Open

by Andre Agassi

After two days of silence I thank her for being so patient, and tell her I’m back.

AND SO THE SUMMER OF 1995 becomes the Summer of Revenge.

Brooke asks why I didn’t just quit. Because it’s the Summer of Revenge.

I think: If only, when we’re born, we could look over our draw in life, project our path to the final.

In the early rounds I’m on autopilot. I know what I want, I see what I want, just ahead, and opponents are mere road cones.

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.

Brooke has told me that she has a ritual when I lose, a way of killing time until normalcy is restored. While I’m mutely grieving, she goes through her closets and pulls out everything she hasn’t worn in months. She folds sweaters and T-shirts, reorganizes socks and stockings and shoes into drawers and boxes. The night I lose to Pete, I peer into Brooke’s closet.

My feigned interest, my canned answers, my fundamental lack of interest—is this what I reduce her to half the time?

She says everyone asked where I was. She says I humiliated her, jeopardized her big break. She says everyone told her how good she was, but she couldn’t enjoy a minute of her success, because the only person she wanted to share it with was gone.

I briefly consider the possibility that Vegas is being struck by an earthquake.

I start to feel weak. I shaved my head this morning, full-on, bare-scalp bald, because I wanted to punish myself. Why? Because it still rankles that I ruined Brooke’s cameo on Friends, because I broke all my trophies, because I came to a slam without putting in the work—and because I lost to Pete at the U.S. Fucking Open. You can’t fool the man in the mirror, Gil always says, so I’m going to make that man pay. My nickname on the tour is The Punisher, because of the way I run guys back and forth. Now I’m hell-bent on punishing my most intractable opponent, myself, by burning his head.

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.

After the initial fun of introducing me to Frankie, she’s cool about him, indifferent, as if he’s played his part and now it’s time for him to move offstage. This follows a precedent, a pattern that repeats itself with many people and places Brooke brings into my life. Museums, galleries, celebrities, writers, shows, friends—I often get more from them than she does. Just as I start to enjoy something, to learn from it, she casts it aside.

Holding on for dear life.

Two years is a meaningful benchmark in my love life. In every previous relationship two years has been the make-or-break moment—and I’ve always chosen break. Every two years I grow tired of the girl I’m dating, or she grows tired of me, as if a timer goes off in my heart.

I gird myself, phone the jeweler and tell her I’m in the market for an engagement ring. The words come out croaky. I feel my heart pound. I ask myself, Shouldn’t this be a joyous moment—one of the great moments of life? Before I can answer, the jeweler is peppering me with her own questions. Size? Carat? Color? Clarity? She keeps talking about clarity, asking me about clarity.

Brooke’s engrossed in a book about how to be single and happy in your thirties.

I stretch as though I’m about to play a match. I shake out my legs, then suggest a stroll. Yes, Brooke says, that sounds like a lovely idea. She takes a sip of wine, smiles casually, no idea what’s coming. We walk for ten minutes until we reach a part of the beach where we can’t see any sign of civilization. I crane my neck to make sure no one is coming. No tourists. No paparazzi. The coast is clear. I think of that line from Top Gun. I had the shot, there was no danger, so I took it.

He likes to trade body blows, and if you respect him too much he gets more macho. I don’t show him any respect. But the ball doesn’t respect me. I’m making all sorts of unforced errors. Before I know what’s happening, I’m down a set and a break. I look to Brad. What should I do? He yells: Stop missing!

I’m seized by an urge, a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds. I sweep the floors. When there’s nothing left to clean, I do laundry. All the laundry. I fold every sweater and T-shirt and still I haven’t made a dent in my energy.

I decide that I need to work. Work, as always, is the answer.

Let me finish.

Far from depressing me, or shaming me, the idea that I must change completely, from top to bottom, brings me back to center. For once I don’t hear that nagging self-doubt that follows every personal resolution.

Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces—forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago.

Next I run to a toy store, the swimming section, and buy one of those tiny inner tubes for toddlers. I slide the inner tube under Kacey, positioning her head in the center, then blow it up until it gently and gradually lifts her head without altering the angle of her neck. A look of pure relief, and gratitude, and joy, washes over her face, and in this look, in this courageous little girl, I find the thing I’ve been seeking, the philosopher’s stone that unites all the experiences, good and bad, of the last few years.

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.

I’d forgotten: it’s in hospital hallways that we know what life is about.

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.

Other players are carping about the heat, and ordinarily I’d be carping too, but I feel only a cool gratitude and a steely resolve, which I maintain in part by waking early every morning, writing out my goals. After putting them on paper, saying them aloud, I also say aloud: No shortcuts.

In the car Brooke is still crying. I’m not happy, she says. We’re not happy. We haven’t been happy for so very long. And I don’t know if we can ever be happy again if we stay together.

I think about the day Wendi and I broke up, when I pulled over and phoned Perry. I think of all that’s happened since—and yet here I am, pulled over again, phoning Perry with a broken heart.

This is the best thing that’s ever happened to your tennis. I’m miserable. What are you talking about? Miserable? Then you’re looking at this all wrong. You don’t have kids. You’re free as a bird. If you had kids, OK, there would be real problems. But this way, you get off scot free.

You’ve got the world by the balls. You’re solo, rid of all that drama!

Asking once and backing off? Strictly amateur. Since when do you let other people run your game? Since when do you take no for an answer?

I need advice. I need a sounding board. I need a wingman. Then I hit the court and practice for my practice session.

I tie my shoes quickly. I pull a racket out of the bag and walk onto the court—then impulsively whip off my shirt. It’s shameless, I realize, but I’m desperate. Steffi looks and does a barely detectable double take. Thank you, Gil.

Standing still, she’s a goddess; in motion, she’s poetry. I’m a suitor, but also a fan. I’ve wondered for so long what Steffi Graf’s forehand feels like.

Every forehand is foreplay.

I manage to act nonchalant, until she starts to use the net post to stretch out her legs. All the blood rushes to my head. I need to do something physical or I might lose consciousness. I’ve never stretched before, but now seems like a good time to start. I put a leg on the net post and pretend my back is flexible.

We rehearse every scenario. He throws me every line she might possibly utter.

Brad knows my mind, the way it works. He knows that order, specificity, a clear and precise goal, are like candy to me.

Andre, he says, some people are thermometers, some are thermostats. You’re a thermostat. You don’t register the temperature in a room, you change it. So be confident, be yourself, take charge. Show her your essential self.

Then the bad news starts pouring in. My sister Tami has gotten a diagnosis of breast cancer. Days later, my mother gets the same diagnosis. I give up my spot on the Olympic team going to Sydney.

I HURRY HOME TO VEGAS, to spend time with my mother. But she’s untroubled, absorbed in her books and jigsaw puzzles, putting the rest of us to shame with her unshakable calm. I see that I’ve underestimated her through the years. I’ve mistaken her silence for weakness, acquiescence. I see that she is what my father made her, as we all are, and yet, beneath the surface, she’s so much more.

But what she wants right now is to be noticed, appreciated. She wants me to know that she’s stronger than I suspected.

To my mind, being with the right woman is true happiness.

time and practice equal achievement.

You have a new family, new interests. It might not be such a bad idea to find a new voice for your home stretch. Someone to re-motivate you.

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.

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.