by Andre Agassi
A private word with Pete Sampras after the final of the 2002 U.S. Open
At 3–4, Pete is serving, and I have two break points. If I win this game I’ll serve for the set. So this is it, the game of the match. He locks in, saves the first, and on the second break point I hit a scorching return at his shoes. I think the ball is well behind him—I’m already celebrating—but somehow he turns and finds it and hits a half-volley that flops and dies on my side of the net. Deuce.
I’m spooked. Pete closes out the game, then goes on to break me.
Now he’s serving for the match, and when Pete serves for a match, he’s a coldblooded killer. Everything happens very fast.
Ace. Blur. Backhand volley, no way to reach it.
Applause. Handshake at the net.
Pete gives me a friendly smile, a pat on the back, but the expression on his face is unmistakable. I’ve seen it before.
Here’s a buck, kid. Bring my car around.
27
I OPEN MY EYES SLOWLY. I’m on the floor beside my bed. I sit up to say good morning to Stefanie, then realize she’s in Vegas and I’m in St. Petersburg. No, wait—St. Petersburg was last week.
I’m in Paris.
No, Paris was after St. Petersburg.
I’m in Shanghai. Yes, that’s right, China.
I go to the window, draw back the curtains. A skyline designed by someone on mushrooms. A skyline that looks like a sci-fi Vegas. Every building is crazily different, and all set against a hard blue sky. It doesn’t matter where I am, strictly speaking, because parts of me are still in Russia and France and the last dozen places I’ve played. And the biggest part of me, as always, is home with Stefanie and Jaden.
No matter where I am, however, the tennis court is the same, and so is the goal—I want to be number one at the end of 2002. If I can put together a win here in Shanghai, one little win, I’ll be the oldest year-end number one in men’s tennis history, breaking Connors’s record.
He’s a punk—you’re a legend!
I want this, I tell myself. I don’t need it, but I do want it.
I order coffee from room service, then sit at the desk and write in my journal. It’s not like me to keep a journal, but I’ve recently begun one, and it’s quickly become a habit. I’m compelled to write. I’m obsessed with leaving a record, in part because I’ve developed a gnawing fear that I won’t be around long enough for Jaden to know me. I live on airplanes, and with the world becoming more dangerous, more unpredictable, I fear that I won’t be able to tell Jaden all that I’ve seen and learned. So every night, wherever I am, I jot a few lines to him. Random thoughts, impressions, lessons learned. Now, before going to the Shanghai stadium, I write:
Hey Buddy. You’re in Vegas with Mom and I’m in Shanghai, missing you. I have a chance at finishing number one after this tournament. But I promise I can only think about getting home to you. I put a lot of pressure on myself with my tennis. But I’m strangely driven to continue. It took me a while to figure that out. I fought it for so long. Now I just work as hard as I can and let the rest fall where it may. It still doesn’t feel great most of the time, but I push through it, for the sake of so much good. Good for the game, good for your future, good for many at my school. Always value others, Jaden. There is so much peace in taking care of people. I love you and am there for you always.
I close the journal, walk out of the room, and get clipped by Jiri Novak, from the Czech Republic. Humiliating. Worse, I can’t leave the country and go home. I have to hang around an extra day to play a kind of consolation match.
Back at the hotel, choked with emotion, I write again to Jaden:
I just lost my match and I feel terrible. I don’t want to go back out there tomorrow. So much so I was actually wishing for an injury. Picture that, not wanting to do something so much that you wish upon yourself injury. Jaden, if you ever feel overwhelmed with something like I was tonight, just keep your head down and keep working and keep trying. Face it at its worst and realize it’s not so bad. That will be your chance for peace. I wanted to quit and leave and go home and see you. It’s hard to stay and play, it’s easy to go home and be with you. That’s why I’m staying.
AT THE END OF THE YEAR, as expected, Hewitt is number one. I tell Gil we need to take it up a notch. He outlines a new regimen for the older me. He pulls ideas from his da Vinci notebooks, and we spend weeks working solely on my deteriorating lower body. Day in, day out, he stands over me as I build my legs, yelling, Big thunder! Australia’s calling!
Weak legs command, Gil says. Strong legs obey.
By the time we board the Ambien Express, Vegas to Melbourne, I feel as if I could run or swim there. I’m the second seed in the 2003 Australian Open, and I come out growling, ferocious. I reach the semis and beat Ferreira in ninety minutes. In six matches I’ve dropped only one set.
In the final I face Rainer Schuettler, from Germany. I win three straight sets, losing only five games and tying the most lopsided victory ever at the Australian Open. My eighth slam, and it’s my best performance ever. I tease Stefanie that it’s like one of her matches, the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing her kind of dominance.
As they hand me the trophy, I tell the crowd: There’s not a single day that’s guaranteed to us, and certainly days like this are very rare.
Someone says later that I sounded as if I’d had a near-death experience.
More like a near-life experience. It’s how a person talks when he almost didn’t live.
I’m the oldest player in thirty-one years to win a slam, and reporters won’t let me hear the end of it. Again and again, before I leave Australia, reporters ask if I have a plan for retirement. I tell them I don’t plan endings any more than I plan beginnings. I’m the last of a generation, they say. Last of the 1980s Mohicans. Chang announces he’s retiring. Courier is already three years into his retirement. People treat me like a codger, because Stefanie is expecting again and it’s well known that we tool around Vegas in a minivan. Still, I feel eternal.
Ironically, my lack of flexibility seems to be stretching out my career. It helps my durability. Since I can’t turn well, I always keep the racket close to my body, always keep the ball out in front of me. Thus, I don’t put unnecessary stress and torque on my frame. With such form, Gil says, my body might have another three years in it.
AFTER A SHORT BREATHER IN VEGAS, we fly to Key Biscayne. I’ve won this tournament two years in a row, five times overall, and nothing can stop me. I reach the final and beat Moyá, my old adversary from the French Open, who’s ranked number five. Straight sets. My sixth win here, which tops Stefanie’s record. Again, I tease her about finally doing something better than she did it. She’s so competitive, however, I know not to tease her too much.
PLAYING IN THE U.S. MEN’S CLAY COURT CHAMPIONSHIPS, in Houston, I just need to reach the finals and I’ll be ranked number one again. And I do. I beat Jürgen Melzer, 6–4, 6–1, and go out with Darren and Gil to celebrate. I throw down several vodka-cranberries. I don’t care that I’m playing in the final against Roddick tomorrow—I’m already ranked number one.
Which is why I beat him. That perfect blend of caring and not caring, the best preparation.
Days before my thirty-third birthday, I’m the oldest player ever ranked number one. I fly to Rome, feeling like Ponce de León, and get off the plane feeling a geriatric twinge in my shoulder. In the first round I play poorly, but don’t dwell on it, put it out of my mind. Weeks later, at the 2003 French Open, my shoulder is still sore, but my practices are crisp. Darren says I’m a force.
In the second round, I’m on the Suzanne Lenglen Court, a court filled with bad memories. Losing to Woodruff in 1996. Losing to Safin in 1998. I’m playing a kid from Croatia, Mario Ancic. I lose the first two sets and trail in the third. He’s nineteen years old, six foot five, a serve-and-volleyer with no fear of me. The Lenglen court is supposed to be denser, slower, but today the ball is moving fast. I’m having an unusually hard tim
e controlling it. I gather myself, however, and win the next two sets. In the fifth, exhausted, my shoulder falling off, I have match point four times, and lose them all. I double fault three of them. I beat the kid, at last, but only because he’s slightly more afraid of losing than I am.
I’m in the quarters against Guillermo Coria, from Argentina, another youngster. He says publicly I’m his idol. Listen, I tell reporters, I’d rather not be his idol and play him on hard court than be his idol and play him on clay. How I hate this dirt. I lose four of the first five games. Then I win the set. How I love this dirt.
Coria shows no emotion, however. In the second set he jumps out to a 5–1 lead. He misses nothing. He’s fast and getting faster. Was I ever that fast? I try to confuse him, rush the net—to no avail. He’s just better than me today. He knocks me out of the tournament, and out of the number one slot.
In England, at a warm-up tournament before Wimbledon, I beat Peter Luczak, from Australia. It’s the one thousandth match of my career. When someone tells me this, I feel an overpowering need to sit down. I have a glass of wine with Stefanie and try to run my mind over all one thousand matches. I remember every one of them, I tell her.
Of course, she says.
For Stefanie’s birthday I take her to see Annie Lennox in London. She’s one of Stefanie’s favorites, but tonight she’s my muse. Tonight she’s singing, speaking, directly to me. In fact I make a point to tell Gil that we’ll need to include some Lennox on Belly Cramps 2. I might listen to her before every match.
My two greatest sources of strength, Gil and Stefanie, sitting in my box at the 2003 Australian Open
Shortly after winning the 2003 Australian Open
This is the path I’ll never tread
These are the dreams I’ll dream instead …
I’M ONE OF THE FAVORITES at the 2003 Wimbledon. How? No father has won Wimbledon since the 1980s. Fathers don’t win slams. In the third round I play Younes El Aynaoui, from Morocco. He’s a new father too. I joke with reporters that I look forward to playing a man who gets as little sleep as I.
In his pre-match instructions Darren says: When you get this guy bled out to the backhand, early in the match, when you see him hit his slice, be sure to take it out of the air. That way you’ll put him on notice that he can’t get away with safe shots from a defensive position. He needs to hit something special. That’s how you’ll send him a message early and force him into errors later in the match.
Good advice. I quickly grab a lead, two sets to one, but El Aynaoui won’t cave. He pours it on in the fourth, gets three set points. I don’t want this thing going five. I refuse to let it go five. The final points of the fourth set are grueling, and I do everything required, everything Darren advised. When it’s over, when I’ve won the set and match, I’m wiped out. I have a day off, but I know it’s not nearly enough.
In the fourth round I face Mark Philippoussis, an Australian kid with tons of talent and a reputation for squandering it. His serve is big, infamously big, and never bigger than today. He’s topping out at 140 miles an hour. He aces me forty-six times. Still, the match goes where we both know it’s going, a fifth set. At 3–4, he’s serving, and somehow I have break point. He misses the first serve. I taste the victory. He unloads a 138-mile-per-hour second serve, straight up the middle. Obscene speed, but that’s right where I thought he’d hit it. I put the racket out, reflex the ball back to him, and he can only stand and watch. He almost gets whiplash. And yet it lands a half inch behind the baseline. Out.
Had it fallen in, I’d have had the break, the momentum, and I’d be serving for the match. But it’s not to be. Now, believing he can win, Philippoussis stands a little taller, and breaks me. It’s all gone in a blink. One minute, I’m almost serving for the match, the next minute he’s raising his arms in conquest. Tennis.
In the locker room my body feels different. Grass has become an ordeal, and a five-setter on grass leaves me physically shattered. Also, the courts at Wimbledon are playing truer this year, which has meant longer rallies, more movement, more lunging and bending. My back is suddenly an issue. It’s never been good, but now it’s actively, troublingly bad. Pain runs from my back, down my butt, circumvents my knee, then reconnects with my shin and shoots down to my ankle. I’m grateful that I haven’t beaten Philippoussis, that I haven’t advanced in the tournament, because I’d have to forfeit the next match.
AS THE 2003 U.S. OPEN GETS UNDER WAY, Pete announces his retirement. He stops several times during his news conference to collect himself. I find myself deeply affected as well. Our rivalry has been one of the lodestars of my career. Losing to Pete has caused me enormous pain, but in the long run it’s also made me more resilient. If I’d beaten Pete more often, or if he’d come along in a different generation, I’d have a better record, and I might go down as a better player, but I’d be less.
For hours after Pete’s news conference I feel a sharp loneliness. I’m the last one standing. I’m the last American slam winner still playing. I tell reporters: You sort of expect to leave the dance with the ones you came with. Then I realize this is the wrong analogy, because I’m not leaving the dance—they are. I’m still dancing.
I reach the quarters. I face Coria, who knocked me out of the French Open. I’m itching to lace them up, get out there, but we’re delayed for days by rain. Holed up in the hotel, there is nothing to do but wait and read. I watch raindrops slide down the window, each one as gray as the hairs of my stubble. Each raindrop seems like a minute forever melting away.
Gil forces me to drink Gil Water and rest. He says it’s going to be good, but he knows. Time is running out. Finally the clouds part and we’re on the court and Coria isn’t the same guy I saw in Paris. He has a leg injury, which I exploit. I run him, merciless, grind him down to dust, and win the first two sets.
In the third set I have four match points—and lose them all. I look to the box and see Gil, squirming. In my entire career he’s never once taken a bathroom break during one of my matches. Never. Not once. He says he doesn’t want to take the chance that I’ll look to my box and not see him there and panic. He deserves better than this. I refocus. I click the lens left, then right, and serve out the match.
There is no time to rest. All the rain has shrunk the tournament schedule. I have to play the semifinal the next day, against Ferrero, who just won the French Open. He has so much confidence, it’s shooting from his pores. He’s a hundred years younger than I am, and it shows. He puts me away in four sets.
I bow to all four corners, blow kisses to the crowd, and I think they know I’ve given them everything. I see Jaden and Stefanie waiting outside the locker room, Stefanie eight months pregnant with our second child, and the disappointment of the loss slides away like a raindrop.
OUR DAUGHTER IS BORN OCTOBER 3, 2003, another beautiful intruder. We name her Jaz Elle—and, as we did with our son, we secretly vow she won’t play tennis. (We don’t even have a tennis court in our backyard.) But there is something else that Jaz Agassi won’t do—sleep. She makes her brother seem like a narcoleptic. Thus, I leave for the 2004 Australian Open looking like a vampire. Every other player, meanwhile, looks as if he’s had twelve hours of sack time. They’re all bright-eyed—and muscular. They seem bulkier than in years past, as if they all have their own Gils.
My legs stay fresh until the semis, when I run into Safin, who plays like a dingo. He missed most of last year with a wrist injury. Now, fully healed and rested, he’s unstoppable. Side to side, back and forth, our rallies take forever. Each of us refuses to miss, to make an unforced error, and after four hours neither of us wants the win any less. In fact, we each want it a little more. The difference is Safin’s serve. He takes the fifth set, and I wonder if I’ve just had my last hurrah in Australia.
Is this the end? I’ve heard this question every other day for months, years, but this is the first time I’m the one asking.
REST IS YOUR FRIEND, Gil says. You need more rest between tournam
ents, and you need to choose your battles ever more carefully. Rome and Hamburg? Pass. Davis Cup? Sorry, can’t do it. You need to save up your sap for the big ones, and the next big one is the French Open.
As a result, when we arrive in Paris, I feel years younger. Darren looks over my draw and projects a clear path to the semis.
In the first round I play Jérôme Haehnel, a twenty-three-year-old from Alsace, ranked number 271, who doesn’t even have a coach. No problem, Darren says.
Big problem. I come out flat. Every backhand finds the net. I scream at myself, You’re better than this! It’s not over yet! Don’t let it end like this! Gil, sitting in the front row, purses his lips.
It’s not just age, and it’s not just the clay. I’m not hitting the ball cleanly. I’m rested, but rusty from the time off.
Newspapers call it the worst loss of my career. Haehnel tells reporters that his friends pumped him up before the match by assuring him that he was going to win, because I’d recently lost to a player just like him. Asked what he meant by a player just like him, he says: Bad.
We’re down the homestretch, Gil tells reporters—all I can ask is that we don’t limp across the finish line.
Come June, I pull out of Wimbledon. I’ve lost four straight matches—my worst losing streak since 1997—and my bones feel like china. Gil sits me down and says he doesn’t know how much longer he can watch me go on like this. I need to think long and hard, for both our sakes, about the end.