Open

by Andre Agassi

The next class, French, is worse. I’m très stupide. I transfer to Spanish, where I’m muy estúpido. Spanish, I think, might actually shorten my life. The boredom, the confusion, might cause me to expire in my chair. They will find me one day in my seat, muerto.

Finally, when my grades hit bottom, my rebellion reaches the breaking point. I walk into a hair salon in the Bradenton Mall and tell the stylist to give me a mohawk. Razor the sides, shave them to the scalp, and leave just one thick strip of spiked hair down the middle. Are you sure, kid? I want it high, and I want it spiky. Then dye it pink.

He says it must be bizarre to have strangers think they know me, and love me beyond reason, while others think they know me and resent me beyond reason—all while I’m a relative stranger to myself.

He’s also hounded by death threats. Prostitutes and drug pushers come to his church and reform, and then their pimps and junkies and families, who’ve depended on that stream of income, blame J.P.

Without thinking, I begin lighting things on fire. Paper, clothes, shoes. For years this has been one of my furtive ways of coping with extreme stress. I don’t do it consciously. An impulse comes over me and I reach for the matches.

To know what your body wants, he says, to understand what it needs and what it doesn’t, you need to be part engineer, part mathematician, part artist, part mystic.

The best exercises, he says, exploit gravity. He tells me how to use gravity and resistance to break down a muscle, so it will come back stronger.

Calorie, for instance. He says it comes from the Latin calor, which is a measure of heat. People think calories are bad, Gil says, but calories are just measures of heat, and we need heat. With food, you feed your body’s natural furnace. How can that be bad? It’s when you eat, how much you eat, the choices you make—that’s what makes all the difference.

There are many ways, Gil says, of getting strong, and sometimes talking is the best way. When he’s not teaching me about my body, I’m teaching him about tennis, the life on tour.

I’m in the final—at last. My first final at a slam.

THEN, CATASTROPHE STRIKES.

The weave is coming undone—the damned thing is falling apart.

Image Is Everything? What would they say if they knew I’ve been wearing a hairpiece all this time? Win or lose, they wouldn’t talk about my game. They would talk only about my hair. Instead of a few kids at the Bollettieri Academy laughing at me, or twelve thousand Germans at Davis Cup, the whole world would be laughing. I can close my eyes and almost hear it. And I know I can’t take it.

Qué lindo es soñar despierto, he says. How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you’re awake, Andre. Anybody can dream while they’re asleep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them. In other words, when in the final of a slam, I must dream. I must play to win.

I can’t promise you that you won’t be tired, he says. But please know this. There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.

I can’t explain it any other way. In the fourth set I lost the will, but now I’ve lost the desire. As certain as I felt about victory at the start of this match, that’s how certain I am now of defeat. And I want it. I long for it. I say under my breath: Let it be fast. Since losing is death, I’d rather it be fast than slow. I no longer hear the crowd. I no longer hear my own thoughts, only a white noise between my ears. I can’t hear or feel anything except my desire to lose. I drop the tenth and decisive game of the fifth set, and congratulate Courier. Friends tell me it’s the most desolate look they’ve ever seen on my face. Afterward, I don’t scold myself. I coolly explain it to myself this way: You don’t have what it takes to get over the line. You just quit on yourself—you need to quit this game.

The problem in the last three slams was that you didn’t want them enough, and therefore you didn’t bring it, but this one you want, so this time you need to let Ivanisevic and everyone else in this joint know you want it.

A very British man approaches and tells me to stand. He hands me a large gold loving cup. I don’t know how to hold it, or where to go with it. He points and tells me to walk in a circle around the court. Hold the trophy over your head, he says. I walk around the court holding the trophy above my head. The fans cheer. Another man tries to take the trophy from me. I pull it back. He explains that he’s going to have it engraved. With my name.

He says nothing. Not because he disagrees, or disapproves, but because he’s crying. Faintly I hear my father sniffling and wiping away tears, and I know he’s proud, just incapable of expressing it. I can’t fault the man for not knowing how to say what’s in his heart. It’s the family curse.

I’ve heard about it for years, and I’m dying to go, because the men’s winner gets to dance with the women’s winner, and this year, as in most years, that means Steffi Graf.

She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good.

I tried to get a message to her after last year’s French Open, but she didn’t respond. Now, I can’t wait to twirl her across a dance floor, never mind that I don’t know how to dance.

Sadly, the woman says, that dance isn’t happening this year.

A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.

I understand that there’s a tax on everything in America. Now I discover that this is the tax on success in sports—fifteen seconds of time for every fan.

I’m struck by how fast the surreal becomes the norm. I marvel at how unexciting it is to be famous, how mundane famous people are. They’re confused, uncertain, insecure, and often hate what they do. It’s something we always hear—like that old adage that money can’t buy happiness—but we never believe it until we see it for ourselves. Seeing it in 1992 brings me a new measure of confidence.

You don’t have to be the best in the world every time you go out there. You just have to be better than one guy. Instead of you succeeding, make him fail. Better yet, let him fail. It’s all about odds and percentages. You’re from Vegas, you should have an appreciation of odds and percentages. The house always wins, right? Why? Because the odds are stacked in the house’s favor. So? Be the house! Get the odds in your favor. Right now, by trying for a perfect shot with every ball, you’re stacking the odds against yourself. You’re assuming too much risk. You don’t need to assume so much risk. Fuck that. Just keep the ball moving. Back and forth. Nice and easy. Solid. Be like gravity, man, just like motherfucking gravity. When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent gamewise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose. Again, since you’re from Vegas, put it this way. It takes twenty-one sets to win...

You know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph.

I’ve knocked Pete off the mountaintop. After eighty-two weeks at number one, Pete’s looking up at me. I’m the twelfth tennis player to be number one in the two decades since they started keeping computer rankings. The next person who phones is a reporter. I tell him that I’m happy about the ranking, that it feels good to be the best that I can be. It’s a lie. This isn’t at all what I feel. It’s what I want to feel. It’s what I expected to feel, what I tell myself to feel. But in fact I feel nothing.

I SPEND MANY HOURS ROAMING the streets of Palermo, drinking strong black coffee, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I did it—I’m the number one tennis player on earth, and yet I feel empty. If being number one feels empty, unsatisfying, what’s the point? Why not just retire?

The problem, all this time, is that I’ve had the wrong goals. I never really wanted to be number one, that was just something others wanted for me. So I’m number one. So a computer loves me. So what? What I think I’ve always wanted, since I was a boy, and what I want now, is far more difficult, far more substantial. I want to win the French Open. Then I’ll have all four slams to my credit. The complete set. I’ll be only the fifth man to accomplish such a feat in the open era—and the first American.

I’ve simply repressed the desire because it didn’t seem possible, especially after reaching the final of the French Open two years in a row and losing. Also, I’ve allowed myself to get sidetracked by sportswriters and fans who don’t understand, who count the number of slams a player won and use that bogus number to gauge his legacy. Winning all four is the true Holy Grail. So, in 1995, in Palermo, I decide that I will chase this Grail, full speed ahead.

A friend asks if I don’t feel even the slightest impulse, when it’s personal with an opponent, to drop the racket and go for his throat. When it’s a grudge match, when there’s bad blood, wouldn’t I rather settle it with a few rounds of old-fashioned boxing? I tell my friend that tennis is boxing. Every tennis player, sooner or later, compares himself to a boxer, because tennis is noncontact pugilism. It’s violent, mano a mano, and the choice is as brutally simple as it is in any ring. Kill or be killed. Beat or take your beat-down. Tennis beatings are just deeper below the skin. They remind me of the old Vegas loan shark method of beating someone with a bag of oranges, because it leaves no outer bruises.

Mercifully, Brooke is summoned to her trailer. Perry and I follow and sit with her while a team of people blows out and combs her hair, and another team tends to her makeup and wardrobe. I watch Brooke as she watches herself in the mirror. She’s so happy, so hyper, like a girl primping for her sweet sixteen party, and I’m so out of place. I feel myself shutting down. I say the appropriate things, I smile and mouth encouragements, but on the inside I feel something like a valve shut. I wonder if what I feel is the same thing Brooke feels when I’m tense before a tournament, or grieving a loss afterward. My feigned interest, my canned answers, my fundamental lack of interest—is this what I reduce her to half the time?

But losing on purpose isn’t easy. It’s almost harder than winning. You have to lose in such a way that the crowd can’t tell, and in a way that you can’t tell—because of course you’re not wholly conscious of losing on purpose. You’re not even half conscious. Your mind is tanking, but your body is fighting on. Muscle memory. It’s not even all of your mind that purposely loses, but a breakaway faction, a splinter group. The deliberately bad decisions are made in a dark place, far below the surface. You don’t do those tiny things you need to do. You don’t run the extra few feet, you don’t lunge. You’re slow to come out of stops. You hesitate to bend or dig. You get handsy, not using your legs and hips. You make a careless error, compensate for the error with a spectacular shot, then make two more errors, and slowly but surely you slide backward. You never actually think, I’m going to net this ball. It’s more complicated, more insidious.

I’ve given up on understanding myself. I have no interest in self-analysis. In the long, losing struggle with myself, I’m tanking.

This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting value or meaning. This is why we’re here. To make each other feel safe.

And yet. Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces—forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions, especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop, as every athlete knows. Even when we vow to change, even when we sorrow and atone for our mistakes, the momentum of our past keeps carrying us down the wrong road. Momentum rules the world. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I’m still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

How many times must I be shown? This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see.

Where you’ve been, he says, doesn’t matter. From now on, we’re all about where you’re going.

I think about something Mandela said once in an interview: No matter where you are in life, there is always more journey ahead. And I think of one of Mandela’s favorite quotes, from the poem Invictus, which sustained him during those moments when he thought his journey had been cut short: I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

What happened? We nearly ran over a lion sleeping in the middle of the road.

He has hair like I used to have.

After dinner Mandela stands and gives a stirring talk. His theme: we must all care for one another—this is our task in life. But also we must care for ourselves, which means we must be careful in our decisions, careful in our relationships, careful in our statements. We must manage our lives carefully, in order to avoid becoming victims. I feel as if he’s speaking directly to me, as if he’s aware that I’ve been careless with my talent and my health.

When he stops speaking and takes his chair I know that my journey, compared with his, is nothing, and yet that’s not his point. Mandela is saying that every journey is important, and that no journey is impossible.

But warming up before my first-rounder, I tell myself I want this, and I realize precisely why. It’s not about my comeback. It’s about my team. My new team, my real team. I’m playing to raise money and visibility for my school. After all these years I’ve got what I’ve always wanted, something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me. Something that bears my name but isn’t about me. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy.

Gil’s philosophy in all things is to seek the pain, woo the pain, recognize that pain is life. If you’re heartbroken, Gil says, don’t hide from it. Wallow in it. We hurt, he says, so let’s hurt. Belly Cramps is his medley of the most painful love songs ever written. We listen to them over and over until we know the lyrics by heart. After a song has played Gil will speak the lyrics.

But his take on Roy Clark’s version of We Can’t Build a Fire in the Rain knocks me out every time. One line in particular resonates with us both: Just going through the motions and pretending we have something left to gain.

It’s so typical in sports. You hang by a thread above a bottomless pit. You stare death in the face. Then your opponent, or life, spares you, and you feel so blessed that you play with abandon. I win the fourth set and the match. I’m in the final.

He stares. Then starts screaming. Brad, who never raises his voice to anybody, comes apart. What do you want me to say, Andre? What is it that you want me to say? You tell me he’s too good. How the fuck would you know? You can’t judge how he’s playing! You’re so confused out there, so blind with panic, I’m surprised you can even see him. Too good? You’re making him look good. But— Just start letting go. If you’re going to lose, at least lose on your own terms. Hit the fucking ball. But— And if you’re not sure where to hit it, here’s an idea. Just hit it to the same place he hits it. If he hits a backhand crosscourt, you hit a backhand crosscourt. Just hit yours a little better. You don’t have to be better than the whole fucking world, remember? You just have to be better than one guy. There isn’t one shot he has that you don’t have. Fuck his serve. His serve will break down when you start making your shots. Just hit. Just fucking hit. If we’re going to lose today, fine, I can live with it, but let’s lose on our terms. The last thirteen days, I’ve seen you lay it on the line. I’ve seen you rip it, under pressure, maim guys. So please stop feeling sorry for yourself, and stop telling me he’s too good, and for the love of God stop trying to be perfect! Just see the ball, hit the ball. Do you hear me, Andre? See the ball. Hit the ball. Make this guy deal with you. Make him feel you out there. You’re not moving. You’re not hitting. You may think you are, but trust me, you’re ju...