just read about her in Time. She’s graduating from Princeton. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, she’s brilliant, she’s famous, and someday you’re going to date her. Don’t get me wrong, your life might never be normal—but soon the abnormal will be cool.

  Buoyed by Perry, I go to Asia. I have just enough cash to get Philly and me there and back. I play the Japan Open, win a few matches before falling to Andrés Gómez in the quarters. I then go to Seoul, where I reach the final. I lose, but my share of the prize money is $7,000, enough to fund another three months of searching for my game.

  As Philly and I land in Vegas, I feel relieved. I feel buoyant. Our father is meeting us at the airport, and I tell Philly as we walk through McCarran International Airport that I’ve made a momentous decision. I’m going to hug Pops.

  Hug him? What for?

  I feel good. I’m happy, damn it. Why not? I’m going to do it. You only live once.

  Our father is at the gate, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. I rush toward him, wrap my arms around him, and squeeze. He doesn’t move. He stiffens. It feels like hugging the pilot.

  I release him and tell myself I’ll never try that again.

  PHILLY AND I GO TO ROME in May 1987. I’m in the main draw, so our rooms will be comped. We can upgrade from the dump Philly booked, which doesn’t have TVs or shower curtains, to the swank Cavalieri, which sits atop a main hill overlooking the city.

  In our free days before the tournament we get out and see the sights. We go to the Sistine Chapel and gaze at the frescoes of Christ handing St. Peter the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. We stare at Michelangelo’s ceiling and learn from the tour guide that he was a tormented perfectionist, eaten up with rage whenever he discovered that his work—or even materials on which he planned to work—had the tiniest flaws.

  We spend a day in Milan, stopping in churches and museums. We stand for half an hour before Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. We learn about da Vinci’s notebooks, with their minute observations of the human form, and their futuristic plans for helicopters and toilets. Both of us are floored that one man could have been so inspired. To be inspired, I tell Philly—that’s the secret.

  The Italian Open is on red clay, a surface that feels unnatural to me. I’ve only played on green clay, which is sort of fast. Red clay, I tell Nick, is hot glue and wet tar laid across a bed of quicksand. You can’t put a guy away on this red-clay shit, I complain at our first practice.

  He smirks. You’re going to be fine, he says. You just have to get used to it. Don’t be impatient, don’t try to finish every point.

  I don’t have the slightest idea what he means. I lose in the second round.

  We fly to Paris for the French Open. More red clay. I manage to win my first-rounder, but get spanked in the second. Again, Philly and I try to see something of the city, to improve ourselves. We go to the Louvre. The sheer number of paintings and sculptures daunts us. We don’t know where to turn, how to stand. We can’t comprehend all that we’re seeing. We pass from room to room, dumbstruck. Then we come to a piece that we understand all too well. It’s a painting from the Italian Renaissance and it depicts a young man, naked, standing on a cliff. With one hand he clutches a bare, breaking tree limb. With the other he holds a woman and two infants. Wrapped around his neck is an old man, perhaps his father, who also grasps a sack of what looks like money. Below them lies an abyss strewn with the bodies of those who couldn’t hold on. Everything depends on this one naked man’s strength—his grip.

  The longer you look, I tell Philly, the tighter that old guy’s arm around the hero’s neck feels.

  Philly nods. He looks up at the man on the cliff and says softly: Hang in there, bro.

  IN JUNE 1987 we go to Wimbledon. I’m scheduled to play a Frenchman, Henri Leconte, on Court 2, known as the Graveyard Court because so many players have suffered fatal losses there. It’s my first time at the most hallowed venue in tennis, and from the moment
we arrive I dislike it. I’m a sheltered teenager from Las Vegas with no education. I reject all that’s alien, and London feels as alien as a place can be. The food, the buses, the venerable traditions. Even the grass of Wimbledon smells different from the grass back home, what little there is of it.

  More off-putting, Wimbledon officials appear to take a haughty, high-handed pleasure in telling players what to do and what not to do. I resent rules, but especially arbitrary rules. Why must I wear white? I don’t want to wear white. Why should it matter to these people what I wear?

  Above all, I take offense at being barred and blocked and made to feel unwanted. I need to show a badge to get into the locker room—and not the main locker room at that. I’m playing in this tournament, but I’m treated as an intruder, not even allowed to practice on the courts where I’ll be competing. I’m restricted to indoor courts up the street. Consequently the first time I ever hit a ball on grass is the first time I play Wimbledon. And what a shock. The ball doesn’t bounce right, doesn’t bounce at all, because this grass isn’t grass, but ice slathered with Vaseline. And I’m so afraid of slipping that I tiptoe. When I look around, to see if the British fans have noticed my discomfort, I get a scare: they’re right on top of me. The building is like a dollhouse. Add my name to the list of those who’ve expired on Graveyard Court. Leconte euthanizes me. I tell Nick that I’m never coming back. I’ll hug my father again before I embrace Wimbledon.

  · · ·

  STILL IN A FOUL MOOD, I travel several weeks later to Washington, D.C. In the first round, playing Patrick Kuhnen, I come up empty. Bone dry. After the long slog across Europe I have nothing left. The travel, the losses, the stress, it’s all sapped me. Plus, the day is oppressively hot and I’m not physically fit. I’m wholly unprepared, so I become unpresent. When we’re tied at one set apiece, I leave the court, mentally. My mind departs my body and goes floating out of the arena. I’m long gone when the third set starts. I lose 6–0.

  I walk to the net and shake Kuhnen’s hand. He says something, but I can’t see or hear him. He’s a blob of energy at the end of a tube. I grab my tennis bag and stumble out of the arena. I walk across the street, into Rock Creek Park, into some woods, and when I feel sure no one is around, I berate the trees.

  I can’t take this shit anymore! I’m fucking done! I quit!

  I keep walking, walking, until I come to a clearing, where I find myself surrounded by a group of homeless men. Some are sitting on the ground, some are stretched out on logs, sleeping. Two are playing cards. They all look like trolls in a fairy tale. I walk up to one who seems fairly alert. I unzip my bag and remove several Prince rackets.

  Here, man, you want these? Do you? Because I don’t have any use for them anymore.

  The man isn’t sure what’s happening, but he’s pretty confident that he’s finally met someone crazier than himself. His buddies shuffle over and I tell them, Gather round, fellas, gather round. It might be a hundred degrees in the shade, but it’s Christmas Eve.

  I dump out my tennis bag, pull out the rest of the rackets, each one worth hundreds of dollars, and pass them around.

  Here, help yourselves! I sure as hell won’t be needing them!

  Then, reveling in how much lighter my tennis bag feels, I walk to the hotel where Philly and I are staying. I sit on one bed and Philly sits on the other, just like old times, in more ways than one. I tell him I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.

  He doesn’t argue. He understands. Who better to understand? We knuckle down to details, making a plan. How to tell Nick, how to tell my father, how I can earn a living.

  What do you want to do instead of playing tennis?

  I don’t know.

  We go out for dinner, talk it over, analyze where I stand financially—a few hundred dollars above zero. We joke that we’re getting close to potato-and-lentil-soup territory.

  Back at the hotel the phone in our room is flashing. I have one message. The organizers of a tennis exhibition in North Carolina phoned to say a player canceled on them. They want to know if I can play. If I do, they’ll guarantee me $2,000.

  Philly agrees it would be nice to walk away from tennis with a little coin in my pocket.

  OK, I say. One last tournament. I better get some more rackets.

  IN THE FIRST ROUND I draw a kid named Michael Chang. I grew up playing him. I played him all through juniors, and I’ve never lost to him. I’ve never even had problems with him. Also, he’s only fifteen, two years younger than I. He comes up to my navel. So this is just what the doctor ordered for my bruised psyche. A preordained beat-down. I walk onto the court, smiling.

  Chang, however, has undergone some kind of metamorphosis since our last meeting. He’s made a quantum leap in his game, and now he plays like a flea on speed. It takes everything I’ve got to beat him. Still, I do beat him. My first win in months. I decide to postpone my retirement. Just a few more weeks. I tell Philly I want to go to Stratton Mountain, where I did well last year. Stratton will be a fitting place for my last hurrah.

  We fly up to Vermont with two fellow players, Peter Doohan and Kelly Evernden. Kelly says he grabbed the Stratton draw right before we left.

  Anyone want to hear who he’ll be playing?

  I do.

  No, Andre. You don’t.

  Uh-oh. Who did I draw?

  Luke Jensen.

  Fuck.

  Luke’s the best junior in the world, by far the most promising kid on the tour. I sink in my seat and watch the clouds. Should have quit while I was ahead. Should have retired after Chang.

  LUKE SERVES BOTH lefty and righty, which is why they call him Dual Hand Luke, and he can bring it 130 miles an hour from either side. But today, against me, his first serve is off, and I cane his second. I’m more surprised than he is when I scrape by him in three sets and advance.

  Next up is Pat Cash—who just won Wimbledon, twelve days after I met my demise on Graveyard Court. Cash is a machine, a finely tuned athlete who moves well and covers the net like a hydra. I don’t even think about beating him, only about holding my own. But in the early going I find that he doesn’t have a lot of top on his ball, so I’m getting nice, clean, eye-level looks, hitting one winner after another. Since I have no chance to win, since I want only to be credible, I’m free, loose, and this makes Cash tight. He appears shocked by what’s unfolding. He’s missing first serves, which lets me cheat in a half step, put everything I’ve got behind my return. Every time I hit a ball past him, Cash glares across the net with an expression that says, This wasn’t in the plan. You’re not supposed to be doing this.

  Foolishly, somewhat arrogantly, he spends more and more time at the net looking surprised, rather than going back to the baseline and thinking up a new strategy. After one of my better returns, he hits a so-so volley, and I pass him again. He stands with his hands on his hips, staring at me, radiating a sense of injustice.

  Keep staring, I think. Keep it up.

  Toward the end he’s giving me painfully easy targets, making his ball so beautifully hittable, so marvelously strikable, that it all seems unfair. I have a legit chance of hitting a winner on every point. I just wanted to leave a mark, but I’m leaving a gash. I score a shocking upset, 7–6, 7–6.

  Stratton Mountain, I conclude, is my magic mountain. My anti-Wimbledon. Last year I played above my level here, now I’m playing twice as well. The setting is breathtaking, laid back—and quintessentially American. Unlike those snooty Brits, these Strattonites know me, or at least the idealized me I want them to know. They don’t know about my struggles of the last twelve months, about my giving rackets to homeless men, about my pending retirement. And if they knew they wouldn’t hold it against me. They cheered me during my match with Jensen, but after I outclass Cash, they adopt me. This guy is our guy. This guy does well here. Inspired by their raucous encouragement, I reach the semis against Ivan Lendl, who’s ranked number one. My biggest match ever. My father flies in from Vegas.

  An hour b
efore the match, Lendl is walking around the locker room wearing only his tennis shoes. Seeing him so relaxed, so remarkably nude, right before facing me, I know what’s coming. The beat-down to end all beat-downs. I lose in three sets. Still, I walk away feeling encouraged, because I won the second set. For half an hour, I gave the best in the world all he wanted. I can build on that. I feel good.

  That is, until I see what Lendl has to say about me in the newspapers. Asked about my game, he sniffs: A haircut and a forehand.

  9

  I FINISH 1987 WITH A BANG. I win my first tournament as a pro, in Itaparica, Brazil, all the more impressive because I do it before a crowd of initially hostile Brazilians. After I beat their top player, Luiz Mattar, the fans don’t seem to hold a grudge. In fact they make me an honorary Brazilian. They rush the court, hoist me on their shoulders, throw me in the air. Many have come to the arena straight from the beach. They’re slathered with cocoa butter, and consequently so am I. Women in bikinis and thongs cover me with kisses. Music plays, people dance, someone hands me a bottle of champagne and tells me to spray it into the crowd. The carnival atmosphere is the perfect complement to my inner Mardi Gras. I finally broke through. I won five matches in a row. (To win a slam, I realize with some alarm, I’ll need to win seven.)

  A man hands me the winner’s check. I have to look twice at the number. In the amount of: $90,000.

  With the check still folded in my jeans pocket, I stand two days later in my father’s living room and employ a bit of remedial psychology. Pops, I say, how much do you think I’m going to make next year?

  Ho ho, he says, beaming. Millions.

  Good—then you won’t mind if I buy a car.

  He frowns. Checkmate.

  I know just the kind I want. A white Corvette with all the extras. My father insists that he and my mother go with me to the dealership, to make sure the salesman doesn’t screw me. I can’t say no. My father is my landlord and keeper. I no longer live full-time at the Bolletieri Academy, so once again I live under my father’s roof, and thus under his control. I’m traveling the world, making good money, winning a measure of fame, and yet my old man essentially keeps me on an allowance. It’s inappropriate, but hell, my whole life is inappropriate. I’m only seventeen, not ready to live on my own, barely ready to stand alone on a tennis court, and yet I was just in Rio, holding a girl in a thong with one hand and a $90,000 check with the other. I’m an adolescent who’s seen too much, a man-child without a checking account.