Open

by Andre Agassi

  I tell him I’ll think about my retirement, but first I need to think about Stefanie’s. She’s been voted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, of course: she has more slams than anyone in the history of tennis besides Margaret Court. She wants me to introduce her at the induction ceremony. We fly to Newport, Rhode Island. A big day. The first time we’ve ever left the children with someone else overnight, and the first time I’ve ever seen Stefanie truly, rigidly nervous. She dreads the ceremony. She doesn’t want the attention. She worries that she’ll say the wrong thing or forget to thank someone. She’s shaking.

  I’m not all that loose myself. I’ve obsessed for weeks about my speech. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken in public about Stefanie, and it’s like writing something on the kitchen Appreciation Board for the world to read. J.P. helps me work through various drafts. I’m overprepared, and as I walk to the dais, I’m breathing hard. Then, the moment I start speaking, I relax, because the subject is my favorite and I consider myself an expert. Every man should have the chance to introduce his wife at her Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

  I look out over the crowd, the fans, the faces of former champions, and I want to tell them about Stefanie. I want them to know what I know. I compare her to the artisans and craftsmen who built the great medieval cathedrals: they didn’t curtail their perfectionism when building the roof or the cellar or other unseen parts of the cathedrals. They were perfectionists about every crevice and invisible corner—and that’s Stefanie. And yet also she’s a cathedral, a monument to perfection. I spend five minutes extolling her work ethic, her dignity, her legacy, her strength, her grace. In closing, I utter the truest thing I’ve ever said about her.

  Ladies and gentleman, I introduce you to the greatest person I have ever known.

  28

  EVERYONE AROUND ME TALKS INCESSANTLY OF RETIREMENT. Stefanie’s retirement, Pete’s retirement, mine. Meanwhile, I do nothing but play and keep my eye on the next slam. In Cincinnati, to everyone’s surprise, I beat Roddick in the semis, which propels me to my first ATP final since last November. Then I beat Hewitt, making me the oldest winner of an ATP event since Connors.

  The next month, at the 2004 U.S. Open, I tell reporters that I think I have a shot at winning this whole thing. They smile as if I’m demented.

  Stefanie and I rent a house outside the city, in Westchester. It’s roomier than a hotel, and we don’t have to worry about pushing the stroller across busy Manhattan streets. Best of all, the house has a basement playroom, which is my bedroom the night before a match. In the basement I can move from the bed to the floor when my back wakes me, without disturbing Stefanie. Since fathers don’t win slams, Stefanie likes to say, you can go to the basement and feel as single as you need to feel.

  I see my life wearing on her. I’m a distracted husband, a tired father. She needs to carry more of the load with the children. Still, she never complains. She understands. Her mission, her passion every day, is to create an atmosphere in which I can think solely about tennis. She remembers how vital that was when she played. For instance, driving to the stadium, Stefanie knows exactly which Elmo songs on the car stereo will keep Jaden and Jaz quiet, so Darren and I can talk strategy. Also, she’s like Gil about food: she never forgets that when you eat is as important as what you eat. After a match, driving home with Darren and Gil, I know that as we walk through the door there will be hot lasagna piled on a plate, the cheese still bubbling.

  I also know Darren’s kids and Jaden and Jaz will be fed and clean and tucked away for the night.

  Because of Stefanie, I make it to the quarters, where I face the number one seed, Federer. He’s not the man I beat in Key Biscayne. He’s growing before my eyes into one of the game’s all-time greats. He methodically builds a lead, two sets to one, and I can’t help but stand back and admire his immense skills, his magnificent composure. He’s the most regal player I’ve ever witnessed. Before he can finish me off, however, play is halted due to rain.

  Driving back to Westchester, I stare out the window and tell myself: Don’t think about tomorrow. Also, don’t even think about dinner, because the match was cut short and I’m coming home hours earlier than expected. But of course Stefanie has a source with the weather service. Someone gave her a heads-up about the storm as it was swooping down from Albany, and she jumped into the car and rushed home and got everything ready. Now, as we walk through the door, she kisses us all and hands us plates in a single motion, fluid as her serve. I want to invite a judge to the house and renew our vows.

  THE NEXT DAY howling winds come. Gusts of forty miles an hour. I fight through the winds, and through Federer’s hurricane-force skills, and tie the match at two sets apiece. Federer glances at his feet, which is how he registers shock.

  Then he adjusts better than I do. I have a sense he can adjust to anything, on the fly. He pulls out a tough fifth set, and I tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s on his way to becoming the best ever.

  Before the winds settle down, retirement talk swirls again. Reporters want to know why I keep going. I explain that this is what I do for a living. I have a family and a school to support. Many people benefit from every tennis ball I hit. (One month after the U.S. Open, Stefanie and I host the ninth annual Grand Slam for Children, which collects $6 million. All told, we’ve raised $40 million for my foundation.)

  Also, I tell reporters, I have game left. I don’t know how much, but some. I still think I can win.

  Again they stare.

  Maybe they’re confused because I don’t tell them the full story, don’t explain my full motivation. I can’t, since I’m only slowly becoming aware of it myself. I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.

  · · ·

  AT THE 2005 AUSTRALIAN OPEN I beat Taylor Dent in three sets, advancing to the fourth round, and outside the locker room I stop for a very engaging TV commentator—Courier. It’s odd to see him in this new role. I can’t stop seeing him as a great champion. And yet TV suits him. He does it well and seems happy. I feel a good deal of respect for him, and I hope he feels some for me. Our differences feel long ago and juvenile.

  He puts the microphone in front of my mouth and asks: How long before Jaden Agassi plays Pete’s son?

  I look into the camera and say: My biggest hope for my child is that he’s focused on something.

  Then I add: Hopefully he’ll choose tennis, because I love it so much.

  The old, old lie. But now it’s even more shameful, because I’ve attached it to my son. The lie threatens to become my legacy. Stefanie and I are more resolved than ever that we don’t want this crazy life for Jaden or Jaz, so what made me say it? As always, I suppose it was what I knew people wanted to hear. Also, flush from a win, I felt that tennis is a beautiful sport, which has treated me well, and I wanted to honor it. And maybe, standing before a champion I respected, I felt guilty for hating it. The lie may have been my way of hiding my guilt, or atoning for it.

  IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS Gil has given a few hard twists to my training. He’s had me eating like a Spartan warrior, and the new diet has honed me to a fine edge.

  Also, I’ve had a cortisone shot, my third in the last year. Four is the maximum annual number recommended. There are risks, the doctors say. We simply don’t know cortisone’s long-term consequences for the spine and liver. But I don’t care. So long as my back behaves.

  And it does. I reach the quarters, where again I face Federer. I can’t win a set. He dismisses me like a teacher with a dense pupil. He, more than any of the young guns taking control of the game, makes me feel my age. When I look at him, with his suave agility, his shot-making prowess and puma-like smoothness, I remember that I’ve been around since the days of wooden rackets. My brother-in-law, after all, was Pancho Gonzalez, a champion during the Berlin airlift, a rival of Fred Perry, and Federer was born the year I met my friend Perry.r />
  · · ·

  I TURN THIRTY-FIVE just before Rome. Stefanie and the children come with me to Italy. I want to get out with Stefanie, see the Colosseum, the Pantheon, but I can’t. When I came here as a boy, and as a young man, I was too consumed by inner torments and shyness to leave the hotel. Now, though I’d love to see the sights, my back won’t permit it. The doctor says one long walk on pavement can mean the difference between the cortisone lasting three months or one.

  I win my first four matches. Then I lose to Coria. Disgusted with myself, I feel guilty about getting a standing ovation. Again, reporters press the question of retirement.

  I say: I only think about it fourteen times a year, because that’s how many tournaments I play each year.

  In other words: That’s how many times I’m forced to sit through these news conferences.

  In the first round of the 2005 French Open, I play Jarkko Nieminen, from Finland. Simply by stepping on the court, I set a record. My fifty-eighth slam. One more than Chang, Connors, Lendl, Ferreira. More than anyone in the open era. My back, however, is in no mood to commemorate the occasion. The cortisone has worn off. Serving is painful, standing is painful. Breathing is work. I think about walking to the net and forfeiting. But this is Roland Garros. I can’t walk off this court, not this one. They’ll have to carry me off this court atop my racket.

  I swallow eight Advils. Eight. During the changeover I cover my face with a towel while biting on another towel to quell the pain. In the third set Gil knows something is terribly wrong. After hitting the ball, I don’t sprint back to the center of the court. In all these years he’s never seen me fail to sprint back to the center of the court. It’s unthinkable, tantamount to him taking a men’s-room break during one of my matches. Afterward, walking with Gil to a restaurant, I’m bent over like a giant shrimp. He says: We can’t keep taking and taking from your body.

  We pull out of Wimbledon, try to get ready for the summer hard courts. It’s necessary, but feels like a gamble. Now I’ll devote all my time and do all my work for fewer tournaments, which means the margin of error will be narrower, the pressure greater. The losses will hurt more.

  Gil buries himself in his da Vinci notebooks. He’s proud that I’ve never injured myself in his gym, and now I can see that, as my body ages, he’s tense. His streak is on the line.

  Some lifts you just can’t do anymore, he says. Others you’ll need to do twice as much.

  We spend hours and hours in the weight room, discussing my core. From here until the finish line, Gil says, it’s all about your core.

  BECAUSE I’VE PULLED OUT OF WIMBLEDON, newspapers and magazines print a fresh batch of eulogies. At an age when most tennis players—

  I swear off newspapers and magazines.

  In late summer I play the Mercedes-Benz Cup and I win. Jaden is now old enough to watch me play, and during the trophy ceremony he comes running onto the court, thinking the trophy is his. Which it is.

  I go to Montreal and scratch and claw my way to the final against a Spanish kid everyone is talking about. Rafael Nadal. I can’t beat him. I can’t fathom him. I’ve never seen anyone move like that on a tennis court.

  At the 2005 U.S. Open I’m a novelty, a sideshow, a thirty-five-year-old playing in a slam. It’s my twentieth year in a row at this tournament—many of this year’s players haven’t been alive twenty years. I remember playing Connors and knocking him out of his twentieth U.S. Open. I’m not the type to ask, Where did the years go? I know exactly where they went. I can feel every set in my spine.

  I play Razvan Sabau, from Romania, in the first round. I’ve had my fourth and final cortisone shot of the year, so my back feels numb. I’m able to hit my meat-and-potatoes shot, which gives Sabau problems. When your basic shot hurts someone, when they’re falling behind on the shot you can make a hundred out of a hundred times, you know the day is going to be fine. It’s as though your jab is leaving marks on a guy’s jaw, and you still haven’t thrown your haymaker. I beat him in sixty-nine minutes.

  Reporters say it was a massacre. They ask if I feel bad about beating him.

  I say: I would never want to deprive anybody of the learning experience of losing.

  They laugh.

  I’m serious.

  In the second round I play Ivo Karlovic, from Croatia. They list him as six foot ten, but he must have been standing in a ditch when they measured. He’s a totem pole, a telephone pole, which gives his serve a sick trajectory. When Karlovic serves, the box technically becomes twice as large. The net becomes a foot lower. I’ve never played anyone so big. I don’t know how to prepare for an opponent his size.

  In the locker room I introduce myself to Karlovic. He’s sweet, fresh-faced, starry-eyed about being in the U.S. Open. I ask him to raise his serving arm as high as he can, then I call Darren over. We crane our necks, looking up, trying to see the tips of Karlovic’s fingers. We can’t.

  Now, I say to Darren, try to imagine a racket in that arm. And now imagine him jumping. And now—imagine where the face of the racket would be and imagine the ball zinging off that racket. It’s like he’s serving from the freaking blimp.

  Darren laughs. Karlovic laughs. He says, I would trade you my reach for your return game.

  Fortunately, I know Karlovic’s height will also be a liability for him at times in the match. Low balls will be problematic. Lunging won’t be easy. Also, Darren says Karlovic’s movement is dodgy. I remind myself not to spend energy worrying about how many times he aces me. Just wait for the one or two times he misses a first serve, then pounce on that second. Those will decide the match. And though Karlovic knows this also, I need to make him know it more. I need to make him feel it, by applying pressure on the second serve, which means never missing.

  I beat him in straight sets.

  In the third round I play Tomas Berdych, a tennis player’s player. I faced him before, nearly two years ago, in the second round of the Australian Open. Darren warned me: You’re about to play an eighteen-year-old kid who has real game, and you’d better be on it. He can rip the ball up both sides, he has a bomb of a serve, and in a few years he’s going to be top ten.

  Darren wasn’t overselling it. Berdych was one of the best tennis players I’d faced all year. I beat him in Australia, 6–0, 6–2, 6–4, and felt fortunate. I thought: Good thing this is only best of five.

  Now, surprisingly, Berdych hasn’t improved much since then. His decision-making still needs work. He’s like me before I met Brad: thinks he needs to win every point. He doesn’t know the value of letting the other guy lose. When I beat him, when I shake his hand, I want to tell him to relax, it takes some people longer than others to learn. But I can’t. It’s not my place.

  Next I play Xavier Malisse, from Belgium. He moves admirably well and has a slingshot of an arm. He features a meaty forehand and an acing serve, but he’s not consistent. Also, his backhand is mediocre: it looks as if it should be great, because he’s so comfortable hitting it, but he’s more interested in the way it looks than actually executing it. He simply cannot hit a backhand up the line, and if you can’t do that, you can’t beat me. I control the court too well. If you can’t hit a backhand up the line, I’ll dictate every point. An opponent has to move me, stretch me off the mark, put me in a position where I’m dealing with him, or else he’ll have to play on my terms. And my terms are harsh. Especially as I get older.

  The night before the match, I have a drink with Courier at the hotel. He warns me that Malisse is playing well.

  Maybe, I say, but I’m actually looking forward to it. You won’t hear me saying this often, but this is going to be fun.

  The match is fun, like a puppet show. I feel as if I’m holding a string and each time I pull it, Malisse jumps. I’m astonished, yet again, by the connection between two players on a tennis court. The net, which supposedly separates you, actually links you like a web. After two bruising hours you’re convinced that you’re locked in a cage with your opponent. You
could swear that his sweat is spraying you, his breath is fogging your eyes.

  I’m up two sets to none, dominating. Malisse has no faith in himself. He doesn’t believe he belongs out here. But as the third set starts Malisse finally gets tired of being pulled from side to side. Such is life. He gets mad, plays with passion, and soon he’s doing things that surprise even himself. He’s hitting that backhand up the line, crisply, consistently. I glare at him with an expression that says, I’ll believe that if you keep doing it.

  He keeps doing it.

  I see relief in his face and body language. He still doesn’t think he’s going to win, but he does think he’s going to make a good show, and that’s enough. He takes the third set in a tiebreak. Now I’m livid. I have better things to do than stand out here with you for another hour. Just for that, I’m going to make you cramp.

  But Malisse isn’t taking orders from me anymore. One set, one little set, has completely changed his demeanor, restored his confidence. He’s no longer afraid. He only wanted to make a good show, and he has, so now he’s playing with house money. In the fourth set our roles reverse, and he dictates the pace. He wins the set and ties the match.

  In the fifth set, however, he’s spent, whereas I’m just beginning to draw on funds long deposited in the Bank of Gil. It isn’t close. Coming to the net, he smiles, accords me tremendous respect. I’m old, and he’s made me older, but he knows that I’ve made him work, that I’ve forced him to dig deep and learn about himself.

  In the locker room, Courier finds me, punches my shoulder.

  He says, You called your shot. You told me you were going to have fun—you looked like you were having fun.

  Fun. If I had fun, why do I feel as if I got hit by a truck?

  I’M READY FOR A MONTH IN A HOT TUB, but my next match looms, and my opponent is playing like a man possessed. Blake. He smoked me the last time we met, in D.C., by getting and staying aggressive. Everyone says he’s grown steadily better since that day.