Open (41 page)

I tell him that I’ve decided to recommit myself to tennis, start at the minor leagues and work my way back. I tell him that Kacey has inspired me, shown me the way.

Gil says he wants to help.

No, you’ve got your hands full.

Hey. Stand on my shoulders, remember? Reach?

I can’t believe he still has faith; I’ve given him so many reasons to doubt. I’m twenty-seven, the age when tennis players start to fade, and I’m talking about a second chance, and yet Gil doesn’t frown, doesn’t arch an eyebrow.

Let’s throw down, he says. It’s on.

W
E START FROM THE BEGINNING
, as if I’m a teenager, as if I’ve never worked out, because that’s how I look. I’m slow, fat, frail as a kitten. I haven’t picked up a dumbbell in a year. The heaviest thing I’ve lifted is Kacey’s air conditioner. I need to rediscover my body, add gingerly and gradually to its strength.

But first: We’re in Gil’s gym. I’m sitting on the free bench, he’s leaning against the leg extension. I tell him what I’ve done to my body. The drugs. I tell him about the pending suspension. I can’t ask him to lead me out of the depths unless he knows how deep I’ve fallen. He looks as crushed as he looked in his daughter’s hospital room. To me, Gil has always resembled that statue of Atlas, but now he looks as if he literally shoulders the weight of the world, as if he’s bench-pressing the problems of six billion. His voice chokes.

I’ve never been so disgusted with myself.

I tell him I’m done with drugs, I’ll never touch them again, but it goes without saying. He knows this as well as I do. He clears his throat, thanks me for being honest, then pushes it all aside. Where you’ve been, he says, doesn’t matter. From now on, we’re all about where you’re going.

Where we’re going, I say.

Right.

He draws up a plan. He outlines a proper diet. And no more Mr. Nice Guy, he says. No more lapses, no more fast food, no more shortcuts.

You’ll even have to cut back on the booze, he says.

Above all, he’s going to keep me on a strict schedule. Eat, exercise, lift, hit, at precise times of day.

As part of my new ascetic lifestyle, I’ll be seeing less of my wife. I wonder if she’ll notice.

I
PUT IN A FIERCE
, rugged month with Gil, every bit as rugged as our mini boot camp in early 1995, and then I go to a challenger, the bottom of
the pro tennis ladder. The winner’s check is $3,500. The crowd is smaller than the crowd at a typical high school football game.

The venue is UNLV. Familiar territory for such an unfamiliar moment. As Gil and I pull into the parking lot, I think of how far I’ve come, and how far I haven’t. These are the same courts I played on when I was seven. This is where I came the day Gil quit his job to work with me. I stood right over there, outside his office, hopping on one foot because I was so excited about the road that lay before us. Now, just a three wood from that spot, I’m playing hackers and has-beens.

In other words, my peers.

A challenger is the definition of small-time, and nowhere is this more evident than in the players’ lounge. The pre-match meal is airplane food: rubber chicken, limp veggies, flat soda. Once upon a time, at slams, I would walk up and down the endless buffet line, chatting with white-hatted chefs while they made me feathery omelets and homemade pasta. All gone.

The indignities don’t stop there. At a challenger, there are fewer ball boys. It makes sense, since there are practically no balls. You get only three per match. On either side of your court are rows of courts with other matches taking place simultaneously. As you toss a ball to serve, you see the players to your left and right. You hear them arguing. They don’t care if they’re interrupting your concentration. Fuck you and your concentration. Now and then a ball comes dribbling past your feet from another court, and you hear, A little help! You need to stop whatever you’re doing and throw the ball back. Now
you’re
the ball boy. Again.

You also operate your own scoreboard. Manually. During the changeover, I flip the little plastic numbers, which feel like part of a children’s game. Fans laugh and yell things. How the mighty have fallen!
Image Is Everything
, eh, buddy? A high-ranking official says publicly that Andre Agassi playing a challenger is like Bruce Springsteen playing a corner bar.

So what’s wrong with Springsteen playing a corner bar? I think it would be cool if Springsteen played a corner bar now and then.

I’m ranked number 141 in the world, the lowest I’ve been ranked in my adult life, the lowest I’ve dreamed of being ranked. Sportswriters say I’m humbled. They love saying this. They couldn’t be more wrong. I was humbled in the hotel room with Brad. I was humbled smoking meth with Slim. Now I’m just glad to be out here.

Brad feels the same way. He doesn’t find anything demeaning about
the challenger. He’s reenergized, rededicated, and I love him for it. He’s excited for this challenger, coaching me as if we’re at Wimbledon. He doesn’t doubt that this is step one on the road all the way back to number one. Inevitably, I put his faith to the test right away. I’m a shadow of my former self. My legs and arms might be on the mend, but my mind is still grossly out of shape. I reach the final, and then my mind gives out. Shaking from the pressure, the strangeness, the ridicule from the stands, I lose.

Brad is undiscouraged. Some technique will need relearning, he says. Shot selection, for instance. You need to retrain that muscle with which a tennis player decides in the heat of battle that this shot is the right one and that shot is the wrong one. You need to remember that it doesn’t matter if you hit the best shot in the world—remember? If it’s the wrong moment, it’s the wrong shot.

Every shot is an educated guess, and I’m no longer educated. I’m as green as I was in juniors. It took me twenty-two years to discover my talent, to win my first slam—and only two years to lose it.

O
NE WEEK AFTER
V
EGAS
I play a challenger in Burbank. The venue is a public park. Center court has a large tree on one side that casts a twenty-foot shadow. I’ve played on thousands of courts in my career, and this is the sorriest one of all. In the distance I hear kids playing kickball and dodgeball, cars backfiring, boom boxes blaring.

The tournament runs through Thanksgiving weekend, and I reach the third round, which falls on Thanksgiving Day. Rather than eating turkey at home, I’m scuffling in a Burbank public park, ranked 120 spots lower than I was two Thanksgivings ago. Meanwhile, in Göteborg, Davis Cup is under way. Chang and Sampras versus Sweden. It’s sad, but appropriate, that I’m not there. I don’t belong there. I belong here, under the ridiculous courtside tree. Unless I can accept that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’ll never belong
there
again.

Warming up before my match, I realize that I’m only four minutes from the studio where Brooke shoots
Suddenly Susan
, on which Perry is now a producer. The show has become a smash hit, and Brooke’s busy, working twelve hours a day. Still, it seems odd that she doesn’t pop over, watch a few points. Even when I get home she doesn’t ask about the match.

Then again, I don’t ask about
Suddenly Susan
either.

We talk about things. We talk about nothing.

·  ·  ·

T
HE ONLY TIME
I
BREAK TRAINING
is to meet with Perry and lay the groundwork for my charitable foundation. This is what we talked about fifteen years ago, two idealistic teenagers with their mouths full of Chipwiches. We wanted to reach a plateau from which we could give back, and we’ve finally arrived. I’ve negotiated a long-term deal with Nike, which will pay me tens of millions over the next decade. I’ve bought my parents a house. I’ve taken care of everyone on my team. Now I’m financially able to think larger, to widen my lens, and in 1997, though I’ve hit rock bottom, or because I’ve hit rock bottom, I’m ready.

My primary concern is children at risk. Adults can always ask for help, but children are voiceless, powerless. So the first project my foundation undertakes is a shelter for abused and neglected children who’ve been placed in the protective custody of the courts. The shelter includes a cottage for medically fragile children, and a makeshift school. Next we launch a program to clothe three thousand inner-city children each year. Then a series of scholarships to UNLV. Then a Boys and Girls Club. My foundation takes a 2,200-square-foot building that’s falling apart and turns it into a 25,000-square-foot showplace, with a computer lab, a cafeteria, a library, and tennis courts. Colin Powell speaks at the dedication.

I spend many carefree hours at the new Boys and Girls Club, meeting children, listening to their stories. I take them onto the tennis court, teach them the proper grip, watch their eyes sparkle because they’ve never held a racket before. I sit with them in the computer room, where the demand for online time is so great that they stand in long lines, patiently waiting their turn. It shocks me, pains me, to see how resolved they are to learn. Other times I simply station myself in the rec center of the Boys and Girls Club, playing ping-pong with the children. I never walk into that rec center without thinking of the rec center at the Bollettieri Academy, where I was so scared that first night, my back against the wall. The memory makes me want to adopt every scared child I see.

One day in the rec center I sit with Stan, the man who runs the Boys and Girls Club. I ask him, What more can we do? How can we make a bigger difference in their lives?

Stan says, You have to figure out a way to occupy more of their day. Otherwise it’s one step forward, two steps back. You really want to make a difference? You want to have a lasting impact? You need more of their day. In fact, you need
all
of their day.

So in 1997 I huddle again with Perry, and we hit on the idea of adding education to our work. Then we decide to
make
education our work. But how? We briefly consider opening a private school, but the bureaucratic and financial obstacles are too much. By chance I catch a story on
60 Minutes
about charter schools, and it’s the eureka moment. Charter schools are partly state funded, partly privately funded. The challenge is raising money, but the benefit is retaining full control. With a charter school we could do things the way we want. We’d be free to build something unique. Special. And if it works, it can spread like wildfire. It can be a model for charter schools around the nation. It can change education as we know it.

I can’t believe the irony. A
60 Minutes
piece caused my father to send me away, to break my heart, and now a
60 Minutes
piece lights the way home, gives me the map to find my life’s meaning, my mission. Perry and I resolve to build the best charter school in America. We resolve to hire the best teachers, pay them well, and hold them accountable for grades and test scores. We resolve to show the world what can be done when you set standards outrageously high and open the purse strings. We shake on it.

I’ll give millions of my own money to launch the school, but we’ll need to raise many more millions. We’ll issue a $40 million bond, then pay it off by parlaying and trading on my fame. At last my fame will have a purpose. All those famous people I’ve met at parties and through Brooke—I’ll ask them to give their time and talent to my school, to visit the children, and to perform at an annual fund-raiser, which we’re calling the Grand Slam for Children.

W
HILE
P
ERRY AND
I are scouting locations for our school, I get a call from Gary Muller, a South African who used to play and coach on the tour. He’s organizing a tennis event in Cape Town to raise money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He asks if I’d like to take part.

We don’t know if Mandela’s going to be there, he says.

If there’s even a remote chance, I’m in.

Gary calls right back. Good news, he says. You’re going to get to meet The Man.

You’re kidding.

He’s confirmed. He’s coming to the event.

I grip the phone tighter. I’ve admired Mandela for years. I’ve followed
his struggles, his imprisonment, his miraculous release and stunning political career, with awe. The idea of actually meeting him, speaking to him, makes me dizzy.

I tell Brooke. It’s the happiest she’s seen me in a long time, which makes her happy. She wants to come. The event happens to be a short flight from where she stayed while filming her Africa movie, back in 1993, when we first started faxing.

She immediately goes shopping for matching safari outfits.

J.P. shares my reverence for Mandela, so I invite him to join us on the trip, and bring his wife, Joni, whom Brooke and I both love. The four of us fly to South America, then catch another plane to Johannesburg. Then we hop a rickety prop plane into the heart of Africa.

A storm forces us to make an unscheduled landing. We batten down in a straw-roofed hut in the middle of nowhere, and over the sound of the thunder we can hear hundreds of animals run for cover. Looking out of the hut, over the vast savannah, watching storm clouds whirl along the horizon, J.P. and I agree this is one of those moments. We’re both reading Mandela’s memoir,
Long Walk to Freedom
, but feeling like heroes in a Hemingway novel. 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
.

After the storm passes we pile back into the prop plane and fly to a game reserve. We spend three days on safari. Every morning, before dawn, we climb into a Jeep. We drive and drive, then abruptly stop. We sit for twenty minutes in pitch dark, the engine running. As the dawn slowly breaks we find that we’re on the banks of a vast fog-covered marsh, surrounded by dozens of different kinds of animals. We see hundreds of impala. We see at least seventy-five zebras. We see scores of giraffes as tall as two-story buildings, dancing around us and gliding among the trees, nibbling from the highest branches, a sound like celery being crunched. We feel the landscape speaking to us: All these animals, beginning their day in a dangerous world, exude tremendous calm and acceptance—why can’t you?