Open (56 page)

I bow to all four corners, blow kisses to the crowd, and I think they know I’ve given them everything. I see Jaden and Stefanie waiting outside the locker room, Stefanie eight months pregnant with our second child, and the disappointment of the loss slides away like a raindrop.

O
UR DAUGHTER IS BORN
O
CTOBER
3, 2003, another beautiful intruder. We name her Jaz Elle—and, as we did with our son, we secretly vow she won’t play tennis. (We don’t even have a tennis court in our backyard.) But there is something else that Jaz Agassi won’t do—sleep. She makes her brother seem like a narcoleptic. Thus, I leave for the 2004 Australian Open looking like a vampire. Every other player, meanwhile, looks as if he’s had twelve hours of sack time. They’re all bright-eyed—and muscular. They seem bulkier than in years past, as if they all have their own Gils.

My legs stay fresh until the semis, when I run into Safin, who plays like a dingo. He missed most of last year with a wrist injury. Now, fully healed and rested, he’s unstoppable. Side to side, back and forth, our rallies take forever. Each of us refuses to miss, to make an unforced error, and after four hours neither of us wants the win any less. In fact, we each want it a little more. The difference is Safin’s serve. He takes the fifth set, and I wonder if I’ve just had my last hurrah in Australia.

Is this the end? I’ve heard this question every other day for months, years, but this is the first time I’m the one asking.

R
EST IS YOUR FRIEND
, Gil says. You need more rest between tournaments, and you need to choose your battles ever more carefully. Rome and Hamburg? Pass. Davis Cup? Sorry, can’t do it. You need to save up your sap for the big ones, and the next big one is the French Open.

As a result, when we arrive in Paris, I feel years younger. Darren looks over my draw and projects a clear path to the semis.

In the first round I play Jérôme Haehnel, a twenty-three-year-old from Alsace, ranked number 271, who doesn’t even have a coach. No problem, Darren says.

Big problem. I come out flat. Every backhand finds the net. I scream at myself, You’re
better
than this! It’s not over yet! Don’t let it end like this! Gil, sitting in the front row, purses his lips.

It’s not just age, and it’s not just the clay. I’m not hitting the ball cleanly. I’m rested, but rusty from the time off.

Newspapers call it the worst loss of my career. Haehnel tells reporters that his friends pumped him up before the match by assuring him that he was going to win, because I’d recently lost to a player just like him. Asked what he meant by a player just like him, he says: Bad.

We’re down the homestretch, Gil tells reporters—all I can ask is that we don’t limp across the finish line.

Come June, I pull out of Wimbledon. I’ve lost four straight matches—my worst losing streak since 1997—and my bones feel like china. Gil sits me down and says he doesn’t know how much longer he can watch me go on like this. I need to think long and hard, for both our sakes, about the end.

I tell him I’ll think about my retirement, but first I need to think about Stefanie’s. She’s been voted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, of course: she has more slams than anyone in the history of tennis besides Margaret Court. She wants me to introduce her at the induction ceremony. We fly to Newport, Rhode Island. A big day. The first time we’ve ever left the children with someone else overnight, and the first time I’ve ever seen Stefanie truly, rigidly nervous. She dreads the ceremony. She doesn’t want the attention. She worries that she’ll say the wrong thing or forget to thank someone. She’s shaking.

I’m not all that loose myself. I’ve obsessed for weeks about my speech. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken in public about Stefanie, and it’s like writing something on the kitchen Appreciation Board for the world to read. J.P. helps me work through various drafts. I’m overprepared, and as I walk to the dais, I’m breathing hard. 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.

I look out over the crowd, the fans, the faces of former champions, and I want to tell them about Stefanie. I want them to know what I know.
I compare her to the artisans and craftsmen who built the great medieval cathedrals: they didn’t curtail their perfectionism when building the roof or the cellar or other unseen parts of the cathedrals. They were perfectionists about every crevice and invisible corner—and that’s Stefanie. And yet also she’s a cathedral, a monument to perfection. 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.

E
VERYONE AROUND ME TALKS INCESSANTLY OF RETIREMENT
. Stefanie’s retirement, Pete’s retirement, mine. Meanwhile, I do nothing but play and keep my eye on the next slam. In Cincinnati, to everyone’s surprise, I beat Roddick in the semis, which propels me to my first ATP final since last November. Then I beat Hewitt, making me the oldest winner of an ATP event since Connors.

The next month, at the 2004 U.S. Open, I tell reporters that I think I have a shot at winning this whole thing. They smile as if I’m demented.

Stefanie and I rent a house outside the city, in Westchester. It’s roomier than a hotel, and we don’t have to worry about pushing the stroller across busy Manhattan streets. Best of all, the house has a basement playroom, which is my bedroom the night before a match. In the basement I can move from the bed to the floor when my back wakes me, without disturbing Stefanie. 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.

I see my life wearing on her. I’m a distracted husband, a tired father. She needs to carry more of the load with the children. Still, she never complains. She understands. Her mission, her passion every day, is to create an atmosphere in which I can think solely about tennis. She remembers how vital that was when she played. For instance, driving to the stadium, Stefanie knows exactly which Elmo songs on the car stereo will keep Jaden and Jaz quiet, so Darren and I can talk strategy. 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.

I also know Darren’s kids and Jaden and Jaz will be fed and clean and tucked away for the night.

Because of Stefanie, I make it to the quarters, where I face the number one seed, Federer. He’s not the man I beat in Key Biscayne. He’s growing before my eyes into one of the game’s all-time greats. He methodically builds a lead, two sets to one, and I can’t help but stand back and admire his immense skills, his magnificent composure. He’s the most regal player I’ve ever witnessed. Before he can finish me off, however, play is halted due to rain.

Driving back to Westchester, I stare out the window and tell myself: Don’t think about tomorrow. Also, don’t even think about dinner, because the match was cut short and I’m coming home hours earlier than expected. But of course Stefanie has a source with the weather service. Someone gave her a heads-up about the storm as it was swooping down from Albany, and she jumped into the car and rushed home and got everything ready. Now, as we walk through the door, she kisses us all and hands us plates in a single motion, fluid as her serve. I want to invite a judge to the house and renew our vows.

T
HE NEXT DAY
howling winds come. Gusts of forty miles an hour. I fight through the winds, and through Federer’s hurricane-force skills, and tie the match at two sets apiece. Federer glances at his feet, which is how he registers shock.

Then he adjusts better than I do. I have a sense he can adjust to anything, on the fly. He pulls out a tough fifth set, and I tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s on his way to becoming the best ever.

Before the winds settle down, retirement talk swirls again. Reporters want to know why I keep going. I explain that this is what I do for a living. I have a family and a school to support. Many people benefit from every tennis ball I hit. (One month after the U.S. Open, Stefanie and I host the ninth annual Grand Slam for Children, which collects $6 million. All told, we’ve raised $40 million for my foundation.)

Also, I tell reporters, I have game left. I don’t know how much, but some. I still think I can win.

Again they stare.

Maybe they’re confused because I don’t tell them the full story, don’t explain my full motivation. I can’t, since I’m only slowly becoming aware of it myself. I play and keep playing because I
choose
to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.

·  ·  ·

A
T THE
2005 A
USTRALIAN
O
PEN
I beat Taylor Dent in three sets, advancing to the fourth round, and outside the locker room I stop for a very engaging TV commentator—Courier. It’s odd to see him in this new role. I can’t stop seeing him as a great champion. And yet TV suits him. He does it well and seems happy. I feel a good deal of respect for him, and I hope he feels some for me. Our differences feel long ago and juvenile.

He puts the microphone in front of my mouth and asks: How long before Jaden Agassi plays Pete’s son?

I look into the camera and say: My biggest hope for my child is that he’s focused on something.

Then I add: Hopefully he’ll choose tennis, because I love it so much.

The old, old lie. But now it’s even more shameful, because I’ve attached it to my son. The lie threatens to become my legacy. Stefanie and I are more resolved than ever that we don’t want this crazy life for Jaden or Jaz, so what made me say it? As always, I suppose it was what I knew people wanted to hear. Also, flush from a win, I felt that tennis is a beautiful sport, which has treated me well, and I wanted to honor it. And maybe, standing before a champion I respected, I felt guilty for hating it. The lie may have been my way of hiding my guilt, or atoning for it.

I
N THE LAST FEW MONTHS
Gil has given a few hard twists to my training. He’s had me eating like a Spartan warrior, and the new diet has honed me to a fine edge.

Also, I’ve had a cortisone shot, my third in the last year. Four is the maximum annual number recommended. There are risks, the doctors say. We simply don’t know cortisone’s long-term consequences for the spine and liver. But I don’t care. So long as my back behaves.

And it does. I reach the quarters, where again I face Federer. I can’t win a set. He dismisses me like a teacher with a dense pupil. He, more than any of the young guns taking control of the game, makes me feel my age. When I look at him, with his suave agility, his shot-making prowess and puma-like smoothness, I remember that I’ve been around since the days of wooden rackets. My brother-in-law, after all, was Pancho Gonzalez, a champion during the Berlin airlift, a rival of Fred Perry, and Federer was born the year I met my
friend
Perry.

·  ·  ·

I
TURN THIRTY-FIVE
just before Rome. Stefanie and the children come with me to Italy. I want to get out with Stefanie, see the Colosseum, the Pantheon, but I can’t. When I came here as a boy, and as a young man, I was too consumed by inner torments and shyness to leave the hotel. Now, though I’d love to see the sights, my back won’t permit it. The doctor says one long walk on pavement can mean the difference between the cortisone lasting three months or one.

I win my first four matches. Then I lose to Coria. Disgusted with myself, I feel guilty about getting a standing ovation. Again, reporters press the question of retirement.

I say: I only think about it fourteen times a year, because that’s how many tournaments I play each year.

In other words: That’s how many times I’m forced to sit through these news conferences.

In the first round of the 2005 French Open, I play Jarkko Nieminen, from Finland. Simply by stepping on the court, I set a record. My fifty-eighth slam. One more than Chang, Connors, Lendl, Ferreira. More than anyone in the open era. My back, however, is in no mood to commemorate the occasion. The cortisone has worn off. Serving is painful, standing is painful. Breathing is work. I think about walking to the net and forfeiting. But this is Roland Garros. I can’t walk off this court, not
this
one. They’ll have to carry me off this court atop my racket.

I swallow eight Advils. Eight. During the changeover I cover my face with a towel while biting on another towel to quell the pain. In the third set Gil knows something is terribly wrong. After hitting the ball, I don’t sprint back to the center of the court. In all these years he’s never seen me fail to sprint back to the center of the court. It’s unthinkable, tantamount to him taking a men’s-room break during one of my matches. Afterward, walking with Gil to a restaurant, I’m bent over like a giant shrimp. He says: We can’t keep taking and taking from your body.

We pull out of Wimbledon, try to get ready for the summer hard courts. It’s necessary, but feels like a gamble. Now I’ll devote all my time and do all my work for fewer tournaments, which means the margin of error will be narrower, the pressure greater. The losses will hurt more.

Gil buries himself in his da Vinci notebooks. He’s proud that I’ve never injured myself in his gym, and now I can see that, as my body ages, he’s tense. His streak is on the line.

Some lifts you just can’t do anymore, he says. Others you’ll need to do twice as much.

We spend hours and hours in the weight room, discussing my core. From here until the finish line, Gil says, it’s all about your core.

B
ECAUSE
I’
VE PULLED OUT OF
W
IMBLEDON
, newspapers and magazines print a fresh batch of eulogies.
At an age when most tennis players—