by Andre Agassi
My theme, I think, will be contradictions. A friend suggests I brush up on Walt Whitman.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.
I never knew this was an acceptable point of view. Now I steer by it. Now it’s my North Star. And that’s what I’ll tell the students. Life is a tennis match between polar opposites. Winning and losing, love and hate, open and closed. It helps to recognize that painful fact early. Then recognize the polar opposites within yourself, and if you can’t embrace them, or reconcile them, at least accept them and move on. The only thing you cannot do is ignore them.
Visiting with a group of students at the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy
What other message could I hope to deliver? What other message could they expect from a ninth-grade dropout whose proudest accomplishment is his school?
IT’S STOPPED RAINING, Stefanie says.
Come on, I say. Let’s go!
She pulls on a tennis skirt. I throw on some shorts. We drive to the public court down the street. In the little pro shop, the teenage girl behind the counter is reading a gossip magazine. She looks up, and her chewing gum almost falls out.
Hello, I say.
Hi.
Are you open?
Yeah.
Could we rent a court for an hour?
Um. Yeah.
How much does it cost?
Fourteen dollars.
OK.
I hand her the money.
She says, You can have center court.
We walk downstairs to a mini amphitheater, where a blue tennis court is surrounded by metal bleachers. We set down our bags, side by side, then stretch and groan, teasing each other about how long it’s been.
I rummage in my bag for wristbands, tape, gum.
Stefanie says, Which side do you want?
This one.
I knew it.
She hits a forehand softly. I creak like the Tin Man as I lumber toward it, then punch it back. We have a gentle, tentative rally, and suddenly Stefanie laces a backhand up the line that sounds like a freight train going by. I shoot her a look. It’s going to be like that, is it?
She hits a Stefanie Slice to my backhand. I sit down on my legs and cane it, hard as I can. I yell to her, That shot has paid a lot of bills for us, baby!
She smiles and blows a lock of hair from her eyes.
Our shoulders loosen, our muscles warm. The pace quickens. I strike the ball clean, hard, and my wife does the same. We shift from hitting without purpose to playing crisp points. She hits a wicked forehand. I hit a screaming backhand—into the net.
First backhand crosscourt I’ve missed in twenty years. I stare at the ball, lying against the net. For a moment it bothers me. I tell her it bothers me. I feel myself getting irritated.
Then I laugh, and Stefanie laughs, and we begin again.
With every swing she’s visibly happier. Her calf is feeling good. She thinks she’ll be fine in Tokyo. Now that she’s not worried about the injury, we can play, really play. Soon we’re having so much fun that when the rain comes, we don’t notice. When the first spectator arrives, we don’t notice him either.
One by one, more arrive. Faces appear throughout the bleachers, as one person presumably phones another person, who phones two more people, to tell them we’re out here, on a public court, playing for nothing but pride. Like Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed after the lights are off and the gym is locked.
The rain falls harder. But we ain’t stopping. We’re going all-out. The people who show up now have cameras. Flashes go off. They seem unusually bright, reflected and magnified by the raindrops. I don’t care, and Stefanie doesn’t notice. We’re not fully conscious of anything but the ball, the net, each other.
A long rally. Ten strokes. Fifteen. It ends with me missing. The court is strewn with balls. I scoop up three, put one in my pocket.
I yell to Stefanie, Let’s both come back! What do you say?
She doesn’t answer.
You and me, I say. We’ll announce it this week!
Still no answer. Her concentration, as usual, puts mine to shame. In the same way that she wastes no movement on the court, she never wastes words. J.P. points out that the three most influential people in my life—my father, Gil, Stefanie—aren’t native English speakers. And with all three, their most powerful mode of communication may be physical.
She’s engrossed in each shot. Each shot is important. She never tires, never misses. It’s a joy to watch her, but also a privilege. People ask what it’s like, and I can never think of the perfect word, but that word comes close. A privilege.
I miss again. She squints, waits.
I serve. She returns, then gives the Stefanie wave, as if swatting a mosquito, meaning she’s done. Time to pick up Jaden.
She walks off the court.
Not yet, I tell her.
What? She stops, looks at me. Then she laughs.
OK, she says, backpedaling to the baseline. It makes no sense, but it’s who I am, and she understands. We have things to do, wonderful things. She can’t wait to go and get started, and neither can I. But I also can’t help it.
I want to play just a little while longer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK would not exist without my friend J. R. Moehringer.
It was J.R., before we even met, who first made me think seriously about putting my story on paper. During my final U.S. Open, in 2006, I spent all my free time reading J.R.’s staggering memoir, The Tender Bar. The book spoke to my heart. I loved it so much, in fact, that I found myself rationing it, limiting myself to a set number of pages each night. At first The Tender Bar was a crucial distraction from the difficult emotions at the end of my career, but gradually it added to the overall anxiety, because I feared the book would run out before the career did.
Just after my first-round match, I phoned J.R. and introduced myself. I told him how much I admired his work, and I invited him to Vegas for dinner. We hit it off right away, as I knew we would, and that first dinner led to many more. Eventually I asked J.R. if he’d consider working with me, helping me tackle my own memoir and give it shape. I asked him to show me my life through a Pulitzer Prize–winner’s lens. To my surprise, he said yes.
J.R. moved to Las Vegas and we got right to it. We have the same work ethic, the same obsessive all-or-nothing approach to big goals. We met each day and developed a strict routine—after wolfing down a couple of burritos, we’d talk for hours into J.R.’s tape recorder. No topics were out of bounds, so our sessions were sometimes fun, sometimes painful. We didn’t go chronologically or topically; we simply let the talk flow, prodded now and then by stacks of clippings collected by our superb, young, soon-to-be-famous researcher, Ben Cohen.
After many months J.R. and I had a crate of tape cassettes—for better or worse, the story of my life. The intrepid Kim Wells then turned those tapes into a transcript, which J.R. somehow transformed into a story. Jonathan Segal, our wise, wonderful editor at Knopf, and Sonny Mehta, the Rod Laver of publishing, helped J.R. and me polish that first draft into a second and a third, which was then excruciatingly fact-checked by Eric Mercado, the second coming of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve never spent so much time reading and rereading, debating and discussing words and passages, dates and numbers. It’s as close as I’ll ever come, or want to come, to studying for final exams.
I asked J.R. many times to put his name on this book. He felt, however, that only one name belonged on the cover. Though proud of the work we did together, he said he couldn’t see signing his name to another man’s life. These are your stories, he said, your people, your battles. It was the kind of generosity I first saw on display in his memoir. I knew not to argue. Stubbornness is another quality we share. But I insisted on using this space to describe the extent of J.R.’s role and to publicly thank him.
I also want to mention the dedicated team of first readers to whom J.R. and I passed copies and excerpts of the manuscript. Each contr
ibuted in significant ways. Deepest thanks to Phillip and Marti Agassi, Sloan and Roger Barnett, Ivan Blumberg, Darren Cahill, Wendy Netkin Cohen, Brad Gilbert, David Gilmore, Chris and Varanda Handy, Bill Husted, McGraw Milhaven, Steve Miller, Dorothy Moehringer, John and Joni Parenti, Gil Reyes, Jaimee Rose, Gun Ruder, John Russell, Brooke Shields, Wendi Stewart Goodson, and Barbra Streisand.
A special thanks to Ron Boreta for being rock solid, for reading me as closely as he read this book, for giving me invaluable advice about everything from psychology to strategy, and for helping me rethink and revise my longstanding definition of the words best friend.
Above all, I want to thank Stefanie, Jaden, and Jaz Agassi. Forced to do without me on countless days, forced to share me for two years with this book, they never once complained, they only encouraged, which enabled me to finish. The steadfast love and support of Stefanie provided constant inspiration, and the daily smiles of Jaden and Jaz converted to energy as quickly as food turns to blood sugar.
One day, while I was working on the second draft, Jaden had a playmate over to the house. Manuscripts were piled high along the kitchen counter, and Jaden’s friend asked: What’s all that?
That’s my Daddy’s book, Jaden said in a voice I’d never heard him use for anything but Santa Claus and Guitar Hero.
I hope he and his sister feel that same pride in this book ten years from now, and thirty, and sixty. It was written for them, but also to them. I hope it helps them avoid some of the traps I walked right into. More, I hope it will be one of many books that give them comfort, guidance, pleasure. I was late in discovering the magic of books. Of all my many mistakes that I want my children to avoid, I put that one near the top of the list.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Courtesy of Andre Agassi
Courtesy of Andre Agassi
James Bollettieri
Michael Cole
John C. Russell / Team Russell
John Parenti
Michael Cole
Mike Nelson / AFP / Getty Images
Gary M. Prior / Getty Images
both Nicolas Luttiau / Presse Sports
top John C. Russell / Team Russell
bottom Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images
Michael Cole
Denise Truscello
This Is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf
Copyright © 2009 by AKA Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agassi, Andre, 1970–
Open : an autobiography / Andre Agassi.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“Borzoi Book.”
eISBN: 978-0-307-59280-4
1. Agassi, Andre, 1970– 2. Tennis players—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
GV994.A43A43 2009
796.342092—dc22 2009024004
[B]
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