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Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.
It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.
The crowd gets louder as we find our way to our chairs. It’s louder than I thought it would be, louder than I’ve ever heard it in New York. I keep my eyes lowered, let the noise wash over me. They love this moment; they love tennis.
Packing my bag, zipping the cover on my racket, I feel a thrill greater than anything I felt after beating Mr. Brown. This is the sweetest win of my life, and it will be hard to top. I’ll take this win over a wheelbarrow full of silver dollars—and Uncle Isar’s jewels thrown on top--because this is the win that made my father finally sneak away from me.
Since I have no chance to win, since I want only to be credible, I’m free, loose, and this makes Cash tight.
Clay is a different game, thus your game must become different, and so must your body. Instead of sprinting from side to side, stopping short and starting, you must slide and lean and dance. Familiar muscles now play supporting roles, dormant muscles dominate. It’s painful enough, under the best of circumstances, that I don’t know who I am. To suddenly become a different person, a clay person, adds another degree of frustration and anxiety. A friend tells me that the four surfaces in tennis are like the four seasons. Each asks something different of you. Each bestows different gifts and exacts
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Win? What’s the point? Why should winning change people’s minds about me? Win or lose, I’ll still be the same person. That’s why I need to win? To shut people up? To satisfy a bunch of sportswriters and reporters who don’t know me? Those are the terms of this negotiation?
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.
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.
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 know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph.
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.
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.
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.
