Open: An Autobiography - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Unknown (ч. 5)

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 time 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 whip-lash. 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 tournaments, 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.

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 over-prepared, 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.

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 aton-ing 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 shotmaking 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.

· · ·

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 com-memorate 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 bruis-ing 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.

My only hope is that he doesn’t play aggressive this time out. Especially since it’s cooler.

In cool weather the court in New York plays slower, which favors a guy like Blake, who’s so damned fast. On a slow court Blake can get to everything, and you can’t, and thus he can make you press. You feel a need to do more than you normally do, and from there everything goes haywire.

The moment we step onto the court, my worst nightmare comes true. Blake is Mr. Aggressive, standing inside the baseline on my second serves, taking full cuts off both wings, making me feel urgency right from the opening minute. He smothers me in the first set, 6–3.

In the second set he gives me a second helping of the same: 6–3.

Early in the third set the match takes on shades of Malisse. Except I’m Malisse. I can’t beat this guy, I know I can’t, so I may as well just try to give a good show. Freed from thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic. I see Blake take a step back and register the change. What just happened? He’s been beating my brains in for seven straight rounds, and at the end of the eighth I land one sneaky punch, wobbling him just as the bell rings. Now he’s walking to his corner, unable to believe that his hobbled, demoralized opponent still has life.

Blake has a huge following in New York, and they’re all here tonight. Nike, which no longer endorses me, gives his supporters T-shirts and urges them to cheer. When I outplay Blake in the third, they stop cheering. When I win the set, they fall silent.

Throughout the fourth set, Blake’s panicking, no longer being aggressive. I can see him thinking, can almost hear him thinking: Damn, I can’t do anything right.

I win the fourth set.

Now that Blake has seen the benefits of my not thinking, he decides he’s going to try it. As the fifth set unfolds, he turns off his brain. At last, after nearly three hours, we meet on equal terms. We’re both on fire, and his on-fire is slightly better than my on-fire. In the tenth game he has a chance to serve out the match.

Then he starts thinking again. The contrarian brain. He presses, I hit three first-class returns, break him, and the crowd changes its mind. They chant, An-dre, An-dre.

I serve. I hold.

During the changeover the stadium sounds like a rock concert. My ears are ringing. My temples are pounding. It’s so loud that I wrap my head in a towel.

He serves. He holds. We’re going to a tiebreak.

I’ve heard old-timers say that the fifth set has nothing to do with tennis. It’s true. The fifth set is about emotion and conditioning. Slowly I leave my body. Nice knowing you, body. I’ve had several out-of-body experiences over my career, but this one is healthy. I trust my skill, and I step out of its way. I remove myself from the equation. At match point, 6–5, I hit a solid serve. He returns to my forehand. I hit a quality ball to his backhand. He’s moving around it, and I know—mistake. If he’s running around my quality ball, that means he’s pressing. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s putting himself out of position, letting the ball play him. He’s not giving himself an opportunity to hit the best possible shot. Thus I know that one of two things is about to happen. He’s going to be handcuffed by my ball and hit it weakly. Or he’s going to be forced into an error.

Either way, I have a pretty good idea the ball is coming right here. I look at the spot where it’s sure to land. Blake wheels, throws his lower torso out of the way and coldcocks the ball. It lands ten feet from where I expected. Winner.

I was completely wrong.

I do the only thing I can do. Walk back. Prepare for the next point.

At six–all we have a murderous rally, backhand to backhand, and I’m a big loose bag of rattling nerves. In a ten-stroke backhand rally, you know somebody’s going to raise the stakes at any moment, and you’re always sure it’s going to be your opponent. I wait. And wait. But with each stroke, Blake doesn’t raise the stakes. So it falls to me. I step in as if I’m going to cane the ball and instead I hit a backhand drop shot. I’m all in.

There are times in a match when you want to put just a solid, serviceable swing on the ball, but your blood is so full of adrenaline that you hit it big. This happens often to Blake, not with his swing but his speed. He runs faster than he means to run. He feels so much urgency that he sprints to a ball and gets there sooner than he anticipated. This is what happens now.

Sprinting all-out for my backhand drop, he has the racket gripped in such a way that he’s going to have to dig, but instead he gets there so fast he doesn’t need to dig. Meaning, the ball is on him and he has the wrong grip. Instead of crushing the ball, as he should, he’s forced by his grip to punch the ball. Then he holds ground at the net, and I lace a backhand up the line.

It passes him by a fair margin.

Now he’s serving at 6–7. I have match point again. He misses the first serve. I have a nanosecond to decide where he’s coming with his second serve. Aggressive? Safe? I decide he’s going to err on the side of safety. He’s going to roll it to my backhand. So how aggressive do I want to be? Where do I want to station myself? Should I make an irrevocable decision, stand where I can kill the ball if I’m correct, but where I won’t be able to reach it if I’m wrong?

Or should I split the difference, stand in the middle ground, where I’ll be able to hit a moder-ately good shot on most serves, and a perfect shot on none?

If there is to be a final decision in this match, one final decision on this night of 100,000

decisions, I want that final decision to be mine. I irrevocably commit. He serves, as expected, to my backhand. It hangs just where I thought it would hang, like a soap bubble. I feel all the hairs on my body rise. I feel the crowd rise. I tell myself: Quality cut, rip it, rip it, rip it, you fuck.

As the ball leaves my racket I track every inch of its flight. I see the shadow of the ball conver-ging with the ball itself. As they slowly become one, I’m saying aloud: Ball, please please find a hole.

It does.

When Blake hugs me at the net, we know we’ve done something special. But I know it better, because I’ve played eight hundred more matches than he has. And this match stands apart from the others. I’ve never been more intellectually aware, never felt the need to be more intellectually aware, and I take a certain intellectual pride in the finished product. I want to sign it.

After they cut the tape off my feet, after the news conference, Gil and Perry and Darren and Philly and I go to P. J. Clarke’s for food and drinks. By the time I get back to the hotel it’s four in the morning. Stefanie is asleep. As I come in she sits up in bed and smiles.

You’re crazy, she says.

I laugh.

That was unbelievable, she says. You went places out there.

I did, baby. I went places.

I lie on the floor next to the bed, try to fall asleep, but I can’t stop replaying the match.

I hear her voice in the darkness somewhere above me, like an angel.

How do you feel?

It was a pretty cool way to spend an evening.

IN THE SEMIS I’m due to play Robby Ginepri, a touted kid from Georgia. CBS wants mine to be the late match. I go to the tournament director on my knees. I tell him, If I’m lucky enough to get through this match, I’ll have to come back tomorrow. Please don’t make a thirty-five-year-old man get home later than his twenty-two-year-old opponent in the final.

He reschedules my match, makes it the early semi.

After two five-setters in a row, no one gives me a chance against Ginepri. He’s fast, solid off both sides, playing the best tennis of his life—and young. And even before dealing with Ginepri, I know the first thing I’ll have to do is chisel through a wall of my own fatigue. The last three sets against Blake are the best tennis I’ve ever played, and the most draining. I tell myself to come out against Ginepri and manufacture adrenaline, pretend I’m down two sets, try to relocate that mindless state I found against Blake.

It works. Feigning urgency, I win the first set. Now my goal is to conserve energy for tomorrow’s final. I begin to play safe tennis, thinking about my next opponent, and of course that lets Ginepri swing freely, take chances. He wins the second set.

I banish from my mind all thought of the final. I give Ginepri my full attention. He’s gassed after expending so much energy to tie the match, and I win the third.

But he wins the fourth.

I need to start the fifth with fury. I also need to acknowledge that I can’t win every point. I can’t run after everything, can’t lunge for each dink and drop. I can’t go full-speed against a kid who’s still teething. He wants to be out here all night, but I have forty-five minutes of energy left, forty-five minutes of a functioning body. Or maybe just thirty-five.

I win the set. It’s not possible, but I’m in the final of the U.S. Open at thirty-five years old.

Darren, Gil, and Stefanie scoop me off the locker-room floor and go into triage mode. Darren grabs my rackets and runs them to Roman, the stringer. Gil hands me my Gil Water. Stefanie helps me to the car. We race back to the Four Seasons to watch Federer and Hewitt fight for the privilege of playing the old cripple from Vegas.

It’s the most relaxed you can be before a final, watching the other semi. You tell yourself: Whatever I’m feeling at this moment, it’s better than what those guys are feeling. Then Federer wins, of course. I lean back on the couch and he’s all I’m thinking about, and I know somewhere out there I’m all he’s thinking about. Between now and tomorrow afternoon I need to do everything a little better than he does it, including sleep.

But I have children. I used to sleep until eleven thirty in the morning on the day of a match.

Now I can’t sleep later than seven thirty. Stefanie keeps the children quiet, but something in my body knows they’re up, they want to see their father. More, their father wants to see them.

After breakfast I kiss them goodbye. Driving to the stadium with Gil, I’m quiet. I know I have no chance. I’m ancient, I’ve played three five-setters in a row. Let’s be real. My only hope is if it goes three or four sets. If it’s a fast match, where conditioning doesn’t come into play, I might get lucky.

Federer comes onto the court looking like Cary Grant. I almost wonder if he’s going to play in an ascot and a smoking jacket. He’s permanently smooth, I’m constantly rattled, even when serving at 40–15. He’s also dangerous from so many different parts of the court, there’s nowhere to hide. I don’t do well when there’s nowhere to hide. Federer wins the first set. I go into frantic mode, do anything I can to knock him off balance. I get up a break in the second. I break again and win the set.

I think to myself: Mr. Grant might just have a problem today.

In the third set, I break him and go up 4–2. I’m serving with a breeze at my back, and Federer is shanking balls. I’m about to go up 5–2, and for a fleeting moment, he and I both think something remarkable is about to happen here. We lock eyes. We share a moment. Then, at 30–love, I hit a kick serve to his backhand, he takes a swing, shanks it. The ball sounds sick as it leaves his racket, like one of my deliberate misfires as a kid. But this sick, ugly misfire somehow wobbles over the net and lands in. Winner. He breaks me, and we’re back on serve.

In the tiebreak, he goes to a place that I don’t recognize. He finds a gear that other players simply don’t have. He wins 7–1.

Now the shit is rolling downhill and doesn’t stop. My quads are screaming. My back is closing the store for the night. My decisions become poor. I’m reminded how slight the margin can be on a tennis court, how narrow the space between greatness and mediocrity, fame and anonymity, happiness and despair. We were playing a tight match. We were dead even. Now, due to a tiebreak that made my jaw drop with admiration, the rout is on.

Walking to the net, I’m certain that I’ve lost to the better man, the Everest of the next generation. I pity the young players who will have to contend with him. I feel for the man who is fated to play Agassi to his Sampras. Though I don’t mention Pete by name, I have him uppermost in my mind when I tell reporters: It’s real simple. Most people have weaknesses. Federer has none.

I PULL OUT OF THE 2006 AUSTRALIAN OPEN, then pull out of the entire clay season. I hate to do it, but I need to save myself for the 2006 Wimbledon, which I quietly, privately decide will be my last. I’m saving myself for Wimbledon. I never thought I’d say such a thing. I never dreamed a proper, respectful goodbye to Wimbledon would feel so important.

But Wimbledon has become hallowed ground for me. It’s where my wife shined. It’s where I first suspected that I could win, and where I proved it to myself and the world. Wimbledon is where I learned to bow, to bend my knee, to do something I didn’t want to do, wear what I didn’t want to wear, and survive. Also, no matter how I feel about tennis, the game is my home. I hated home as a boy, and then I left, and I soon found myself homesick. In the final hours of my career I’m continually chastened by that memory.

I tell Darren this will be my last Wimbledon, and the coming U.S. Open will be my last tournament ever. We make the announcement just as Wimbledon gets under way. Immediately after, I’m startled by how differently my peers look at me. They no longer treat me as a rival, a threat. I’m retired. I’m irrelevant. A wall is let down.

Reporters ask, Why now? Why did you choose to retire now? I tell them I didn’t. I simply can’t play anymore. That’s the finish line I’ve been seeking, the finish line with the inexorable pull. Can’t play, as opposed to won’t play. Unwittingly, I’ve been seeking that moment when I’d have no choice.

Bud Collins, the venerable tennis commentator and historian, the coauthor of Laver’s autobiography, sums up my career by saying I’ve gone from punk to paragon. I cringe. To my thinking, Bud sacrificed the truth on the altar of alliteration. I was never a punk, any more than I’m now a paragon.

Also, several sportswriters muse about my transformation, and that word rankles. I think it misses the mark. Transformation is change from one thing to another, but I started as nothing. I didn’t transform, I formed. When I broke into tennis, I was like most kids: I didn’t know who I was, and I rebelled at being told by older people. I think older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as finished products when in fact they’re in process. It’s like judging a match before it’s over, and I’ve come from behind too often, and had too many opponents come roaring back against me, to think that’s a good idea.

What people see now, for better or worse, is my first formation, my first incarnation. I didn’t alter my image, I discovered it. I didn’t change my mind. I opened it. J.P. helps me work through this idea, to explain it to myself. He says people have been fooled by my changing looks, my clothes and hair, into thinking that I know who I am. People see my self-exploration as self-expression. He says that, for a man with so many fleeting identities, it’s shocking, and symbolic, that my initials are A.K.A.

Sadly, in the early summer of 2006, despite the best efforts of J.P. and others, I can’t yet explain this to reporters. Even if I could, the press room at the All England Club isn’t the place.

I can’t explain it to Stefanie either, but I don’t need to. She knows all. In the days and hours leading up to Wimbledon, she stares into my eyes and pats my cheek. She talks to me about my career. She talks about hers. She tells me about her last Wimbledon. She didn’t know it would be her last. She says it’s better this way, to know, to go out on my own terms.

Wearing a necklace made for me by Jaden—a chain of block letters that spells out Daddy Rocks—I face Boris Pashanski, from Serbia, in the first round. As I step on the court, the applause is loud and long. On the first serve, I can’t see the court, because my eyes are filled with tears. Despite feeling as if I’m playing in a suit of armor, with a back that will not loosen, I persist, endure. I win.

In the second round I beat Andreas Seppi, from Italy, in straight sets. I’m playing well, which gives me hope going into my third-round match, against Nadal. He’s a brute, a freak, a force of nature, as strong and balletic a player as I’ve ever seen. But I feel—the delusional effects of winning—that I might be able to make inroads. I like my chances. I lose the first set, 7–6, but take hope from how close it was.

Then he annihilates me. The match takes seventy minutes. My window of opportunity is fifty-five. That’s when I start to feel my back. Late in the match, with Nadal serving, I can no longer stand still. I need to move around, stomp my foot, get the blood flowing. The stiffness is so severe, the pain so great, returning is the last thing on my mind. I’m thinking only of remaining vertical.

After, in a moment dripping with irony, Wimbledon officials break with tradition to hold an on-court interview with Nadal and me. They never hold on-court interviews. I tell Gil: Sooner or later, I knew I’d get Wimbledon to break with tradition.

Gil isn’t laughing. He never laughs while a fight is still going on.

It’s almost over, I tell him.

I go to Washington, D.C., and play an Italian qualifier named Andrea Stoppini. He beats me as if I’m the qualifier, and I feel ashamed. I thought I needed a tune-up for the U.S. Open, but this tune-up has left me shaken. I tell reporters that I’m struggling with the end more than I expected. I tell them that the best way I can explain it is this: Many of you, I’m sure, don’t like your jobs. But imagine if someone told you right now that your story about me would be your last. After this, you’ll never be able to write another word for as long as you live. How would you feel?

EVERYONE TRAVELS TO NEW YORK. The whole team. Stefanie, the children, my parents, Perry, Gil, Darren, Philly. We invade the Four Seasons and colonize Campagnola. The children smile to hear the applause as we walk in. To my ear, the applause sounds different this time. It has a different timbre. It has a subtext. They know this isn’t about me, it’s about all of us finishing something special together.

Frankie seats us at the corner table. He makes a big fuss over Stefanie and the children. I watch him serve Jaden all my favorite foods, and I watch Jaden enjoy them. I watch Jaz enjoy the food too, though she insists that each entrée remain separate. They mustn’t touch. A vari-ation of the blueberry muffin imperative. I watch Stefanie watching the kids, smiling, and I think of the four of us, four distinct personalities. Four different surfaces. And yet a matching set. Complete. On the eve of my final tournament, I enjoy that sense we all seek, that knowledge we get only a few times in life, that the themes of our life are connected, the seeds of our ending were there in the beginning, and vice versa.

In the first round I play Andrei Pavel, from Romania. My back seizes up midway through the match, but despite standing stick straight I manage to tough out a win. I ask Darren to arrange a cortisone shot for the next day. Even with the shot, I don’t know if I’ll be able to play my next match.

I certainly won’t be able to win. Not against Marcos Baghdatis. He’s ranked number eight in the world. He’s a big strong kid from Cyprus, in the midst of a great year. He’s reached the final of the Australian Open and the semis of Wimbledon.

And then somehow I beat him. Afterward I’m barely able to stagger up the tunnel and into the locker room before my back gives out. Darren and Gil lift me like a bag of laundry onto the training table, while Baghdatis’s people hoist him onto the table beside me. He’s cramping badly. Stefanie appears, kisses me. Gil forces me to drink something. A trainer says the doctors are on the way. He turns on the TV above the table and everyone clears out, leaving just me and Baghdatis, both of us writhing and groaning in pain.

The TV shows highlights from our match. SportsCenter.

In my peripheral vision I detect slight movement. I turn to see Baghdatis extending his hand. His face says, We did that. I reach out, take his hand, and we remain this way, holding hands, as the TV flickers with scenes of our savage battle.

We relive the match, and then I relive my life.

Finally the doctors arrive. It takes them and the trainers half an hour to get Baghdatis and me on our feet. Baghdatis leaves the locker room first, gingerly, leaning against his coach.

Then Gil and Darren lead me out to the parking lot, enticing me forward a few more steps with the thought of a cheeseburger and a martini at P. J. Clarke’s. It’s two in the morning.

Christ, Darren says, as we emerge into the parking lot. The car is all the way over there, mate.

We squint at the lone car in the middle of the empty parking lot. It’s several hundred yards away. I tell him I can’t make it.

No, of course not, he says. Wait here and I’ll bring it around.

He runs off.

I tell Gil that I can’t stay upright. I need to lie down while we wait. He sets my tennis bag on the cement and I sit, then lie back, using the bag as a pillow.

I look up at Gil. I see nothing but his smile and his shoulders. I look just beyond his shoulders at the stars. So many stars. I look at the light stanchions that rim the stadium. They seem like bigger, closer stars.

Suddenly, an explosion. A sound like a giant can of tennis balls being opened. One stanchion goes out. Then another, and another.

I close my eyes. It’s over.

No. Hell no. It will never really be over.

· · ·

I’M HOBBLING THROUGH THE LOBBY of the Four Seasons the next morning when a man steps out of the shadows. He grabs my arm.

Quit, he says.

What?

It’s my father—or a ghost of my father. He looks ashen. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in weeks.

Pops? What are you talking about?

Just quit. Go home. You did it. It’s over.

He says he prays for me to retire. He says he can’t wait for me to be done, so he won’t have to watch me suffer anymore. He won’t have to sit through my matches with his heart in his mouth. He won’t have to stay up until two in the morning to catch a match from the other side of the world, so he can scout some new wonderboy I might soon have to face. He’s sick of the whole miserable thing. He sounds as if—is it possible?

Yes, I see it in his eyes.

I know that look.

He hates tennis.

He says, Don’t put yourself through this anymore! After last night, you have nothing left to prove. I can’t see you like this. It’s too painful.

I reach out and touch his shoulder. I’m sorry, Pops. I can’t quit. This can’t end with me quitting.

THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE MATCH, I get an anti-inflammatory injection, but it’s different from the cortisone. Less effective. Against my third-round opponent, Benjamin Becker, I’m barely able to remain standing.

I look at the scoreboard. I shake my head. I ask myself over and over, How is it possible that my final opponent is a guy named B. Becker? I told Darren earlier this year that I wanted to go out against somebody I like and respect, or else against somebody I don’t know.

And so I get the latter.

Becker takes me out in four sets. I can feel the tape of the finish line snap cleanly across my chest.

U.S. Open officials let me say a few words to the fans in the stands and at home before heading into the locker room. I know exactly what I want to say.

With Stefanie, Jaden, and Jaz in the fall of 2006

Marcos Baghdatis congratulates me after the second round of the 2006 U.S. Open Centre Court, Wimbledon, 2000

I’ve known for years. But is still takes me a few moments to find my voice.

The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. Over the last twenty-one years I have found loyalty: You have pulled for me on the court, and also in life. I have found inspiration: You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I have found generosity: You have given me your shoulders to stand on, to reach for my dreams—dreams I could have never reached without you. Over the last twenty-one years I have found you, and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life.

It’s the highest compliment I know how to pay them. I’ve compared them to Gil.

In the locker room it’s deathly quiet. I’ve noticed through the years that every locker room is the same when you lose. You walk in the door—which slams open, because you’ve pushed it harder than you needed to—and the guys always scatter from the TV, where they’ve been watching you get your ass kicked. They always pretend they haven’t been watching, haven’t been discussing you. This time, however, they remain gathered around the TV. No one moves. No one pretends. Then, slowly, everyone comes toward me. They clap and whistle, along with trainers and office workers and James the security guard.

Only one man remains apart, refusing to applaud. I see him in the corner of my eye. He’s leaning against a far wall with a blank look on his face and his arms tightly folded.

Connors.

He’s now coaching Roddick. Poor Andy.

It makes me laugh. I can only admire that Connors is who he is, still, that he never changes. We should all be so true to ourselves, so consistent.

I tell the players: You’ll hear a lot of applause in your life, fellas, but none will mean more to you than that applause—from your peers. I hope each of you hears that at the end.

Thank you all. Goodbye. And take care of each other.

THE BEGINNING

RAIN HAS BEEN FALLING OFF AND ON ALL DAY.

Stefanie peers at the sky and says, What do you think?

Come on, I say—let’s try. I’m willing if you are.

Willing. She frowns. She’s always willing, but she can’t speak for her calf, which has been giving her problems since she retired. Especially lately. She looks down. Darned calf. She has a charity match in Tokyo next week. She’s playing to raise money for a kindergarten she’s opened in Eritrea, and even though it’s only an exhibition she wants to do well. She feels the old pressure to do well. Also, she can’t help but wonder how much game she has left.

I wonder the same thing about myself. It’s been a year since I walked off the court for the last time at the U.S. Open. It’s autumn, 2007.

So we’ve been planning all week to get out there, hit with each other, but now the day has come and it’s the one rainy day all year in Vegas.

We can’t build a fire in the rain.

Stefanie looks again at the overcast sky. Then at the clock. Busy day, she says. She has to pick up Jaden at school. We only have this small window.

IF THE RAIN DOESN’T LET UP, if we don’t hit, I might go down to my school, because that’s where I go whenever I have time. I can’t believe how it’s grown: a 26,000-square-foot education complex with 500 students and a waiting list of eight hundred.

The $40 million campus features everything the kids could want. A high-tech TV produc-tion studio. A computer room with dozens of PCs along the walls and a big, white, fluffy couch. A topflight exercise room with machines as fancy as those at the most exclusive clubs in Vegas. There’s a weight room, a lecture hall, and bathrooms as modern and clean as the ones in the city’s finest hotels. Best of all, the place is still freshly painted and pristine, just as sparkling as it was on opening day. Students, parents, the neighborhood, everyone respects the school because everyone owns it. The area hasn’t completely rebounded since we arrived. While I was giving a tour recently, someone was shot across the street. And yet in eight years not one window has been broken, not one wall has been sprayed with graffiti.

Everywhere you look are little touches, subtle details that signify this school is different, this place is about excellence, through and through. On the front window is etched one large word, our unofficial school motto: BELIEVE. Every classroom is flooded with soft natural daylight. Indirect, southern, bounced from skylights to high-tech reflectors, it’s a diffuse glow that’s ideal for reading and concentrating. Teachers never need to flick a light switch, which saves energy and money, but also spares students the headaches and general gloom caused by standard flu-orescents, which I remember all too well.

Our grounds are designed like a college campus, with intimate quads and welcoming common areas. The walls are stone—muted purple and pale salmon quartzite from local quarries—and the walkways are lined with delicate plum trees, leading to one beautiful holly oak, a symbolic Tree of Hope, which we planted even before the groundbreaking. First things first, our architects figured, so they planted the Tree of Hope, then asked construction workers to keep the tree watered and lighted while they built the school around it.

The land on which the school sits is narrow, only eight acres, but the lack of space actually suited the architects’ overall scheme. They wanted the flow of the campus to symbolize a short, serpentine journey. Like life. Wherever students stand, they can turn one way and see a glimpse of where they’ve been, or turn the other and see a hint of where they’re headed.

Kindergarteners and elementary schoolers can gaze at the tall high school buildings, waiting for them—though they can’t hear the voices of the older kids. We don’t want to scare them.

High schoolers can glance back at the primary classrooms from which they set out—though they can’t hear the high-pitched screaming on the playground. We don’t want to disturb them.

The architects, local guys named Mike Del Gatto and Rob Gurdison, threw themselves in-to this project. They spent months researching the history of the neighborhood, examining charter schools throughout the nation, experimenting with ideas. Then they stayed up night after night, brainstorming around a ping-pong table in Mike’s basement. They built the first cardboard-plywood model of the school on that ping-pong table, unaware of any coincidence or irony.

It was their idea to have the buildings teach, to tell stories. We told them the stories we wanted told. In the middle school we wanted enormous photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Ma-hatma Gandhi, and, of course, Mandela, with their inspirational words painted on raised glass beneath their portraits. Since most of our students are African American, we asked Mike and Rob to embed bricks of marbled glass in one wall, depicting the Big Dipper, and to the right one single brick of glass, representing the North Star. The Big Dipper and the North Star were beacons for runaway slaves, pointing them to freedom.

My small contribution to the aesthetics of the school: in the common area of the high school building I wanted a gleaming black Steinway. When I delivered the piano, all the students gathered around and I shocked them by playing Lean on Me. What delighted me most was that the students didn’t know who I was. And when their teachers told them, they weren’t all that impressed.

I dreamed of a school with the fewest possible dry routines, a place that fostered serendipity. A place where serendipity was the norm. And it’s happened. On any given day something cool is likely to happen at Agassi Prep. President Bill Clinton might drop by and take a turn teaching history. Shaquille O’Neal might be the substitute in physical education.

You might bump into Lance Armstrong walking the halls, or Muhammad Ali wearing a visitor badge, shadow-boxing a freshman. You might look up at any moment and see Janet Jackson or Elton John standing in the door of a classroom, or members of Earth, Wind & Fire auditing.

More serendipity: When we dedicate the gymnasium, the NBA All-Star Game will be taking place in Vegas. We’ll invite the rookie and sophomore All-Stars to play their traditional pickup game on our floor—the first game ever played at Agassi Prep. The kids will love that.

Our educators are the best, plain and simple. The goal in hiring them was to find sharp, passionate, inspired men and women who were willing to lay it on the line, to get personally involved. We ask one thing of every teacher: to believe that every student can learn. It sounds like a painfully obvious concept, self-evident, but nowadays it’s not.

Of course, because Agassi Prep has a longer day and a longer year than other schools, our staff might earn less per hour than staffs elsewhere. But they have more resources at their fingertips, and so they enjoy greater freedom to excel and make a difference in children’s lives.

We thought it important that students wear uniforms. Tennis shirt with khaki pants, shorts, or skirt, in official school colors—burgundy and navy. We think it creates less peer pressure, and we know it saves our parents money in the long run. Every time I walk into the school I’m struck by the irony: I’m now the enforcer of a uniform policy. I look forward to the day when some Wimbledon official happens to be in Vegas and asks for a tour. I can hardly wait to see the look on his or her face when I mention my school’s strict dress code.

We have another code that might be my favorite feature of the school. The Code of Respect that begins each day. Whenever I’m down there I poke my head into a random classroom and ask the children to stand with me and recite.

The essence of good discipline is respect.

Respect for authority and respect for others.

Respect for self and respect for rules.

It is an attitude that begins at home,

Is reinforced at school,

And is applied throughout life.

I promise them that if they memorize that simple code, keep it close to their hearts, they will go very far.

Walking the halls, peering into the classrooms, I can see how the children value this place.

I can hear it in their voices, discern it in their postures. From the teachers and staff I’ve heard their stories, and I know the many ways this school enriches their lives. Also, we ask them to write personal essays, which we excerpt in the program for the yearly fundraiser. Not all the essays are about trials and hardships. Far from it. But those are the ones I remember. Like the girl living alone with her frail mother, who’s been unable to work for years due to an incurable lung disease. They share a cockroach-infested apartment in a neighborhood ruled by gangs, so school is the girl’s refuge. Her grades, she says with touching pride, are outstand-ing, because I rationalized that if I did well in school no one would question what was going on at home, and I wouldn’t have to tell my story. Now, at seventeen, despite being forced to watch my mother deteriorate, to have lived with The Bloods and cockroaches, to work to support my family, I am college bound.

Another senior writes about her painful relationship with her father, who’s spent much of her childhood in jail. Recently, when he got out, she went to meet him and found him painfully thin, living with a haggard woman in a broken motor home that reeked of sewage and crystal meth. Desperate not to repeat the mistakes of her parents, the girl pushes herself to succeed at Agassi Prep. I won’t let myself down the way others have. It’s up to me to change the course of my future and I will never give up.

Not long ago, while walking through the high school, I was flagged down by a boy. He was fifteen, shy, with soulful eyes and chubby cheeks. He asked if he could speak to me privately.

Of course, I said.

We stepped into an alcove off the main hallway.

He didn’t know where to start. I told him to start at the beginning.

My life changed a year ago, he said. My father died. He was killed. Murdered, you know.

I’m so sorry.

After that, I really lost my way. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

His eyes grew cloudy with tears.

Then I came to this school, he said. And it gave me direction. It gave me hope. It gave me a life. So I’ve been keeping an eye out for you, Mr. Agassi, and when you came by, I had to introduce myself and tell you—you know. Thanks.

I hugged him. I told him that it was I who needed to thank him.

IN THE UPPER GRADES, the focus is squarely on college. The kids are told again and again that Agassi Prep is only a stepping-stone. Don’t get comfortable, we tell them. College is the main goal. Should they happen to forget, reminders are everywhere. College banners line the walls. A main hallway is named College Street. A metal sky bridge between the two main buildings has never been used, and never will be used, until the first seniors receive their diplomas and embark for college in 2009. Walking across that bridge, the seniors will enter a secret room, sign their names in a ledger, and leave notes to the next class, and the next, and all senior classes to come. I can see myself addressing that first senior class. I’m already working with J.P. and Gil, obsessing over my speech.

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 presum-ably 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 stagger-ing 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 contributed 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

top John C. Russell / Team Russell

This Is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf

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.