by Andre Agassi
Just for that, I tell Perry, I’m beating this guy in three easy sets—and he’s going to win no more than nine games.
The crowd is pulling for Connors. It’s the opposite of Stratton. Here, I’m cast as the bad guy. I’m the impertinent upstart who dares to oppose the elder statesman. The crowd wants Connors to defy the odds, and Father Time, and I’m standing in the way of that dream scenario. Each time they cheer I think: Do they realize what this guy is like in the locker room? Do they know what his peers say about him? Do they have any concept of how he responds to a friendly hello?
I’m cruising, winning easily, when a man in the upper bleachers calls out, C’mon, Jimmy, he’s a punk—you’re a legend! The words hang in midair for a moment, bigger and louder than the Goodyear Blimp overhead, and then twenty thousand fans guffaw. Connors cracks a sly smile, nods, and hits a ball as a souvenir to the man who yelled.
Now the crowd erupts. A standing ovation.
Running on adrenaline and anger, I punk the legend in the final set, 6–1.
After the match, I tell reporters about my pre-match prediction, and then they tell Connors.
He says: I enjoy playing guys who could be my children. Maybe he’s one of them. I spent a lot of time in Vegas.
In the semis I lose again to Lendl. I take him to a fourth set, but he’s too strong. Trying to wear him out, I wear myself out. Despite the best efforts of Limping Lenny and Pat the Spitting Chilean, I’m not able to stay with a man of Lendl’s caliber. I tell myself that when I get back to Vegas, the search must continue for someone, anyone, who can make me battle ready.
BUT NO ONE CAN MAKE me ready for the battle with the media, because it’s not really a battle, it’s a massacre. Each day brings another anti-Agassi screed in another magazine or newspaper. A dig from a fellow player. A diatribe from a sportswriter. A fresh piece of libel, served up as analysis. I’m a punk, I’m a clown, I’m a fraud, I’m a fluke. I have a high ranking because of a conspiracy, a cabal of networks and teenagers. I don’t rate the attention I get because I haven’t won a slam.
Millions of fans like me, apparently. I get potato sacks full of fan mail, including naked pictures of women with their phone numbers scrawled along the margin. And yet each day I’m vilified because of my look, because of my behavior, because of no reason at all. I absorb the role of villain-rebel, accept it, grow into it. The role seems like part of my job, so I play it. Before long, however, I’m being typecast. I’m to be the villain-rebel forever, in every match and every tournament.
I turn to Perry. I fly back east and visit him for a weekend. He’s studying business at Georgetown. We go out for big dinners, and he takes me to his favorite local bar, the Tombs, and over beers he does what Perry has always done. He reshapes my anguish, makes it more logical and articulate. If I’m a returner, he’s a reworder. First, he redefines the problem as a negotiation between me and the world. Then he clarifies the terms of the negotiation. He grants that it’s horrible to be a sensitive person who’s publicly excoriated every day, but he insists it’s only temporary. There’s a time limit to this torture. Things will get better, he says, the moment I start to win Grand Slams.
Win? What’s the point? Why should winning change people’s minds about me? Win or lose, I’ll still be the same person. That’s why I need to win? To shut people up? To satisfy a bunch of sportswriters and reporters who don’t know me? Those are the terms of this negotiation?
PHILLY SEES THAT I’M SUFFERING, that I’m searching. He’s searching too. He’s been searching all his life, and recently he’s stepped up the search. He tells me he’s been going to a church, or a kind of church, in an office complex on the west side of Vegas. It’s nondenominational, he says, and the pastor is different.
He drags me to the church and I have to admit, he’s right, the pastor, John Parenti, is different. He wears jeans, a T-shirt and he has long, sandy-brown hair. He’s more surfer than pastor. He’s unconventional, which I respect. He’s—no other way to say it—a rebel. I also like his prominent aquiline nose, his sad canine eyes. Above all, I like the casual vibe of his service. He simplifies the Bible. No ego, no dogma. Just common sense and clear thinking.
Parenti is so casual, he doesn’t want to be called Pastor Parenti. He insists we call him J.P. He says he wants his church to feel unlike a church. He wants it to feel like a home where friends gather. He doesn’t have any answers, he says. He just happens to have read the Bible a few dozen times, front to back, and he has some observations to share.
I think he has more answers than he’s letting on. And I need answers. I consider myself a Christian, but J.P.’s church is the first one where I’ve felt truly close to God.
I attend with Philly every week. We time our arrival so that we walk in just as J.P. starts talking, and we always sit in the back, slouched low, so we don’t get recognized. One Sunday Philly says he wants to meet J.P. I hang back. Part of me would like to meet J.P. too, but part of me is wary of strangers. I’ve always been shy, but the recent avalanche of bad press has made me borderline paranoid.
Days later I’m driving around Vegas, feeling gutted after reading the latest attacks on me. I find myself parked outside J.P.’s church. It’s late, all the lights are off—except one. I peer in the window. A secretary is doing some paperwork. I knock at the door and tell the woman I need to speak with J.P. She says he’s at home. She doesn’t say, Where you should be. With a shaky voice I ask if she could please phone him. I really need to talk to him. To somebody. She dials J.P. and hands me the receiver.
Hello? he says.
Hi. Yes. You don’t know me. My name is Andre Agassi, I’m a tennis player, and, well, it’s just—
I know you. I’ve seen you in church the last six months. I recognized you, of course. I just didn’t want to bother you.
I thank him for his discretion, for respecting my privacy. I haven’t been getting that kind of respect lately. I say, Look, I wonder if we could spend some time together. Talk.
When?
Now?
Oh. Well, I guess I could come down to the office and meet you.
With all due respect, can I come to wherever you are? I have a fast car, and I think I can get there faster than you can get here.
He pauses. OK, he says.
I’m there in thirteen minutes. He meets me on his doorstep.
Thanks for agreeing to see me. I feel like I have nowhere else to turn.
What is it you need?
I wonder if we can just, um, get to know each other?
He smiles. Listen, he says, I don’t do father figure real well.
I nod, laugh at myself. I say, Right, right. But maybe you could give me some assignments? Life assignments? Reading assignments?
Like a mentor?
Yeah.
I don’t do mentor real well either.
Oh.
Talking, listening, fellowship—those things I can do.
I frown.
Look, J.P. says, my life is as screwed up as the next guy’s. Maybe more. I can’t offer much in the way of shepherding. I’m not that kind of pastor. If you’re looking for advice, I’m sorry. If you’re looking for a friend, that we can do, maybe.
I nod.
He holds open the door, asks if I’d like to come in. But I ask if he’d like to go for a drive. I think better when I drive.
He cranes his neck and sees my white Corvette. It looks like a small private plane parked in his driveway. The color drains a bit from his face.
I drive J.P. all over Vegas, up and down the Strip, then into the mountains that circle the town. I show him what the Vette can do, open up the engine on a lonely stretch of highway, then open up myself. I tell him my story, in a ragged and disorderly fashion, and he has Perry’s knack for saying it all back to me, artfully reworded. He understands my contradictions, and reconciles a few of them.
You’re a kid who still lives with his parents, he says, but you’re known around the planet. That’s got to be har
d. You’re trying to express yourself freely and creatively and artistically, and you’re slammed at every turn. That’s very hard.
I tell him about the knock on me, that I’ve snuck up on my high ranking, that I’ve never beaten anyone good, that I’ve been lucky. Horseshoe up my ass. He says I’m experiencing backlash, and never even got to enjoy the lash.
I laugh.
He says it must be bizarre to have strangers think they know me, and love me beyond reason, while others think they know me and resent me beyond reason—all while I’m a relative stranger to myself.
What makes it perverse, I tell him, is that it all revolves around tennis, and I hate tennis.
Right, sure. But you don’t actually hate tennis.
Yes. Yes, I do.
I talk about my father. I tell J.P. about the yelling, the pressure, the rage, the abandonment. J.P. gets a funny look on his face. You do realize, don’t you, that God isn’t anything like your father? You know that—don’t you?
I almost drive the Corvette onto the shoulder.
God, he says, is the opposite of your father. God isn’t mad at you all the time. God isn’t yelling in your ear, harping on your imperfections. That voice you hear all the time, that angry voice? That’s not God. That’s still your father.
I turn to him: Do me a favor? Say that again.
He does. Word for word.
Say it once more.
He does.
I thank him. I ask about his own life. He tells me that he hates what he does. He can’t abide being a pastor. He no longer wants to be responsible for people’s souls. It’s a round-the-clock job, he says, and it leaves him no time for reading and reflection. (I wonder if this is a slight jab at me.) He’s also hounded by death threats. Prostitutes and drug pushers come to his church and reform, and then their pimps and junkies and families, who’ve depended on that stream of income, blame J.P.
What do you think you’d like to do instead?
Actually, I’m a songwriter. A composer. I’d like to make music for a living.
He says he’s written a song, When God Ran, that’s a huge hit on the Christian charts. He sings a few bars. He has a nice voice and the song is moving.
I tell him that if he wants it bad enough, and works hard enough, he’ll succeed.
When I start talking like a motivational speaker, I know I’m tired. I look at my watch. Three in the morning. Wow, I say, stifling a yawn, if you don’t mind, can you just drop me off at my parents’ house? I live right up here at the corner and I’m exhausted. I can’t drive another minute. Take my car, take yourself home, bring it back to me when you can.
I don’t want to take your car.
Why not? Fun car. Goes like the wind.
I see that. But what if I wreck it?
If you wreck it, as long as you’re okay, I would laugh. I don’t give a shit about the car.
How long do you want me to—I mean, when should I bring it back?
Whenever.
He brings it back the next day.
Driving to church in this thing was awkward enough, he says, tossing me the keys. But, Andre, I officiate at funerals. You cannot drive up to a funeral in a white Corvette.
I INVITE J.P. TO MUNICH for Davis Cup. I look forward to Davis Cup, because it’s not about me, it’s about country. I imagine it’s as close as I’ll ever get to playing on a team, so I expect the trip to be a pleasant diversion, the matches to be easy, and I want to share the experience with my new friend.
Early on I find myself pitted against Becker, who’s attained godlike status in West Germany. The fans are bringing down the house, twelve thousand Germans cheering his every swing, booing me. And yet I’m unfazed, because I’m in a zone. Maybe not the zone, but my zone. I can’t miss. Also, I promised myself months ago that I’d never again lose to Becker, and I’m making good on that promise. I jump out to a two-set lead. J.P. and Philly and Nick are the only people cheering for me, and I can hear them. A fine day in Munich.
Then I lose my concentration, followed by my confidence. I drop a game and head for my chair during the changeover, discouraged.
Suddenly several German officials are gabbling at me. They’re calling me back onto the court.
The game isn’t over.
Come back, Mr. Agassi, come back.
Becker giggles. The audience roars with laughter.
I walk back onto the court, feeling my eyes throb. Once again I’m at the Bollettieri Academy, being humiliated by Nick in front of the other kids. I have enough trouble being laughed at in the press, but I can’t handle being laughed at in person. I lose the game. I lose the match.
Showered, climbing into a car outside the arena, I ignore J.P. and turn to Nick and Philly. I tell them: The first person who talks to me about tennis is fired.
I SIT ON THE BALCONY of my Munich hotel room, alone, staring out over the city. Without thinking, I begin lighting things on fire. Paper, clothes, shoes. For years this has been one of my furtive ways of coping with extreme stress. I don’t do it consciously. An impulse comes over me and I reach for the matches.
Just as I’ve got a small bonfire going, J.P. appears. He watches, then calmly adds a piece of hotel stationery to my bonfire. Then a napkin. I add the room-service menu. We feed the bonfire for fifteen minutes, neither of us saying a word. As the last flame dies down he asks, Do you want to go for a walk?
We wind our way through the beer gardens of downtown Munich. Everywhere we look, people are being boisterous, festive. They’re drinking from one-liter tankards, singing and laughing. The laughter gives me the shakes.
We come to a large stone bridge with a cobblestone walkway. We cross. Far below is a rushing river. At the apex of the bridge we stop. No one is around. The singing and laughter have subsided. We hear nothing but the rushing water. I stare into the river and ask J.P.: What if I’m no good? What if today wasn’t a bad day, but my best day? I’m always making excuses when I lose. I could have beaten him if such-and-such. If I’d wanted it. If I’d had my A game. If I’d gotten the calls. But what if I’m playing my best, and I care, and I want it, and I’m still not the best in the world?
Well—what if?
I think I’d rather die.
I lean against the railing, sobbing. J.P. has the decency, the wisdom, to say and do nothing. He knows there is nothing to say, nothing to do, but to wait for this fire to burn out.
I FACE CARL-UWE STEEB, another German, the following afternoon. Spent, physically and emotionally, I play Steeb exactly the wrong way. Yes, I’m attacking his backhand, which is his weakest shot, but I’m doing it with pace. If I were to give him no pace, he’d have to generate his own, and his backhand would be much weaker. His greatest flaw would be on display. Using my pace, however, he can hit a low slice that stays down on this fast surface. I’m making him better than he is, all because I’m trying to hit bigger than I need to, trying to be perfect. With a cordial smile Steeb accepts my gifts, settling into his legs and his Agassi-augmented backhand, having a marvelous time. Later, the captain of the Davis Cup team accuses me of tanking, as does a prominent sportswriter.
PART OF THE PROBLEM with my game in 1989 is my racket. I’ve always used a Prince, but Nick has convinced me to sign with a new company, Donnay. Why? Because Nick’s got money troubles, and for delivering me to Donnay he gets a lucrative contract for himself.
Nick, I tell him—I love my Prince.
You could play with a broomstick, he says. It wouldn’t matter.
Now, with the Donnay, I feel as if I am playing with a broomstick. I feel as if I’m playing left-handed, as if I’ve suffered a brain injury. Everything is slightly off. The ball doesn’t listen to me. The ball doesn’t do what I say.
I’m in New York, hanging out with J.P. It’s well after midnight. We’re sitting in a seedy deli with garish fluorescent lights and loud countermen arguing in several Eastern European languages. We’re each having a cup of coffee and I’m holding my head in my hands, telling J.P. ov
er and over: When I hit the ball with this new racket, I don’t know where it’s going.
You’ll find a solution, J.P. says.
How? What?
I don’t know. But you will. This is a momentary crisis, Andre. One of many. As sure as we’re sitting here, there will be others. Bigger, smaller, and everything in between. Treat this crisis as practice for the next crisis.
And then the crisis is resolved during a practice. Days later, I’m in Florida, hitting at the Bollettieri Academy and someone hands me a new Prince. I hit three balls, just three, and it’s something like a religious experience. Every ball goes like a laser to the spot where I want it to go. The court opens before me like Xanadu.
I don’t care about any deals, I tell Nick. I can’t sacrifice my life to a deal.
I’ll handle it, he says.
He doctors a Prince racket, stencils it to look like a Donnay, and I cruise to several easy victories at Indian Wells. I lose in the quarters, but I don’t care, because I have my racket back, my game back.
The next day, three Donnay execs descend on Indian Wells.
This is unacceptable, they say. It’s clear to everyone that you’re playing with a doctored Prince. You’re going to ruin us. You’re going to be liable for the destruction of our company.
Your racket is going to be liable for the destruction of me.
Seeing that I’m unrepentant, and not budging, the Donnay execs say they’ll build me a better racket. They go away and duplicate a Prince, just as Nick did, but make it look more convincing. I take my faux Donnay to Rome and play a kid I recognize from juniors, Pete Something. Sampras, I think. Greek kid from California. When I played him in juniors, I beat him handily. I was ten, he was nine. The next time I saw him was some months ago, at a tournament. I can’t recall which one. I was sitting on a beautiful grassy hill beside my hotel, just after winning my match. Philly and Nick were sitting alongside me. We were stretched out, enjoying the fresh air, and watching Pete, who’d just taken a beating in his match. He was on the hotel court for a post-match practice, and nearly every ball he hit looked bad. He missed three of every four swings. His backhand was awkward, and one-handed, which was new. Someone had tinkered with his backhand, and it was clearly going to cost him a career.