This guy will never make it on the tour, Philly said.
He’ll be lucky to qualify into tournaments, I said.
Whoever did that to his game should be ashamed, Nick said.
They should be indicted, Philly said. He has all the physical gifts. He’s six foot one, moves great, but someone has turned him into a mess. Someone is responsible for that shit. Someone should pay.
At first I was taken aback by Philly’s vehemence. Then I realized: Philly was projecting. He was seeing himself in Pete. He knew what it was like to try and fail to make it on tour, particularly with an involuntary one-handed backhand. In Pete’s plight, in Pete’s fate, Philly saw his own.
Now, in Rome, I see that Pete has improved since that day, but not much. He has a big serve, but not extraordinary, not a Becker serve. He has a fast arm, good action, an easy motion, and comes close to his spots. He wants to ace you out wide, and when he misses it’s not by much—he’s not one of these players who try to ace you out wide and serve it by mistake into your chest. His real problem comes after his serve. He’s inconsistent. He can’t keep three balls in a row between the lines. I beat him, 6–2, 6–1, and as I walk off the court I think to myself that he’s got a long and painful slog ahead. I feel bad for the guy. He seems like a good soul. But I don’t expect to see him again on the tour, ever.
I go on to reach the final. I face Alberto Mancini. Strong, stocky, with tree-trunk legs, he pounds the ball with tremendous weight, penetration, and a tornado spin that causes it to hit your racket like a medicine ball. I have match point against him in the fourth set, but I lose the point—then fall apart. Somehow I lose the match.
Back in my hotel I sit in my room for hours, watching Italian TV, setting things on fire. People, I think, don’t understand the pain of losing in a final. You practice and travel and grind to get ready. You win for one week, four matches in a row. (Or, at a slam, two weeks, six matches.) Then you lose that final match and your name isn’t on the trophy, your name isn’t in the record books. You lost only once, but you’re a loser.
I go to the 1989 French Open and in the third round I face Courier, my schoolmate from the Bollettieri Academy. I’m the chalk, the heavy favorite, but Courier scores the upset, then rubs my nose in it. He pumps his fist, glares at me and Nick. Moreover, in the locker room, he makes sure everyone sees him lacing up his running shoes and going for a jog. Message: Beating Andre just didn’t provide enough cardio.
Later, when Chang wins the tournament, and thanks Jesus Christ for making the ball go over the net, I feel sickened. How could Chang, of all people, have won a slam before me?
Again, I skip Wimbledon. I hear another chorus of jeers from the media. Agassi doesn’t win the slams he enters, and then he skips the slams that matter most. But it feels like a drop in the ocean. I’m becoming desensitized.
EVEN THOUGH I’M A PUNCHING BAG for sportswriters, big companies beg me to pose with their products. In the middle of 1989 one of my corporate sponsors, Canon, schedules a series of photo shoots, including one in the wilds of Nevada, in the Valley of Fire. I like the sound of that. I walk every day through a valley of fire.
Since the ad campaign is for a camera, the director wants a colorful setting. Vivid, he says. Cinematic. He builds an entire tennis court in the middle of the desert, and as I watch the workmen I can’t help thinking of my father building his tennis court in his desert. I’ve come a long way. Or have I?
For a full day the director films me playing tennis by myself, the flame-red mountains and orange rock formations in the background. I’m weary, sunburned, ready for a break, but the director isn’t done with me. He tells me to take off my shirt. I’m known for taking off my shirt, in moments of teenage exuberance, and throwing it into crowds.
Then he wants to film me in a cave, hitting a ball at the camera, as if to shatter the lens.
Then, at Lake Mead, we film several scenes against the watery backdrop.
It all seems silly, goofy, but harmless.
Back in Vegas we do a series of shots on the Strip, then around a swimming pool. As luck would have it, they choose the pool at good old Cambridge Racquet Club. Finally, we set up for one last shot at a Vegas country club. The director puts me in a white suit, then has me drive up to the front portico in a white Lamborghini. Step out of the car, he says, turn to the camera, lower your black sunglasses, and say, Image Is Everything.
Image Is Everything?
Yes. Image Is Everything.
Between takes I look around and in the crowd of spectators I see Wendi, the former ballgirl, my childhood crush, all grown up. Now she’s definitely come a long way since the Alan King tournament.
She’s carrying a suitcase. She’s just dropped out of college and she’s just come home. You were the first person I wanted to see, she says.
She looks beautiful. Her brown hair is long, curly, and her eyes are impossibly green. She’s all I can think about while the director is ordering me around. As the sun goes down, the director yells, Cut! That’s a wrap! Wendi and I jump into my new Jeep, the doors and top off, and go roaring away like Bonnie and Clyde.
Wendi says, What was that slogan they kept making you say into the camera?
Image Is Everything.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Beats me. It’s for a camera company.
WEEKS LATER I BEGIN TO HEAR this slogan twice a day. Then six times a day. Then ten. It reminds me of those Vegas windstorms, the kind that begin with a faint, ominous rustling of leaves, and ultimately turn into high-pitched, gale-force, three-day blows.
Overnight the slogan becomes synonymous with me. Sportswriters liken this slogan to my inner nature, my essential being. They say it’s my philosophy, my religion, and they predict it’s going to be my epitaph. They say I’m nothing but image, I have no substance, because I haven’t won a slam. They say the slogan is proof that I’m just a pitchman, trading on my fame, caring only about money and nothing about tennis. Fans at my matches begin taunting me with the slogan. Come on, Andre—image is everything! They yell this if I show any emotion. They yell it if I show no emotion. They yell it when I win. They yell it when I lose.
This ubiquitous slogan, and the wave of hostility and criticism and sarcasm it sets off, is excruciating. I feel betrayed—by the advertising agency, the Canon execs, the sportswriters, the fans. I feel abandoned. I feel the way I did when I arrived at the Bollettieri Academy.
The ultimate indignity, however, is when people insist that I’ve called myself an empty image, that I’ve proclaimed it, simply because I spoke the line in a commercial. They treat this ridiculous throwaway slogan as if it’s my Confession, which makes as much sense as arresting Marlon Brando for murder because of a line he uttered in The Godfather.
As the ad campaign widens, as this insidious slogan creeps its way into every article about me, I change. I develop an edge, a mean streak. I stop giving interviews. I lash out at linesmen, opponents, reporters—even fans. I feel justified, because the world is against me, the world is trying to screw me. I’m becoming my father.
When crowds boo, when they yell, Image is everything, I yell back. As much as you don’t want me here, that’s how much I don’t want to be here! In Indianapolis, after a particularly bad loss, and a sonorous booing, a reporter asks me what went wrong. You didn’t seem like yourself today, he says with a smile that isn’t a smile. Something bothering you?
I tell him, in so many words, to kiss my ass.
No one counsels me that you should never snap at reporters. No one bothers to explain that snapping, baring your fangs, makes reporters more rabid. Don’t show them fear, but don’t show them your fangs, either. Even if someone were to give me this sensible advice, I don’t know that I could take it.
Instead I hide. I act like a fugitive, and my accomplices in seclusion are Philly and J.P. We go every night to an old coffee shop on the Strip, a place called the Peppermill. We drink bottomless cups of coffee and eat slabs of pie and
talk and talk—and sing. J.P. has made the leap from pastor to composer-musician. He’s moved to Orange County and rededicated his life to music. Along with Philly we belt out our favorite songs until the other customers at the Peppermill turn and stare.
J.P. is also a frustrated comedian, a devotee of Jerry Lewis, and he slips in and out of slapstick routines that leave Philly and me weak from laughter. We then try to out-slapstick J.P. We dance around the waitress, crawl along the floor, and eventually the three of us are laughing so hard that we can’t breathe. I laugh more than I’ve laughed since I was a boy, and even though it’s tinged with hysteria, the laughter has healing properties. For a few hours, late at night, laughter makes me feel like the old Andre, whoever that is.
10
NOT FAR FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE is the sprawling concrete campus of the University of Nevada–Las Vegas, which in 1989 is gaining a reputation for its sports teams. The basketball squad is a powerhouse, with NBA-ready stars, and the football team is vastly improved. The Runnin’ Rebels are known for their speed and superb conditioning. Plus, they’re the Rebels—that’s my kind of mascot. Pat says there might be someone at UNLV who can help me get in shape when he’s not in town.
We drive to the campus one day and make our way to the gym, a new building that I find as daunting as the Sistine Chapel. So many perfect bodies. So many full-grown men. I’m five foot eleven, 148 pounds, and my Nike clothes hang off me. I tell myself this was a mistake. Apart from feeling woefully undersized, I still feel edgy in a school, any kind of school.
Pat, who am I kidding? I don’t belong here.
We’re here, he says, spitting.
We find the office of the school’s strength coach. I tell Pat to wait, I’ll go in and talk to the guy. I poke my head in the doorway, and there, across the office, in the far corner, behind a desk the size of my Corvette, I see a real-life giant. He looks like the statue of Atlas fronting Rockefeller Center, which I saw during my first U.S. Open, except this Atlas has long black hair and black eyes as large and round as the weights neatly stacked in the gym. He looks as if he’ll flatten the first person who disturbs him.
I jump back through the doorway.
You go, Pat.
He walks in. I hear him say something. I hear a deep baritone rumble in response. It sounds like a truck engine. Then Pat calls to me.
I hold my breath and again go through the doorway.
Hello, I say.
Hello, the giant says.
Um, yeah, well, my name is Andre Agassi. I play tennis, and uhh, I live here in Vegas, and—
I know who you are.
He stands. He’s six feet tall, with a chest at least fifty-six inches around. For a moment I think he might tip the desk over in anger. Instead he comes around from behind and extends his hand. The largest hand I’ve ever seen. A hand that goes with his shoulders, biceps, and legs, also record-setters in my personal experience.
Gil Reyes, he says.
Nice to meet you, Mr. Reyes.
Call me Gil.
OK. Gil. I know you must be very busy. I don’t want to take up your time. I was just wondering—that is, Pat and I were wondering—if we could talk to you about using your facilities now and then. I’m really struggling to improve my conditioning.
Sure, he says. His voice makes me think of the bottom of the ocean and the core of the earth. But it’s also a voice as soft as it is deep.
He shows us around, introduces us to several student-athletes. We talk about tennis, basketball, the differences, the similarities. Then the football team walks in.
Excuse me, Gil says. I need to speak with the fellas. Make yourself at home. Use whatever machines or weights you want to use. But please, be careful. And be discreet. Technically speaking, you know, it’s against the rules.
Thank you.
Pat and I do a few bench presses, leg lifts, sit-ups, but I’m more interested in watching Gil. The football players gather before him and gaze up at him with awe. He’s like a Spanish general addressing his conquistadors. He gives them their orders. You—take this bench. You—grab that machine. You—that squat rack. 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!
They break, then fan out and hit the weights. I’m reminded how much better off I’d be on a team.
· · ·
PAT AND I GO BACK to the gym at UNLV every day, and while doing curls and bench presses I can feel Gil keeping tabs on us. I sense that he’s noting my bad form. I sense that the other athletes are noticing too. I feel amateurish, and often want to leave, but Pat always stops me.
After a few weeks, Pat needs to fly back east. Family emergency. I knock at the door to Gil’s office and tell him that Pat is gone, but he left a regimen for me to follow. I hand Gil the piece of paper with Pat’s regimen and ask if he might be willing to help me go through it.
Sure, Gil says. But he sounds put-upon.
With each exercise, Gil arches an eyebrow. He looks over Pat’s regimen, turns the paper in his hands, frowns. I encourage him to tell me what’s on his mind, but he only frowns more deeply.
He asks, What’s the point of this exercise?
I’m not sure.
Tell me again, how long have you been doing this?
Long time.
I beg him to speak his mind.
I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, he says. I don’t want to speak out of turn. But I can’t lie to you: if somebody can write down your routine on a piece of paper, it isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s written on. You’re asking me to put you through a workout here that leaves no room for where you are, how you’re feeling, what you need to focus on. It doesn’t allow for change.
That makes sense. Could you help me? Maybe give me some tips?
Well, look, what are your goals?
I tell him about my recent loss to Alberto Mancini, from Argentina. He out-physicalled me, pushed me around like an old-time bully at the beach kicking sand in my face. I had the match won, I had my foot on the man’s neck, but I couldn’t finish him off. I was serving for the match, and Mancini broke me, then won the tiebreak, then broke me three times in the fifth set. I had nothing left. I need to get strong so that I never let that happen again. Losing is one thing; being outgunned is another. I can’t bear that feeling anymore.
Gil listens, not moving, not interrupting, soaking it all in.
That fuzzy ball takes some fuzzy bounces, I tell him, and I can’t control it all the time. But one thing I think maybe I can control is my body. At least, I could, maybe, if I had the right information.
Gil fills his fifty-six-inch chest with air and then breathes out slowly. He says, What’s your schedule?
I’ll be gone the next five weeks. Summer hard courts. But when I get back, I’d really consider it an honor if we could work together.
All right, Gil says. We’ll figure something out. Good luck on your road trip. I’ll see you when you get back.
AT THE 1989 U.S. OPEN I play Connors again in the quarters. It’s the first five-set win of my career, after five straight losses. Somehow it only earns me a new wave of criticism: I should have finished Connors off in three. Someone claims to have heard me yelling to Philly in my box: I’m going to take him five sets and give him some pain!
Mike Lupica, a columnist for the New York Daily News, points to my nineteen unforced errors in the third set and says I carried Connors merely to prove that I was tough enough to go the distance. If they’re not trashing me for losing on purpose, they’re ragging me for the way I win.
WHEN I WALK BACK INTO the gym, I see from Gil’s face that he’s been expecting me. We shake hands. The start of something.
He walks me over to the weight racks and tells me that many of the exercises I’ve been doing are wrong, dead wrong, but the way I’ve been d
oing them is worse. I’m courting disaster. I’m going to hurt myself.
He gives me a fast primer on the mechanics of the body, the physics and hydraulics and architecture of human anatomy. To know what your body wants, he says, to understand what it needs and what it doesn’t, you need to be part engineer, part mathematician, part artist, part mystic.
I don’t fare well in lectures, but if all lectures were like Gil’s, I’d still be in school. I soak up every fact, every insight, confident that I’ll never forget a single word.
It’s amazing, Gil says, how many fallacies there are about the human body, how little we know about our own bodies. For instance: guys do incline benches for their upper pecs. It’s not an efficient use of time, he says. I haven’t done an incline in thirty years. Is it possible that my chest would be bigger if I did inclines?
No, sir.
The step-ups you’re doing, the exercises where you hold a heavy weight on your back as you walk upstairs? You’re asking for a catastrophic injury. You’re lucky you haven’t already ruined your knee.
How so?
It’s all about angles, Andre. At one angle, you’re engaging your quad. Fine, great. At another angle, you’re engaging your knee, putting loads of pressure on that knee. Engage that knee too many times—it’ll break off the engagement.
The best exercises, he says, exploit gravity. He tells me how to use gravity and resistance to break down a muscle, so it will come back stronger. He shows me how to do a proper, safe bicep curl. He walks me over to a dry-erase board and diagrams my muscles, arms, joints, tendons. He talks about a bow and arrow, shows me the pressure points along a bow as it’s pulled taut, then uses this model to explain my back, why it hurts after matches and workouts.
I tell him about my spine, my spondylolisthesis, the vertebra that’s out of sync. He jots a note, says he’ll look up the condition in the medical books and learn all about it for me.