Open

by Andre Agassi

  One night I tell J.P. that I feel a remarkable confidence in my game, and a new purpose for being on the court—so how come I still feel all this fear? Doesn’t the fear ever go away?

  I hope not, he says. Fear is your fire, Andre. I wouldn’t want to see you if it ever completely went out.

  Then J.P. looks around the house, takes a pull on his cigar, and says he can’t help but notice my wife is never around. Whenever he comes over, no matter the day or time, Brooke seems to be out with friends.

  He asks if it bothers me.

  Hadn’t noticed.

  I GO TO MONTE CARLO in April 1998 and lose to Pete. He pumps his fist. No more pulling for me—the rivalry is back on.

  I go to Rome. I’m lying on my hotel bed, resting after a match.

  Back-to-back phone calls.

  First, Philly. He’s sniffling, on the verge of all-out tears. He tells me his wife, Marti, just gave birth to a baby girl. They’re calling her Carter Bailey. My brother sounds different. Happy, of course, and busting with pride, but also: Philly sounds as though he feels blessed. Philly sounds as though he feels supremely lucky.

  I tell him how overjoyed I am for him and Marti, and I promise to get home as soon as I can. Brooke and I will come straight over and see my brand-new niece, I say, my voice catching in my throat.

  The phone rings again. Is it an hour later? Three? In my memory it will always feel like part of the same foggy moment, though the two calls might be days apart. It’s my lawyers, they’re on speaker phone. Andre? Can you hear us? Andre?

  Yes, I hear you. Go ahead.

  Well, the ATP has read and carefully reviewed your heartfelt assertion of innocence. I’m pleased to say that your explanation has been accepted. Your failed test is thrown out. Henceforth the matter will be considered closed.

  I’m not suspended?

  No.

  I’m free to go on with my career? My life?

  Yes.

  I ask several more times. You’re sure? You mean, this is really over?

  As far as the ATP is concerned, yes. They believe and accept your explanation. Gladly. I think everyone is eager to move on and put this behind them.

  I hang up and stare into space, thinking again and again: New life.

  I GO TO the 1998 French Open, and against Marat Safin, from Russia, I hurt my shoulder. I always forget how weighty the ball can be on this particular clay. It’s like hitting a shotput. The shoulder is agony, but I’m grateful for the hurt. I will never again take for granted the privilege of hurting on a tennis court.

  The doctor says I have an impingement. Pressure on the nerve. I shut myself down for two weeks. No practice, no sparring, nothing. I miss the game. What’s more, I let myself miss it. I enjoy and celebrate missing it.

  At Wimbledon I face Tommy Haas, from Germany. In the third set, during a fierce tiebreak, the linesman makes an atrocious blunder. Haas hits a ball clearly long and wide, but the linesman calls it in, giving Haas a commanding 6–3 lead. It’s the worst call of my career. I know the ball was out, know it without question, but all my arguing is for nothing. The other linesman and the umpire uphold the call. I go on to lose the tiebreak. Now I’m down two sets to one, a steep hole.

  Officials pause the match, postpone the end because of darkness. Back at my hotel, on the news, I see that the ball was several inches out. I can only laugh.

  The next day, taking the court, I’m still laughing. I still don’t care about the call. I’m just happy to be here. Maybe I don’t know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time: Haas wins the fourth set. Afterward, he tells reporters he grew up idolizing me. I used to look up to Agassi, he says—it’s a very special win for me because he won Wimbledon in 1992 and I can say I beat Andre Agassi, a former number one who’s won a couple of Grand Slams.

  It sounds like a eulogy. Does the guy think he beat me or buried me?

  And did anyone in the press room bother to tell him I’ve actually won three slams?

  BROOKE LANDS A ROLE in an indie film called Black and White. She’s elated, because the director is a genius and the theme is race relations and she’ll get to ad-lib her lines and wear her hair in dreadlocks. She’s also living in the woods for a month, bunking with her fellow actors, and when we talk on the phone she says they all stay in character, 24–7. Doesn’t that sound cool?

  Cool, I say, rolling my eyes.

  On her first morning home, eating breakfast in the kitchen, she’s full of stories about Robert Downey Jr. and Mike Tyson and Marla Maples and other stars of the movie. I try to be interested. She asks about my tennis, and she tries to be interested. We’re tentative, like strangers. We’re not like spouses sharing a kitchen; more like teens sharing a hostel. We’re courteous, polite, even kind, but the vibe feels brittle, as if everything could shatter any minute.

  I put another log in the kitchen fireplace.

  So I have something to tell you, Brooke says. While I was away, I got a tattoo.

  I spin around. You’re kidding.

  We go to the bathroom where there’s more light, and she pulls down the waistline of her jeans and shows me. On her hip. A dog.

  Did it cross your mind to run that by me?

  The exact wrong thing to say. Controlling, she calls it. Since when does she need my permission to decorate her body? I go back to the kitchen, pour myself a second cup of coffee, and stare harder into the fire. Stare harder.

  BECAUSE OF SCHEDULING CONFLICTS, Brooke and I couldn’t take our honeymoon right after the wedding. But now, with her done filming and me just done, it seems like the perfect time. We decide to go to Necker Island, in the British Virgin Islands, southeast of Indigo Island. It’s owned by billionaire Richard Branson, and he tells us we’ll love it.

  He says, It’s an island paradise!

  From the moment we land, we’re out of sync. We can’t get comfortable. We can’t agree how to spend our time. I want to relax. Brooke wants to go scuba diving. And she wants me to go with her. Which means taking a class. I tell her that of all the things I want to do on my honeymoon, taking a class is right up there with having a colonoscopy.

  While watching Friends.

  She insists.

  We spend hours at the pool, an instructor teaching us about wet suits and tanks and masks. Water keeps leaking into my mask because I have a five-o’clock shadow and my bristles prevent the mask from lying flush against my skin. I go up to the room and shave.

  When I come back down the instructor says the final phase of training is an underwater card game. If you can sit calmly playing cards at the bottom of the pool, and if you can play a full game without needing to surface, then you’re a scuba diver. So here I am, in full scuba gear, in the middle of the Caribbean, sitting at the bottom of a pool and playing Go Fish. I don’t feel like a scuba diver. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. I climb out of the pool and tell Brooke, I can’t do this.

  You never want to try anything new.

  Enjoy. Go out to the middle of the ocean if you want. Say hi to the Little Mermaid. I’ll be in the room.

  I walk into the kitchen and order a large plate of French fries. Then I go up to the room, kick off my shoes, stretch out on the couch, and watch TV for the rest of the day.

  We leave the island paradise three days early. Honeymoon over.

  I’M IN D.C. FOR THE 1998 LEGG MASON. Another July heat wave, another withering D.C. tournament. Other players are carping about the heat, and ordinarily I’d be carping too, but I feel only a cool gratitude and a steely resolve, which I maintain in part by waking early every morning, writing out my goals. After putting them on paper, saying them aloud, I also say aloud: No shortcuts.

  Just before the tournament starts, during a final practice with Brad, I give a halfhearted effort. Perry drives me back to the hotel. I stare out the window, silent.

  Pull over, I say.

  Why?

  Just pull over.

  He steers onto the shoulder.

  Drive two
miles ahead and wait for me.

  What are you talking about? Are you crazy?

  I’m not done. I didn’t give my best today.

  I run two miles through Rock Creek Park, the same park where I gave my rackets away in 1987. With every step I’m close to passing out, but I don’t care. This run, even if it brings on heatstroke, will give me peace of mind tonight in that all-important ten minutes before I fall asleep. I now live for that ten minutes. I’m all about that ten minutes. I’ve been cheered by thousands, booed by thousands, but nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those ten minutes before you fall asleep.

  When I get to the car, my face is bright purple. I slide into the passenger seat, turn up the air-conditioning, and smile at Perry.

  That’s how we do it, he says, handing me a towel as he pulls away.

  I reach the final. I face Draper again. I remember wondering not too long ago how I ever beat him. I remember shaking my head in disbelief that I’d ever gotten past him. One of the low points of my life. Now I take him out in fifty minutes, 6–2, 6–0. I win the tournament for the fourth time.

  At the Mercedes-Benz Cup I reach the semis without losing a set and ultimately win the whole thing. At the du Maurier Open in Toronto I face Pete again. He plays great in the first set but wears down in the second. I beat him, which costs him the number one ranking and moves me up to number nine.

  I meet Krajicek in the semis. He’s still feeling good about winning the 1996 Wimbledon, the only Dutchman ever to do it. In the process he beat Pete in the quarters, handing Pete his first Wimbledon loss in years. But I’m not Pete, and I’m not me. Krajicek is down a set, serving at 3–4 in the second set, love–40. Triple break point. I rope the best return of my adult life. The ball seems to clear the net by a centimeter and leaves a smoking skid mark. It’s a true old-fashioned rug-burner. Krajicek shuts his eyes, shoves out his racket, hits a wild volley. It could go anywhere, he has no idea where it might go, but it’s a winner. If his racket had been open another half degree, the ball would have hit somebody in the front row and I would have broken serve and taken control of the match. Instead he wins the point, holds serve, beats me in three sets, ends my streak of consecutive matches at fifteen. In the old days I’d have had trouble getting over it. Now I tell Brad: That’s tennis, right, BG?

  ENTERING THE 1998 U.S. OPEN, I’m number eight in the world. The crowd is fully behind me, which always lifts my spirits, makes me lighter on my feet. In the round of sixteen I meet Kucera, who seems to be trying to irk me with his serve. He tosses the ball, then stops, catches it, and tosses it again. I’m down two sets to love, sorely annoyed by this guy. Then I remember: the better you play Kucera, the better he plays. Hit shit to him, he hits shit back. That’s it—I’m playing too well! I’m also serving too well. When it’s my serve, I imitate Kucera. The crowd laughs. Then I hit big goofy moonballs. I irk Kucera, irritate my way back into the match.

  Rain falls. The match is held over until tomorrow.

  Brooke and I go out for a late dinner with her friends. Actors. It’s always actors. The sky has cleared, so we eat outside at a downtown restaurant with tables on the roof. Afterward, we’re standing in the street, saying goodnight.

  Good luck tomorrow! the actors shout as they jump into cabs, off to do some more drinking.

  Brooke watches them, turns to me. Her bottom lip is out. She’s torn. She looks like a child caught between what she should do and what she wants to do.

  I take a swig from my liter bottle of Gil Water. Go, I say.

  Really? You won’t mind?

  No, I lie. Have fun.

  I take a cab to Brooke’s apartment. She sold the brownstone and bought this place on the Upper East Side. I miss the brownstone. I miss the front stoop where Gil stood guard. I even miss the eyeless, hairless African masks, if only because they were there when Brooke and I didn’t wear masks with each other. I finish my Gil Water, slide into bed. I drift off but snap awake when Brooke comes home hours later.

  Go back to sleep, she whispers.

  I try. I can’t. I get up and take a sleeping pill.

  The next day I have a titanic battle with Kucera. I manage to tie the match. But he has more verve, more stamina. He outduels me in a tough fifth set.

  · · ·

  I’M SITTING IN A CORNER of our bathroom in Los Angeles, watching Brooke get ready to go out. I’m staying home—again. We talk about why this is always so.

  She accuses me of refusing to participate in her world. She says I’m not open to new experiences, new people. I’m not interested in meeting her friends. I could be rubbing elbows every night with geniuses—writers, artists, actors, musicians, directors. I could be attending art gallery openings, world premieres, new plays, private screenings. But all I want to do is stay home, watch TV, and maybe, just maybe, if I’m feeling social, have J.P. and Joni over for dinner.

  I can’t lie. That does sound like a perfect night.

  Andre, she says, they’re all bad for you. Perry, J.P., Philly, Brad—they coddle you, humor you, enable you. Not one of them has your best interests at heart.

  You think all my friends are bad for me?

  All but Gil.

  All?

  All. Especially Perry.

  I know she’s been feuding with Perry, that he gave up his producer role on Suddenly Susan. I know she’s irked that I haven’t automatically taken her side in the feud. But I had no idea she was ready to write off everyone else on my team.

  Standing, turning from the mirror, she says: Andre, I consider you a rose among thorns.

  A rose among—?

  An innocent, surrounded by people who are bleeding you dry.

  I’m not so innocent. And those thorns have helped me since I was a boy. Those thorns have saved my life.

  They’re holding you back. They’re keeping you from growing. From evolving. You’re unevolved, Andre.

  PERRY AND I CHOOSE to set the academy in the worst neighborhood of West Las Vegas, where it can serve as a beacon. After months of scouting locations, trying to find a lot that’s for sale and affordable and capable of accommodating an evolving campus, we find an eight-acre parcel that meets all our requirements. It’s in the center of an urban wasteland, surrounded by pawnshops and homes on the verge of being torn down. It’s on the site of the original Las Vegas, the long-forgotten outpost where settlers first arrived, which was later abandoned. I like that our school will be placed on a site that has a history of abandonment. Where better to initiate the kind of change we envision in the lives of children?

  At the groundbreaking ceremony, dozens of politicians and dignitaries and neighborhood leaders are on hand. Reporters, TV cameras, speeches. We push the golden shovel into the litter-strewn dirt. I look around, and I can actually hear the sound of children in the future, laughing and playing and asking questions. I can feel the procession of lives that will cross this spot, and go forward from this spot. I become lightheaded, thinking of the dreams that will be formed here, the lives that will be shaped and saved. I’m so overcome by the thought of what will happen here, in a few years, and many decades after I’m gone, that I don’t hear the speeches. The future drowns out the present.

  Then someone jolts me from my reverie, tells me to stand over here for a group picture. A flash goes off, a happy occasion, but daunting. We have so far to go. The fight to get the school opened, accredited, funded, will be rough. If not for my progress these last few months, fighting to reconstitute my tennis career, to recapture my health and balance, I don’t know that I’d have the stomach.

  People ask me where Brooke is, why she isn’t here for the groundbreaking. I tell them the truth. I don’t know.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE, the close of 1998. Brooke and I throw our traditional New Year’s Eve party. No matter how disconnected we may be, she insists that during holidays we give no sign of trouble to our friends and family. It feels as if we’re actors and our guests are an audience. And yet, even when the audi
ence isn’t here, she playacts, and I follow along. Hours before our guests arrive, we pretend to be happy—a dress rehearsal of sorts. Hours after they’re gone, we continue pretending. A kind of cast party.

  Tonight there seem to be more of Brooke’s friends and family than mine in the audience. Included in this group is Brooke’s new dog, an albino pit bull named Sam. It growls at my friends. It growls as if it’s been briefed on what Brooke thinks of all of them.

  J.P. and I sit in a corner of the living room, eyeballing the dog, which is lying at Brooke’s feet, eyeballing us.

  That dog would be cool, J.P. says, if it were sitting here. He points to the ground beside my feet.

  I laugh.

  No. Really. That’s not a cool dog. That’s not your dog. This is not your house. This is not your life.

  Hm.

  Andre, there are red flowers on this chair.

  I look at the chair where he’s sitting and see it as if for the first time.

  Andre, he says. Red flowers. Red flowers.

  AS I PACK FOR THE 1999 AUSTRALIAN OPEN, Brooke frowns and stomps around the house. She’s irritated by my attempted comeback. It can’t be that she resents my hitting the road, given all the tension between us. So I can only assume she thinks I’m wasting my time. She’s certainly not alone.

  I kiss her goodbye. She wishes me luck.

  I reach the round of sixteen. The night before my match I phone her.

  This is hard, she says.

  What is?

  Us. This.

  Yes. It is.

  There’s so much distance between us, she says.

  Australia is far.

  No. Even when we’re in the same room—distance.

  I think: You said all my friends suck. How could there not be distance?

  I say: I know.

  When you get home, she says, we should talk. We need to talk.

  What about?

  She repeats, When you get home. She sounds overwhelmed. Is she crying? She tries to change the subject. Who do you play?

  I tell her. She never recognizes the names or understands what they mean.