by Andre Agassi
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PLAYING WEEKS LATER, I struggle against Scott Draper. Left-handed, talented, he’s a good player, but I’ve beaten him soundly in the past. I shouldn’t have any trouble with him, and yet he’s cleaning my clock. I’m so far from being able to beat Draper, in fact, I honestly wonder if it was me who beat him the last time. How could I have been that much better such a short time ago? He’s outplaying me in every phase of the game.
Afterward, reporters ask if I’m OK. They don’t sound accusatory or mean. They sound like Perry and Brad. They’re actually concerned, trying to figure out what’s wrong.
Brooke is remarkably unconcerned. I lose all the time now, and the only time I don’t lose is when I pull out of a tournament, and her only comment is that she enjoys having me around more. Also, since I’m generally playing less often, she says I’m not as moody.
Her oblivion is partly due to the wedding planning, but also her rigorous premarital training regimen. She’s working with Gil to get in shape for that white dress. She’s running, lifting, stretching, counting every calorie. For added motivation, she tapes a photo on the refrigerator door, and around the photo she puts a magnetic heart frame. It’s a photo of the perfect woman, she says. The perfect woman with the perfect legs—the legs Brooke wants.
Astonished, I stare at the photo. I reach out and touch the frame.
Is that—?
Yep, Brooke says. Steffi Graf.
I PLAY DAVIS CUP IN APRIL, looking for a spark. I practice hard, train hard. We’re up against the Netherlands. My first match, in Newport Beach, is against Sjeng Schalken. He’s six foot five but serves like a man five foot six. Still, he strikes the ball cleanly, and like me he’s a punisher, a baseliner who stays back and tries to run an opponent into the ground. I know what I’m in for. The day is sunny, windy, and weird—Dutch fans wear wooden shoes and wave tulips. I beat Schalken in three wearying sets.
Two days later I play Jan Siemerink, aka the Garbage Man. He’s a lefty, an excellent volleyer, who gets to the net quick and covers it well. But that’s the only part of his game that isn’t comically, fundamentally unsound. Every Siemerink forehand looks mishit, every backhand seems shanked. Even his serve has a wacky, slingy quality. Garbage. I start the match confident, then recall that his lack of form is a powerful weapon. His abysmal shotmaking keeps you always off balance. Your timing never feels right. After two hours, I’m wrong-footed, breathing hard, and have a splitting headache. I’m also down two sets to love. Still, somehow I win, making me 24–4 in Davis Cup play, one of the best records ever compiled by an American. Sportswriters praise this small part of my game, and ask why I can’t translate it to the rest of my game. Even if their praise is tempered, I bask in it. It feels good. I give a small thanks for Davis Cup.
On the other hand, Davis Cup plays havoc with my manicure schedule. Brooke has made many requests of me for the wedding, but her non-negotiable demand is that my nails be perfect. I pick at my cuticles, a lifelong nervous habit, and when she puts a wedding band on my finger, she says, she wants my hands looking their best. Just before my match with the Garbage Man, and again after the match, I submit. I sit myself in the manicurist’s chair, watch the woman work at my cuticles, and tell myself this feels as off balance and wrong-footed as my match against the Garbage Man.
I think: Now this is what I call garbage.
WITH FOUR HELICOPTERS full of paparazzi circling overhead, on April 19, 1997, Brooke and I get married. The ceremony takes place in Monterey, in a tiny church that’s stiflingly, criminally hot. I’d give anything for a puff of fresh air, but the windows must remain shut to block out the noise of the helicopters.
The heat is one reason I break out in a sweat during the ceremony. The main reason, however, is that my body and nerves are shot. As the priest drones on, sweat drips from my brow, from my chin, from my ears. Everyone is looking. They’re sweating too, but not like me. The jacket of my new Dunhill tuxedo is soaked. Even my shoes squish when I walk. They’re also fitted with lifts, another non-negotiable demand from Brooke. She’s nearly six feet tall and she doesn’t want to tower over me in our photos, so she’s wearing old-fashioned pumps with minimal heels, and I’m wearing what feel like stilts.
Before we leave the church, a decoy bride, a stand-in for Brooke, leaves first. To throw the paparazzi off the scent. The first time I heard about this plan, I tuned it out, refused to pay attention. Now, as I see the Brooke look-alike leaving, I have a thought no man should have on his wedding day: I wish I were leaving too. I wish I had a decoy groom to take my place.
A horse-drawn carriage is standing by to whisk Brooke and me to the reception, at a ranch called Stonepine. But first we have a short car ride to the carriage. I sit in the car beside Brooke, staring into my lap. I feel mortified about my attack of hysterical sweats. Brooke tells me it’s OK. She’s very sweet, but it’s not OK. Nothing is OK.
Into the reception we go, into a solid wall of noise. I see a whirling carousel of faces—Philly, Gil, J.P., Brad, Slim, my parents. There are famous people I don’t know, have never met, but vaguely recognize. Friends of Brooke? Friends of friends? Some of the Friends from Friends? I catch sight of Perry, my best man and the self-anointed wedding producer. He wears a Madonna headset so he can be in constant communication with the photographers and florists and caterers. He’s so jacked up, so high-strung, he’s making me more nervous, which I didn’t think was possible.
At the end of the night, Brooke and I stagger up to our bridal suite, which I’ve arranged to have filled with hundreds of candles. Too many candles—the room is an oven. It’s hotter than the church. Again I start to sweat. We start to blow out the candles, and the smoke detectors go off. We disable the smoke detectors and open the windows. While the room cools we go downstairs, back to the reception, to spend our wedding night eating chocolate mousse with the wedding party.
The following afternoon, at a barbecue for friends and family, Brooke and I make a grand entrance. As per Brooke’s plan, we wear cowboy hats and denim shirts and arrive on horses. Mine is named Sugar. Her sad glassy eyes remind me of Peaches. People surround me, talk at me, congratulate me, slap me on the back, and I need to run away. I spend a good portion of the barbecue with my nephew, Skyler, son of Rita and Pancho. We get hold of a bow and arrow and take target practice with a distant oak.
While drawing back the bow, I feel a sudden twinge in my wrist.
I PULL OUT OF THE 1997 FRENCH OPEN. Of all the surfaces, clay is the worst on a tender wrist. There is no way I can last five sets against the dirt rats, who’ve been practicing and drilling on clay while I’ve been getting manicures and riding Sugar.
But I will go to Wimbledon. I want to go. Brooke has landed an acting job in England, which means she can accompany me. This will be good, I think. A change of venue. A trip, our first as husband and wife, to somewhere other than an island.
Though, come to think of it, England is an island.
In London we spend several happy nights. Dinner with friends. An experimental play. A walk along the Thames. The stars are lined up for a good Wimbledon. And then I decide that I’d rather jump in the Thames. Out of nowhere I can’t bring myself to practice.
I tell Brad and Gil I’m pulling out of the tournament. I’m in vapor lock.
Brad says, What the hell does vapor lock mean?
I’ve played this game for a lot of reasons, I say, and it just seems like none of them has ever been my own.
The words come tumbling out, with no forethought, just as they did that night with Slim. But they sound remarkably true. So much, in fact, that I write them down. I repeat them to reporters. And to mirrors.
After pulling out of the tournament I stay on in London, waiting for Brooke to finish filming. We go out one night with a group of actors to a world-famous restaurant Brooke is eager to try. The Ivy. Brooke and the actors talk over each other while I silently hunker down at one end of the table, eating. Grazing, actually. I order five courses, an
d for dessert I shovel three sticky toffee puddings into my mouth.
Slowly, an actress notices how much food is disappearing at my end of the table. She looks at me, alarmed.
Do you always, she asks, eat like this?
I’M PLAYING IN D.C. and my opponent is Flach. Brad tells me to go out and avenge last year’s Wimbledon loss, but I can’t imagine anything mattering less. Revenge? Again? Haven’t we been down that road before? It makes me sad, and weary, that Brad can be so blinded by his Bradness, that he can be so oblivious to what I’m feeling. Who does he think he is—Brooke?
I lose to Flach, of course, then tell Brad I’m shutting down for the summer.
Brad says, The whole summer?
See you in the fall.
Brooke is in Los Angeles, but I spend most of my time in Vegas. Slim is there, and we get high a lot. It’s a welcome change to have energy, to feel happy, to clear away the vapor lock. I like feeling inspired again, even if the inspiration is chemically induced. I stay awake all night, several nights in a row, relishing the silence. No one phoning, no one faxing, no one bothering me. Nothing to do but dance around the house and fold laundry and think.
I want to get clear of the void, I tell Slim.
Yeah, he says. Yeah. The void.
Apart from the buzz of getting high, I get an undeniable satisfaction from harming myself and shortening my career. After decades of merely dabbling in masochism, I’m making it my mission.
But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this. Slim gets high all the time, and he seems fine.
Then all at once Slim is not fine. He becomes unrecognizable, and drugs aren’t fully to blame. He was already frantic about the prospect of becoming a father; now he phones me one night from the hospital and says, It happened.
What.
She had the baby. Months ahead of time. A boy. Andre, it only weighs one pound, six ounces. The doctors don’t know if he’s going to make it.
I speed down to Sunrise Hospital, the hospital where Slim and I were born twenty-four hours apart. I stare through the glass at what they tell me is a baby, though it’s only the size of my open palm. The doctors tell Slim and me that the baby is very sick. They have to give him an IV of antibiotics.
The next morning the doctors tell us that the IV popped out. It dripped on the baby’s leg, and now the leg is burned. Also, the baby’s not breathing on his own. They need to put him on a ventilator. It’s risky. The doctors worry that the baby’s lungs aren’t developed enough for the ventilator, but without the ventilator he’ll die.
Slim says nothing. Do whatever you think best, I tell the doctors.
As feared, hours later one of the baby’s lungs collapses. Then the other. Now the doctors say the lungs really can’t handle the ventilator, but without the ventilator the baby will die. They simply don’t know what to do.
There’s one final hope. A machine that might do the work of a ventilator without harming the lungs. A machine that takes the blood from the baby, oxygenates it, then flows it back into the baby. But the nearest such machine is in Phoenix.
I arrange a medical airplane. A team of doctors and nurses unhooks the baby from the ventilator and carries him like an egg to the tarmac. Then Slim, his girlfriend, and I board a separate plane. A nurse gives us a number to call when we land, to find out if the baby has survived the flight.
As the wheels touch down in Phoenix, I take a breath and dial.
Is he—?
He made it. But now we need to get him onto the machine.
At the hospital we sit and sit. The clock doesn’t move. Slim chainsmokes. His girlfriend weeps quietly over a magazine. I step away for a moment to phone Gil. Kacey isn’t doing well, he says. She’s in constant pain. He doesn’t sound like Gil. He sounds like Slim.
I return to the waiting room. A doctor appears, pulling down his mask. I don’t know if I can handle more bad news.
We managed to get him hooked to the machine, the doctor says. So far, so good. The next six months will tell.
I rent a house near the hospital for Slim and his girlfriend. Then I fly back to Los Angeles. I should sleep on the flight, but instead I stare at the back of the seat in front of me and think how fragile it all is. The next six months will tell. To which of us does that dire statement not apply?
At home, sitting in our kitchen, I tell Brooke the entire sad, awful, miraculous story. She’s fascinated—but mystified.
She asks, How could you get so involved?
How could I not?
WEEKS LATER, Brad talks me into coming back, briefly, to play at the ATP Championships in Cincinnati. I face Gustavo Kuerten, a Brazilian. It takes him forty-six minutes to beat me. My third first-round loss in a row. Gullickson announces that he’s dropping me from the Davis Cup team. I’m one of the best American players ever, but I don’t blame him. Who could blame him?
At the 1997 U.S. Open I’m unseeded for the first time in three years. I’m wearing a peach shirt, and they can’t keep them in stock at the concession stand. Astonishing. People still want to dress like me. People want to look like me. Have they taken a good look at me lately?
I reach the round of sixteen and play Rafter, who’s having his breakout year. He reached the semis of the French Open, and he’s my personal favorite to win this tournament. He’s a great serve-and-volleyer, reminiscent of Pete, but I always thought Rafter and I made a better rivalry, aesthetically, because Rafter is more consistent. Pete can play a lousy thirty-eight minutes, then one lights-out minute and win the set, whereas Rafter plays well all the time. He’s six foot two, with a low center of gravity, and he can change direction like a sports car. He’s one of the hardest guys on the tour to pass, and even harder to dislike. He’s all class, win or lose, and today he wins. He gives me a gentlemanly handshake and a smile in which there is an unmistakable trace of pity.
I’M PLAYING STUTTGART IN TEN DAYS. I should lie low, rest, practice, but instead I need to go to North Carolina, a little town called Mount Pleasant, because of Brooke. She’s tight with David Strickland, an actor on her new TV show, Suddenly Susan, and David’s traveling to North Carolina to spend his birthday with family. Brooke wants us to tag along. She thinks it would do us good, hanging out in the country, breathing fresh air, and I can’t think of a good reason to say no.
Mount Pleasant is a quaint Southern town, but I don’t see any mount and it’s not all that pleasant. The Strickland house is comfortable, with old wood floors and soft beds and a warm, enveloping smell of cinnamon and pie crust. But somewhat incongruously it sits on a golf course, its back porch only twenty yards from one of the greens, so there’s always someone in my peripheral vision, lining up a putt. The lady of the house, Granny Strickland, is ample-bosomed, apple-cheeked, straight out of Mayberry, and she’s forever standing at her stove, baking something or whipping up another batch of paella. Not exactly training food, but to be polite I clean my plate and ask for seconds.
Brooke seems to be in heaven, and part of me understands. The house is surrounded by rolling hills and ancient trees, the leaves have turned nine different kinds of orange, and she loves David. They have a special bond, a secret language of inside jokes and comic banter. Now and then they slip into their characters from the show, doing a scene, then laughing themselves hoarse. Then they quickly explain what they’ve just done and said, trying to bring me up to speed, so I don’t feel left out. But it’s always too little, too late. I’m the third wheel, and I know it.
At night the temperature drops. The cool air has a piney, earthy scent that makes me sad. I stand on the back porch, looking at the stars, wondering what’s wrong with me, why this setting has no power to charm me. I think about that moment, so many years ago, when Philly and I decided I was going to quit. When that call came for me to play here, in North Carolina. The rest is history. Over and over, I ask
myself—what if?
I decide that I need to work. Work, as always, is the answer. After all, Stuttgart is only days off. It would be nice to win. I phone Brad, and he locates a tennis court an hour or so away. He also scrounges up a sparring partner, a young amateur who’d love nothing more than to hit with me each morning. I drive through the morning mist, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, and meet the amateur. I thank him for taking the time, but he says the pleasure is all his. It will be my honor, Mr. Agassi. I feel virtuous—I’m getting my work done, even here in this remote outpost—and then we start hitting. At the higher altitude, the ball flies every which way, defying gravity. It’s like playing in outer space. Hardly worth the effort.
Then the young pro blows out his shoulder.
I spend the next two days of our Southern sojourn scarfing paella and brooding. When I grow so bored that I think I might bang my head against a pine tree, I walk out to the golf course and try to birdie the hole off the porch.
At last it’s time for me to leave. I kiss Brooke goodbye, kiss Granny Strickland goodbye, and notice that both kisses have the same amount of passion. I fly to Miami to connect with a direct flight to Stuttgart. Walking up to the gate, who should I see but Pete. As always, Pete. He looks as if he’s done nothing for the last month but practice, and when he wasn’t practicing, he was lying on a cot in a bare cell, thinking about beating me. He’s rested, focused, wholly undistracted. I’ve always thought the differences between Pete and me were overblown by sportswriters. It seemed too convenient, too important for fans, and Nike, and the game, that Pete and I be polar opposites, the Yankees and Red Sox of tennis. The game’s best server versus its best returner. The diffident Californian versus the brash Las Vegan. It all seemed like horseshit. Or, to use Pete’s favorite word, nonsense. But at this moment, making small talk at the gate, the gap between us appears genuinely, frighteningly wide, like the gap between good and bad. I’ve often told Brad that tennis plays too big a part in Pete’s life, and not a big enough part in mine, but Pete seems to have the proportions about right. Tennis is his job, and he does it with brio and dedication, while all my talk of maintaining a life outside tennis seems like just that—talk. Just a pretty way of rationalizing all my distractions. For the first time since I’ve known him—including the times he’s beaten my brains out—I envy Pete’s dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.