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Pressure is how you know everything’s working, the doctor said.
One thing I’ve learned in twenty-nine years of playing tennis: 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.
When I open my eyes, one hour has passed. I say aloud, It’s time.
Deciding which type of butterflies you’ve got going (monarchs or moths) is the first order of business when you’re driving to the arena. 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. One of the thousand lessons I’ve learned from Gil.
He sets them atop my bag. He knows I want to place them in the bag myself.
Because I’m playing for my family, my charitable foundation, my school, every string is like a wire in an airplane engine. Given all that lies beyond my control, I obsess about the few things I can control, and racket tension is one such thing.
It reminds me of the singular importance in this world of a job done well.
I always like my opponent and his team to show nervous energy. A good omen, but also a sign of respect.
Time to narrow your mind, the way the tunnel narrows your vision.
He expects to play the villain tonight. He thinks he’s prepared. I let him go, let him hear the buzzing turn to cheers. I let him think the crowd is cheering for both of us. Then I walk out. Now the cheers triple.
Without hitting a single ball I’ve caused a major swing in his sense of well-being. A trick of the trade. An old-timer’s trick.
My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day, I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls. He believes in math. Numbers, he says, don’t lie. A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.
The net is the biggest enemy, but thinking is the cardinal sin. Thinking, my father believes, is the source of all bad things, because thinking is the opposite of doing. When my father catches me thinking, daydreaming, on the tennis court, he reacts as if he caught me taking money from his wallet. I often think about how I can stop thinking.
We moved out here to the middle of nowhere, the heart of nothingness, because it’s only here that my father could afford a house with a yard big enough for his ideal tennis court.
He just got a picture in his head and set about making that picture a reality.
My father says that when he boxed, he always wanted to take a guy’s best punch. He tells me one day on the tennis court: When you know that you just took the other guy’s best punch, and you’re still standing, and the other guy knows it, you will rip the heart right out of him. In tennis, he says, same rule. Attack the other man’s strength. If the man is a server, take away his serve. If he’s a power player, overpower him. If he has a big forehand, takes pride in his forehand, go after his forehand until he hates his forehand.
I wonder why my father loves tennis. Yet another question I can’t ask him directly. Still, he drops clues. He talks sometimes about the beauty of the game, its perfect balance of power and strategy. Despite his imperfect life—or maybe because of it—my father craves perfection. Geometry and mathematics are as close to perfection as human beings can get, he says, and tennis is all about angles and numbers.
Bad habits plus bad luck—deadly combination.
He analyzes, strategizes, spit-balls, helps me come up with a plan to make things better.
When we’re not drilling, we’re studying the psychology of tennis. We take classes on mental toughness, positive thinking, and visualization. We’re taught to close our eyes and picture ourselves winning Wimbledon, hoisting that gold trophy above our heads. Then we go to aerobics, or weight training, or out to the crushed-shell track, where we run until we drop.
Nick’s eyes are wider than the panda’s. But he’s not angry. Or sad. He’s mildly pleased, because this is the only language he understands. He reminds me of Pacino in Scarface, when a woman tells him, Who, why, when, and how I fuck is none of your business, and Pacino says, Now you’re talking to me, baby.
Nick respects the way I stood up to him, and I respect him for being true to his word. We’re working hard to achieve a common goal, to conquer the tennis world.
redefines the problem as a negotiation between me and the world. Then he clarifies the terms of the negotiation.
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.
While he’s speaking, no one looks away. He doesn’t demand their attention, he simply compels it. Lastly, he tells them to gather round, closer, reminds them that hard work is the answer, the only answer. Everyone bring it in. Hands together. One two three—Rebels!
one of the great regrets of my life is that I don’t have a tape recorder with me. Still, I remember it nearly word for word.
Andre, I won’t ever try to change you, because I’ve never tried to change anybody. If I could change somebody, I’d change myself. But I know I can give you structure and a blueprint to achieve what you want. There’s a difference between a plow horse and a racehorse. You don’t treat them the same. You hear all this talk about treating people equally, and I’m not sure equal means the same. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a racehorse, and I’ll always treat you accordingly. I’ll be firm, but fair. I’ll lead, never push. I’m not one of those people who expresses or articulates feelings very well,
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Next up is Chang. The defending champ. I play with a chip on my shoulder, because I still can’t believe he’s won a slam before me. I envy his work ethic, admire his court discipline—but I just don’t like the guy. He continues to say without compunction that Christ is on his side of the court, a blend of egotism and religion that chafes me. I beat him in four.
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.
Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.
Gil and I drive back to the hotel and watch the other men’s semi to see who I’ll get tomorrow. McEnroe or Sampras.
Gil, who never touches the stuff, is letting himself get tipsy.
He’s acing me left and right, monster serves that the speed gun clocks at 138 miles an hour.
Now the crowd rises. I call time, to have a talk with myself, aloud, saying: Win this point or I’ll never let you hear the end of it, Andre. Don’t hope he double-faults, don’t hope he misses. You control what you can control. Return this serve with all your strength, and if you return it hard but miss, you can live with that. You can survive that. One return, no regrets.
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 know that feeling. Winning Wimbledon has done nothing to salve it. Then I look over at Wendi and realize she’s not just idly talking, she’s going somewhere with this. She’s making a point—about us. She turns in her seat and looks me in the eye. Andre, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I just don’t think I can be happy, really happy, until I figure out who I am and what I’m supposed to do with my life. And I don’t see how I can do that if we stay together.
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. So what if she didn’t want to perform? She had to.
She has remarkable poise, and charisma, and she’s surprisingly funny. We both laugh when the waiter comes to our table and asks, Have you two ladies had a chance to look over the menu?
She sees her dreams and doesn’t falter in describing them, even if she’s having trouble figuring out how to make them come true.
It’s not rocket science, he says. If I were you, with your skills, your talent, your return and footwork, I’d dominate. But you’ve lost the fire you had when you were sixteen. That kid, taking the ball early, being aggressive, what the hell happened to that kid?
Brad says my overall problem, the problem that threatens to end my career prematurely—the problem that feels like my father’s legacy—is perfectionism.
You always try to be perfect, he says, and you always fall short, and it fucks with your head. Your confidence is shot, and perfectionism is the reason. You try to hit a winner on every ball, when just being steady, consistent, meat a...
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Quit going for the knockout, he says. Stop swinging for the fences. All you have to be is solid. Singles, doubles, move the chains forward. Stop thinking about yourself, and your own game, and remember that the guy on the other side of the net has weaknesses. Attack his weaknesses. 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,
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I cloister myself in Gil’s gym and train with fury. I tell him about the goal, and he draws up a battle plan. First, he designs a course of study. He sets about collecting a master list of phone numbers and addresses for the world’s most acclaimed sports doctors and nutritionists, and reaches out to all of them, turns them into his private consultants. He huddles with experts at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He flies coast to coast, interviewing the best and brightest, famed researchers on health and wellness, recording every word they tell him in his da Vinci
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Then he determines my physical limit, and pushes me right up to it. He soon has me bench-pressing almost twice my weight, five to seven sets of more than three hundred pounds. He has me lifting fifty-pound dumbbells in excruciating sets of three-ways: back-to-back-to-back flexes that burn three different muscles in my shoulders. Then we work on biceps and triceps. We burn my muscles to ashes. I like when Gil talks about burning muscles, setting them afire. I like being able to put my pyromania to constructive use.
I’ve always noticed the way players silently anoint the alpha dog in their midst,
the way they single out the one player who’s feeling it, who’s likeliest to win. At this tournament, for the first time, I’m that player. I feel them all watching me in the locker room. I feel them noting my every move, the little things I do, even studying how I organize my bag. They’re quicker to step aside when I walk by, eager to give up the training table. A new degree of respect is directed toward me, and while I try not to take it seriously, I can’t help but enjoy it. Better me getting this treatment than someone else.
At night I sit in the hotel room, staring out the window at Paris, an eagle on a cliff, but she talks to me of this and that, Grease and Paris and what so-and-so said about such-and-such.
She doesn’t understand the work I did in Gil’s gym, the trials and sacrifices and concentration that have led to this new confidence—or the huge task that lies ahead. And she doesn’t try to understand. She’s more interested in where we’re going to eat next, which wine cellar we’re going to explore. She takes it for granted that I’m going to win, and she wishes I’d hurry up and do it, so we can have fun. It’s
Brooke lies in the sun and waits for me to speak. She’s not frightened by my silence, but she doesn’t understand it, either. In her world, everyone pretends, whereas in mine some things can’t be pretended away.
