Open

by Andre Agassi

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.

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.

Tennis is the sport in which you talk to yourself. No athletes talk to themselves like tennis players.

Figuring out your butterflies, deciphering what they say about the status of your mind and body, is the first step to making them work for you.

I’ve internalized my father—his impatience, his perfectionism, his rage—until his voice doesn’t just feel like my own, it is my own. I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

So go ahead and cry. Hurt a while longer. But then tell yourself, that’s it, time to get back to work.

Tennis is lonely, I tell him. There’s nowhere to hide when things go wrong. No dugout, no sideline, no neutral corner. It’s just you out there, naked.

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 different costs.

This is a momentary crisis, Andre. One of many. As sure as we’re sitting here, there will be others. Bigger, smaller, and everything in between. Treat this crisis as practice for the next crisis.

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.

Above all, I told her that it would be dangerous to surrender to fear. Fears are like gateway drugs, I said. You give in to a small one, and soon you’re giving in to bigger ones.

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.

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.

So here we are. A new low. Fine. I can handle this. I can actually get comfortable here. I can settle in. Rock bottom can be very cozy, because at least you’re at rest. You know you’re not going anywhere for a while.

All those people out there, all those millions who hate what they do for a living, they do it anyway. Maybe doing what you hate, doing it well and cheerfully, is the point. So you hate tennis. Hate it all you want. You still need to respect it—and yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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 will never again take for granted the privilege of hurting on a tennis court.

I’m suddenly loose, happy. 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.

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.

Crying

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.

Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.

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?

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.