by Andre Agassi
Then again, I don’t ask about Suddenly Susan either.
We talk about things. We talk about nothing.
· · ·
THE ONLY TIME I BREAK TRAINING is to meet with Perry and lay the groundwork for my charitable foundation. This is what we talked about fifteen years ago, two idealistic teenagers with their mouths full of Chipwiches. We wanted to reach a plateau from which we could give back, and we’ve finally arrived. I’ve negotiated a long-term deal with Nike, which will pay me tens of millions over the next decade. I’ve bought my parents a house. I’ve taken care of everyone on my team. Now I’m financially able to think larger, to widen my lens, and in 1997, though I’ve hit rock bottom, or because I’ve hit rock bottom, I’m ready.
My primary concern is children at risk. Adults can always ask for help, but children are voiceless, powerless. So the first project my foundation undertakes is a shelter for abused and neglected children who’ve been placed in the protective custody of the courts. The shelter includes a cottage for medically fragile children, and a makeshift school. Next we launch a program to clothe three thousand inner-city children each year. Then a series of scholarships to UNLV. Then a Boys and Girls Club. My foundation takes a 2,200-square-foot building that’s falling apart and turns it into a 25,000-square-foot showplace, with a computer lab, a cafeteria, a library, and tennis courts. Colin Powell speaks at the dedication.
I spend many carefree hours at the new Boys and Girls Club, meeting children, listening to their stories. I take them onto the tennis court, teach them the proper grip, watch their eyes sparkle because they’ve never held a racket before. I sit with them in the computer room, where the demand for online time is so great that they stand in long lines, patiently waiting their turn. It shocks me, pains me, to see how resolved they are to learn. Other times I simply station myself in the rec center of the Boys and Girls Club, playing ping-pong with the children. I never walk into that rec center without thinking of the rec center at the Bollettieri Academy, where I was so scared that first night, my back against the wall. The memory makes me want to adopt every scared child I see.
One day in the rec center I sit with Stan, the man who runs the Boys and Girls Club. I ask him, What more can we do? How can we make a bigger difference in their lives?
Stan says, You have to figure out a way to occupy more of their day. Otherwise it’s one step forward, two steps back. You really want to make a difference? You want to have a lasting impact? You need more of their day. In fact, you need all of their day.
So in 1997 I huddle again with Perry, and we hit on the idea of adding education to our work. Then we decide to make education our work. But how? We briefly consider opening a private school, but the bureaucratic and financial obstacles are too much. By chance I catch a story on 60 Minutes about charter schools, and it’s the eureka moment. Charter schools are partly state funded, partly privately funded. The challenge is raising money, but the benefit is retaining full control. With a charter school we could do things the way we want. We’d be free to build something unique. Special. And if it works, it can spread like wildfire. It can be a model for charter schools around the nation. It can change education as we know it.
I can’t believe the irony. A 60 Minutes piece caused my father to send me away, to break my heart, and now a 60 Minutes piece lights the way home, gives me the map to find my life’s meaning, my mission. Perry and I resolve to build the best charter school in America. We resolve to hire the best teachers, pay them well, and hold them accountable for grades and test scores. We resolve to show the world what can be done when you set standards outrageously high and open the purse strings. We shake on it.
I’ll give millions of my own money to launch the school, but we’ll need to raise many more millions. We’ll issue a $40 million bond, then pay it off by parlaying and trading on my fame. At last my fame will have a purpose. All those famous people I’ve met at parties and through Brooke—I’ll ask them to give their time and talent to my school, to visit the children, and to perform at an annual fund-raiser, which we’re calling the Grand Slam for Children.
WHILE PERRY AND I are scouting locations for our school, I get a call from Gary Muller, a South African who used to play and coach on the tour. He’s organizing a tennis event in Cape Town to raise money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He asks if I’d like to take part.
We don’t know if Mandela’s going to be there, he says.
If there’s even a remote chance, I’m in.
Gary calls right back. Good news, he says. You’re going to get to meet The Man.
You’re kidding.
He’s confirmed. He’s coming to the event.
I grip the phone tighter. I’ve admired Mandela for years. I’ve followed his struggles, his imprisonment, his miraculous release and stunning political career, with awe. The idea of actually meeting him, speaking to him, makes me dizzy.
I tell Brooke. It’s the happiest she’s seen me in a long time, which makes her happy. She wants to come. The event happens to be a short flight from where she stayed while filming her Africa movie, back in 1993, when we first started faxing.
She immediately goes shopping for matching safari outfits.
J.P. shares my reverence for Mandela, so I invite him to join us on the trip, and bring his wife, Joni, whom Brooke and I both love. The four of us fly to South America, then catch another plane to Johannesburg. Then we hop a rickety prop plane into the heart of Africa.
A storm forces us to make an unscheduled landing. We batten down in a straw-roofed hut in the middle of nowhere, and over the sound of the thunder we can hear hundreds of animals run for cover. Looking out of the hut, over the vast savannah, watching storm clouds whirl along the horizon, J.P. and I agree this is one of those moments. We’re both reading Mandela’s memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, but feeling like heroes in a Hemingway novel. I think about something Mandela said once in an interview: No matter where you are in life, there is always more journey ahead. And I think of one of Mandela’s favorite quotes, from the poem Invictus, which sustained him during those moments when he thought his journey had been cut short: I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
After the storm passes we pile back into the prop plane and fly to a game reserve. We spend three days on safari. Every morning, before dawn, we climb into a Jeep. We drive and drive, then abruptly stop. We sit for twenty minutes in pitch dark, the engine running. As the dawn slowly breaks we find that we’re on the banks of a vast fog-covered marsh, surrounded by dozens of different kinds of animals. We see hundreds of impala. We see at least seventy-five zebras. We see scores of giraffes as tall as two-story buildings, dancing around us and gliding among the trees, nibbling from the highest branches, a sound like celery being crunched. We feel the landscape speaking to us: All these animals, beginning their day in a dangerous world, exude tremendous calm and acceptance—why can’t you?
With us are a driver and a shooter. The shooter is named Johnson. We love Johnson. He’s our African Gil. He stands guard. He knows we love him, and he smiles with the pride of a crack shot. He also knows the landscape better than the impalas do. At one point he waves his hand at the trees and a thousand small monkeys, as if on cue, fall to the ground, like autumn leaves.
In South Africa, on safari with Brooke, late 1997, days before meeting Mandela
We’re driving deep into the bush one morning when the Jeep shudders, swerves, and we go spinning off to the right.
What happened?
We nearly ran over a lion sleeping in the middle of the road.
The lion sits up and stares with an expression that says, You woke me. His head is enormous. His eyes are the color of lemon-lime Gatorade. The smell of him is a musk so primal that it makes us lightheaded.
He has hair like I used to have.
Do not make a sound, the driver whispers.
Whatever you do, Johnson whispers, do not stand up.
Why?
The lion looks at us
as one big predator. Right now he’s afraid of us. If you stand, he’ll see that we’re several smaller people.
Fair enough.
After a few minutes, the lion backs away, into the bush. We drive on.
Later, returning to our campsite, I lean into J.P. and whisper: I need to tell you something.
Fire away.
I’m going through—well, a tough time right now. I’m trying to put some bad stuff behind me.
What’s the problem?
I can’t go into it. But I wanted to apologize if I seem—different.
Well, now that you mention it, you do. You have. But what’s going on?
I’ll tell you when I know you better.
He laughs.
Then he sees that I’m not kidding. He asks, Are you OK?
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.
I want to tell him about the depression, the confusion, the time with Slim, the pending suspension from the ATP. But I can’t. Not now. Not until it’s all farther behind me. At the moment it feels like the lion, still inches away and glowering. I don’t want to give voice to my problems, for fear of rousing them, making them pounce. I just want to alert J.P. to their presence.
I also tell him that I’m doubling down on tennis, and if I can pull through this tough time, if I can come back, everything is going to be different. I’m going to be different. But even if I can’t, even if I’m finished, even if I lose everything, I’m still going to be different.
He says, Finished?
I just wanted you to know.
It’s like a confession, a testimony. J.P. looks at me with sadness. He squeezes my arm and tells me, in so many words, that I am the captain of my fate.
WE TRAVEL TO CAPE TOWN, where I play tennis with obvious impatience, like a child doing chores on Saturday morning. Then, at last, it’s time. We helicopter to a compound, and Mandela himself greets us at the helipad. He’s surrounded by photographers, dignitaries, reporters, aides—and he towers above them all. He looks not only taller than I expected, but stronger, healthier. He looks like a former athlete, which surprises me, given his years of hard labor and torture. But of course he is a former athlete, a boxer in his youth—and in prison, he says in his memoir, he kept fit by running in place in his cell and playing tennis occasionally on a crude, makeshift court. For all his strength, however, his smile is sweet, almost angelic.
I tell J.P. he seems saintly to me. Gandhi-like, void of all bitterness. His eyes, though damaged by years of working in the harsh glare of the prison’s lime quarry, are filled with wisdom. His eyes say that he’s figured something out, something essential.
I babble as he fixes me with those eyes and shakes my hand and tells me he admires my game.
We follow him into a great hall, where a formal dinner is served. Brooke and I are seated at Mandela’s table. Brooke sits on my right, Mandela on her right. Throughout the meal he tells stories. I have many questions, but I don’t dare interrupt him. He talks about Robben Island, where he was held for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. He talks about winning over a few of the guards. As a special treat, they would sometimes let him walk to the edge of a small lake with a fishing pole, to catch his own dinner. He smiles at the memory, almost nostalgic.
After dinner Mandela stands and gives a stirring talk. His theme: we must all care for one another—this is our task in life. But also we must care for ourselves, which means we must be careful in our decisions, careful in our relationships, careful in our statements. We must manage our lives carefully, in order to avoid becoming victims. I feel as if he’s speaking directly to me, as if he’s aware that I’ve been careless with my talent and my health.
He talks about racism, not just in South Africa but around the world. It’s nothing but ignorance, he says, and education is the only remedy. In prison, Mandela spent his few free hours educating himself. He created a kind of university, and he and his fellow prisoners were professors to each other. He survived the loneliness of constant confinement by reading; he especially loved Tolstoy. One of the harshest punishments his guards devised was taking away his right to study for four years. Again his words seem to shimmer with personal relevance. I think of the work Perry and I have undertaken in Vegas, our charter school, and I feel invigorated. Also embarrassed. For the first time in many years I’m acutely aware of my lack of education. I feel the weight of this lack, the misfortune of it. I see it as a crime in which I’ve been complicit. I think of how many thousands in my hometown are victims of this crime right now, deprived of an education, unaware how much they’re losing.
Finally, Mandela talks about the road he’s traveled. He talks about the difficulty of all human journeys—and yet, he says, there is clarity and nobility in just being a journeyer. When he stops speaking and takes his chair I know that my journey, compared with his, is nothing, and yet that’s not his point. Mandela is saying that every journey is important, and that no journey is impossible.
Bidding Mandela goodbye, I’m magnetized. I’m pointed in the right direction. A friend later shows me a passage in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family, in which a woman deep in mourning thinks:
Now I am more nearly a grown member of the human race … she thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the strength human beings have, to endure; she loved and revered all those who had ever suffered, even those who had failed to endure.
This is close to what I feel as I leave Mandela. This is what I think when the helicopter lifts away from his compound. I love and revere those who suffer, who have ever suffered. I am now more nearly a grown member of the human race.
God wants us to grow up.
NEW YEAR’S EVE, the last hours of this dreadful year, 1997. Brooke and I throw another New Year’s party, and the next morning I wake early. I pull the covers over my head, then remember that I scheduled a practice with a kid on the tour, Vince Spadea. I decide to cancel. No. I yell at myself. You cannot cancel. You’re not that person anymore. You’re not going to start 1998 by oversleeping and canceling a practice.
I force myself out of bed and meet Spadea. Even though it’s only practice, we both want it. He turns it into a battle, which I appreciate, especially when I win. Walking off the court, I feel winded but strong. The old kind of strong.
This is going to be my year, I tell Spadea—1998 is my year.
Brooke comes with me to the 1998 Australian Open and watches me dispatch my first three opponents, and unfortunately watches as I face Alberto Berasategui, from Spain. I go up two sets to love, then unaccountably, impossibly, for no reason, I lose. Berasategui is a nasty opponent, but still, I had him. It’s an unthinkable loss, one of the few times I’ve ever lost a match when ahead two sets to none. Is this a detour in the comeback or a dead end?
I go to San Jose and play well. I meet Pete in the final. He seems glad to have me back, glad to see me again on the other side, as if he’s missed me. I have to admit, I’ve missed him too. I win, 6–2, 6–4, and toward the end, part of him seems to be pulling for me. He knows what I’m attempting, how far I have to go.
I tease him in the locker room about how easy it was to beat him.
How does it feel to lose to someone outside the top hundred?
I’m not too worried about it, he says. It’s not going to happen again.
Then I tease him about recent reports of his personal life. He’s broken up with the law student and he’s said to be dating an actress.
Bad move, I tell him.
The words catch us both off guard.
In the media room, reporters ask me about Pete and Marcelo Ríos, who are dueling for the number one rank: Which of them do you think will ultimately be number one?
Neither.
Nervous laughter.
I think I’m going to be number one.
Raucous laughter.
No. Really. I mean it.
They stare, then dutifully write my insane prediction in their notebooks.
&nbs
p; In March I go to Scottsdale and win my second straight tournament. I beat Jason Stoltenberg, from Australia. A classic Aussie, he’s solid, steady, with an enviable all-around game that forces opponents to execute. He’s a good gut check for me, a good test of my nerves, and I pass. Anyone who crosses me right now is going to have to deal with something they don’t want to deal with.
I go to Indian Wells and beat Rafter, but lose to a young phenom named Jan-Michael Gambill. They say he’s the best of the young bucks coming up. I look at him and wonder if he knows what lies ahead, if he’s ready—if anyone can possibly be ready.
I go to Key Biscayne. I want to win, I’m crazy to win. It’s not like me to want a win this badly. What I normally feel is a desire not to lose. But warming up before my first-rounder, I tell myself I want this, and I realize precisely why. It’s not about my comeback. It’s about my team. My new team, my real team. I’m playing to raise money and visibility for my school. After all these years I’ve got what I’ve always wanted, something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me. Something that bears my name but isn’t about me. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy.
At first I didn’t want my name on the school. But friends persuaded me that my name can bring cachet and credibility. My name might make raising money easier. Perry chooses the word Academy, and it’s not until later that I appreciate the way this forever links my school to my past, to Bradenton Academy and the Bollettieri Academy, my childhood prisons.
I DON’T HAVE MANY FRIENDS IN LOS ANGELES, and Brooke has countless friends, so most nights find her out being sociable and me at home, alone.
Thank God for J.P. He lives in Orange County, so it’s easy enough for him to drive north now and then, sit with me by the fire, smoke a cigar, and talk about life. His pastoring days seem like ancient history, but during our fireside talks it feels as if he’s speaking to me from an invisible pulpit. Not that I mind. I like being his solitary congregation, his flock of one. In early 1998 he covers all the big topics. Motivation, inspiration, legacy, destiny, rebirth. He helps me sustain the sense of mission I felt in Mandela’s presence.