Open (48 page)

So. There you have it. I’m still going to lose—Medvedev is now just six points from the championship—but I’m going to lose on Brad’s terms instead of mine.

I serve again. Out. I stubbornly refuse to take anything off the second serve. Out again. Two double faults in a row.

Now it’s 30–40. Break point. I walk in circles, squeezing my eyes, on the verge of tears. I need to pull myself together. I toe the line, toss the ball into the air, and miss yet another serve. I’ve now missed five straight serves. I’m falling apart. I’m one missed serve away from Medvedev serving for the French Open.

He leans in, ready to obliterate this second serve. As a returner you’re always guessing about your opponent’s psyche, and Medvedev knows my
psyche is in tatters after missing five serves in a row. He’s guessing, therefore, with a high degree of certainty, that I won’t have the stomach to be aggressive. He expects a nice soft kick serve. He thinks I have no other choice. He steps up, well inside the baseline, sending me a message that he anticipates a softie, and when he gets hold of it he’s going to ram it down my throat. He wears a look on his face that unmistakably says: Go ahead, bitch. Be aggressive. I dare you.

This moment is the crucial test for both of us. This is the turning point in the match, perhaps in both of our lives. It’s a test of wills, of heart, of manhood. I toss the ball in the air and refuse to back down. Contrary to Medvedev’s expectations, I serve hard and aggressive to his backhand. The ball takes a wicked skidding bounce. Medvedev stretches out and shovels the ball to the center of the court. I hit a forehand behind him. He gets there, hits a backhand at my feet. I bend, play an awkward forehand volley that lands on the line, he shovels it over the net, and then I tap it ever so lightly back over, where it dies, a huge winner for such a soft shot.

I go on to hold serve.

I have a bounce in my step as I walk to my chair. The crowd is going crazy. The momentum hasn’t shifted, but it’s twitched. That was Medvedev’s moment, and he missed it, and I think I can see on his face that he knows it.

Allez, Agassi! Allez!

One good game, I think. Play one good game, and you’ll have won a set, and then at least you can walk out of here holding your head up.

The clouds have blown away. The sun has dried the clay hard and the pace is now lightning fast. I catch Medvedev sneaking a worried look at the sky as we retake the court. He wants those rain clouds to return. He wants no part of this blazing sun. He’s starting to sweat. His nostrils are flaring. He looks like a horse—like a dragon.
You can beat the dragon
. He falls behind love–40. I break him and win the third set.

Now we play on my terms. I move Medvedev side to side, hit the ball big, do everything Brad said to do. Medvedev is a step slower, notably distracted. He’s had too long to think about winning. He was five points away, five points, and it’s haunting him. He’s going over and over it in his mind. He’s telling himself,
I was so close. I was there. The finish line!
He’s living in the past, and I’m in the present. He’s thinking, I’m feeling. Don’t think, Andre. Hit
harder
.

In the fourth set, I break him again. Then we settle into a dogfight. We
play good solid tennis, each of us sprinting and grunting and digging deep. The set could go either way. But I have one distinct advantage, a secret weapon I can pull out any time I need a point—my net play. Everything I do at the net is working, and it’s clearly troubling Medvedev, messing with his head. He becomes skittish, almost paranoid. If I merely pretend to rush the net, he flinches. I jump, he lunges.

I win the fourth set.

I break him early in the fifth set and go up 3–2. It’s happening. It’s turning. The thing that should have been mine in 1990 and 1991 and 1995 is coming around again. I’m up 5–3. He’s serving, 40–15. I have two match points. I need to win this thing right now, or I’m going to have to serve out the match, and I don’t want that. If I don’t win this thing right now, maybe I don’t win at all. If I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll be in Medvedev’s shoes, haunted by how close I was. If I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll have to think about the French Open in my old age, in my rocking chair, mumbling about Medvedev with a plaid blanket over my legs. I’ve already obsessed about this tournament for the last ten years. I can’t bear the idea of obsessing about it for another eighty. After all this work and sweat, after this improbable comeback and this miraculous tournament, if I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll never be happy, truly happy, again. And Brad will have to be institutionalized. The finish line is close enough to kiss.
I feel it pulling me
.

Medvedev wins both match points. He staves off death. We’re back to deuce. I win the next point, however. Match point, again.

I yell at myself: Now.
Now
. Win this now.

But he wins the next point, then wins the game.

The changeover takes an eternity. I mop my face with a towel. I look at Brad, expecting him to be disconsolate, as I am. But his face is determined. He holds up four fingers.
Four more points
. Four points equals all four slams.
Come on! Let’s go!

If I’m going to lose this match, if I’m doomed to live with withering regret, it won’t be because I didn’t do what Brad said. I hear his voice in my ear: Go back to the well.

Medvedev’s forehand is the well.

We walk onto the court. I’m going to hit everything to Medvedev’s forehand, and he knows I’m going to. On the first point he’s tight, tentative on a passing shot up the line. He puts the ball into the net.

He wins the next point, however, when I net my running forehand.

Suddenly I rediscover my serve. Out of nowhere I uncork a big first
serve that he can’t handle. He hits a tired forehand that flies long. I hit my next first serve, even bigger, and he nets a forehand.

Championship point. Half the crowd is yelling my name, the other half is yelling,
Ssssh
. I hit another sizzling first serve, and when Medvedev steps to the side and takes a chicken-wing swing, I’m the second person to know that I’ve won the French Open. Brad is the first. Medvedev is third. The ball lands well beyond the baseline. Watching it fall is one of the great joys of my life.

I raise my arms and my racket falls on the clay. I’m sobbing. I’m rubbing my head. I’m terrified by how good this feels. Winning isn’t supposed to feel this good. Winning is never supposed to matter this much. But it does, it does, I can’t help it. I’m overjoyed, grateful to Brad, to Gil, to Paris—even to Brooke and Nick. Without Nick I wouldn’t be here. Without all the ups and downs with Brooke, even the misery of our final days, this wouldn’t be possible. I even reserve some gratitude for myself, for all the good and bad choices that led here.

I walk off the court, blowing kisses in all four directions, the most heartfelt gesture I can think of to express the gratitude pulsing through me, the emotion that feels like the source of all other emotions. I vow that I will do this from now on, win or lose, whenever I walk off a tennis court. I will blow kisses to the four corners of the earth, thanking everyone.

W
E HAVE A SMALL PARTY
at an Italian restaurant, Stressa, in downtown Paris, close to the Seine, close to the spot where I gave Brooke the tennis bracelet. I’m drinking champagne out of my trophy. Gil is drinking a Coke and he’s physically incapable of not smiling. Every now and then he puts his hand on mine—it’s as heavy as a dictionary—and says, You did it.

We
did it, Gilly.

McEnroe is there. He hands me a phone and says: Someone wants to say hello.

Andre? Andre! Congratulations. I got such joy watching you tonight. I envy you.

Borg.

Envy? Why?

Doing something so few of us have done.

The sun is coming up when Brad and I walk back to the hotel. He puts his arm around me and says, The journey ended the right way.

Seconds after beating Andrei Medvedev to capture the 1999 French Open

How so?

He says, Usually in life the journey ends the wrong fucking way. But this one time it ended the right way.

I throw an arm around Brad. It’s one of the few things the prophet has gotten wrong all month. The journey is just beginning.

O
N THE
C
ONCORDE BACK TO
N
EW
Y
ORK
, Brad tells me it’s destiny
—destiny
. He’s had a couple of beers.

You won the 1999 French Open on the men’s side, he says. And who should happen to have won it on the women’s side? Who? Tell me.

I smile.

That’s right. Steffi Graf. It’s destiny you end up together. Only two people in the history of the world have won all four slams and a gold medal—you and Steffi Graf. The Golden Slam. It’s destiny that you two should be married.

In fact, he says, here’s my prediction. He takes the Concorde promotional literature from the seat pocket and scribbles on the upper right-hand corner:
2001—Steffi Agassi
.

What the hell does that mean?

You guys will be married by 2001. And you’ll have your first kids together in 2002.

Brad, she has a boyfriend. Have you forgotten?

After the two weeks you’ve just had, you’re going to tell me anything is impossible?

Well, I’ll say this. Now that I’ve won the French Open, I do feel slightly more—I don’t know. Worthy?

There. Now you’re talking.

I don’t believe people are destined to win tennis tournaments. Destined to come together, maybe, but not destined to hit more winners and aces than their opponent. Still, I’m reluctant to question anything Brad says. So, just in case, and because I like the way it looks, I tear off the corner of the Concorde program on which he’s written his latest prophecy and I put it in my pocket.

We spend the next five days on Fisher Island, recuperating and celebrating.
Mostly the latter. The party keeps growing. Brad’s wife, Kimmie, flies in. J.P. and Joni fly in. Late at night we crank the stereo, listening over and over to Sinatra singing That’s Life, Kimmie and Joni dancing like go-go girls atop the table and bed.

Then I take to the grass courts at the hotel. I hit with Brad for several days, and we board a plane for London. Halfway across the Atlantic, I realize that we’re going to land on Steffi’s birthday. What are the chances? What if we bump into her? It would be nice to have something for her.

I look at Brad, sleeping. I know he’ll want to go straight from the airport to the practice courts at Wimbledon, so there won’t be time to stop at a stationery store. I should make some kind of birthday card now. But with what?

I notice that the airplane’s first-class menu is kind of cool. On the cover is a photo of a country church under a sliver of moon. I combine two covers into one card and along the inside I write:
Dear Steffi, I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a happy birthday. How proud you must feel. Congratulations on what I know is only a sliver of what is out there for you
.

I punch holes in the two menus. Now I just need something to hold them together. I ask the flight attendant if she has any string or ribbon. Maybe some tinsel? She gives me a bit of raffia coiled around the neck of a champagne bottle. I carefully weave the raffia through the holes. It feels as though I’m stringing a tennis racket.

When the card is finished I wake Brad and show him my handiwork.

Old World craftsmanship, I say.

He twirls a knuckle in his eye, nods approvingly. All you need is a look, he says. An opening. I tuck the card in my tennis bag and wait.

T
HERE ARE THREE LEVELS
of practice courts at the Wimbledon practice site, Aorangi Park. It’s a tiered mountain, an Aztec temple of tennis courts. Brad and I hit on the middle tier for half an hour. When we’re done I pack my tennis bag, taking my time, as always. It’s hard to get reorganized after a transatlantic flight. I’m carefully arranging, rearranging, slipping my wet shirt into a plastic bag, when Brad begins punching my shoulder.

She’s coming, dude, she’s coming.

I look up like an Irish setter. If I had a tail it would be wagging. She’s thirty yards off, wearing tight-fitting blue warm-up pants. I notice for the
first time that she walks slightly pigeon-toed, like me. Her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail and gleaming in the sun. It looks, yet again, like a halo.

I stand. She gives me the European double-cheek kiss.

Congratulations on the French, she says. I was so happy for you. I had tears in my eyes.

Me too.

She smiles.

Congratulations to you as well, I say. You paved the way. You warmed up the court for me.

Thank you.

Silence.

Luckily, no fans or photographers are around, so she seems relaxed, in no hurry. I’m oddly relaxed as well. Brad, however, is making small squeaking noises, like air being slowly let out of a balloon.

Oh, I say. Hey. I just remembered. I have a gift for you. I knew it was your birthday, so I made you a card. Happy Birthday.