I love watching Stefanie with my mother. The two shy women in my life. Stefanie often brings her a couple of new jigsaw puzzles. And I adore Stefanie’s mother, Heidi. She looks like Stefanie, so she had me at guten tag. Stefanie and I, barefoot and wearing jeans, stand before the judge in the courtyard. For wedding bands we use twists of old raffia Stefanie found in a drawer—the same stuff I used to decorate her first birthday card. Neither of us notices the coincidence until later.
My father insists he’s not the least bit slighted by not getting an invite. He doesn’t want an invite. The last thing he wants to do is attend a wedding. He doesn’t like weddings. (He walked out in the middle of my first.) He doesn’t care where or when or how I make Stefanie my wife, he says, so long as I do it. She’s the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, he says. What’s not to like?
The judge runs through his legal rigmarole, and Stefanie and I are just about to say I do, when a team of landscapers arrive. I run outside and ask them to please turn off their lawnmowers and leaf blowers for five minutes so that we can get married. They apologize. One holds a finger over his lips.
By the power vested in me, the judge says, and at last, at long last, with two mothers and three landscapers looking on, Steffi Graf becomes Stefanie Agassi.
26
A SEASON OF BIRTH AND REBIRTH. Weeks after my school opens, my son arrives. In the delivery room, when the doctor hands me Jaden Gil, I feel bewildered. I love him so much that my heart splits open, like something overripe. I can’t wait to get to know him, and yet, and yet. I also wonder, Just who is this beautiful intruder? Are Stefanie and I ready for a perfect stranger in the house? I’m a stranger to myself—what will I be to my son? Will he like me?
We bring Jaden home, and I spend hours staring at him. I ask him who he is, where he came from, what he’ll be. I ask myself how I can be everything to him that I needed and never had. I want to retire, immediately, spend all my time with him. But now more than ever I need to play. For him, his future, and my other children at my school.
My first match as a father is a win against Rafter at the Tennis Masters Series tournament in Sydney. I tell reporters afterward that I doubt I’ll be able to do this long enough that my new son will get to see me play, but it sure is a nice dream.
Then I pull out of the 2002 Australian Open. My wrist is throbbing, and I can’t compete. Brad is frustrated. I wouldn’t expect anything less. But this time he has trouble brushing aside his frustration. This time is different.
Days later he says we need to talk. We meet for coffee, and he lays it out.
We’ve had a great run, Andre, but we’ve gone as far as we can go. We’re growing stagnant. Creatively. I’ve burned through my bag of tricks, buddy.
But—
We’ve had eight years, we could go on a few more, but you’re thirty-two. 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.
After beating Pete at Indian Wells, I celebrate with Brad, not knowing it will be one of our last tournament victories together.
He pauses. He looks at me, then looks away. Bottom line, he says. We’re so close, my worst fear is that we get into an argument as the end approaches, and it carries over.
I think: That could never happen, but better safe than sorry.
We hug.
As he walks out the door I feel the kind of melancholy you feel on a Sunday night after an idyllic weekend. I know Brad does too. It might not be the right way to end our journey, but it’s the best way possible.
I CLOSE MY EYES and try to picture myself with someone new. The first face I see is Darren Cahill. He’s just finished a brilliant span coaching Lleyton Hewitt, who’s ranked number one, and among the best shot selectors in the history of tennis, and a great deal of the credit must go to Darren. Also, I recently bumped into Darren down in Sydney and we had a long talk about fatherhood. It was a bonding moment. Darren, a fellow new father, turned me on to a book about getting infants to sleep. He swore by this book and said his son is known on tour as the baby who sleeps like a drunkard.
I’ve always liked Darren. I like his easygoing style. I find his Aussie accent soothing. It almost puts me to sleep. I read the book he recommended and phoned Stefanie from Australia to read her passages. It worked. Now I dial him and tell him I’ve parted from Brad. I ask if he has any interest in the job.
He says he’s flattered, but he’s on the verge of signing to coach Safin. He’ll think about it, though, and get back to me.
No problem, I say. Take your time.
I call him back in half an hour. I ask him, What the hell is there to think about? You can’t coach Safin. He’s a loose cannon. You’ve got to work with me. It feels right. I promise you, Darren, I have game left. I’m not done. I’m focused—I just need someone to help me keep the focus.
OK, he says, laughing. OK, mate.
He never once mentions money.
STEFANIE AND JADEN COME WITH ME to Key Biscayne. It’s April 2002, days before my thirty-second birthday, and the tournament is crawling with players half my age, young Turks like Andy Roddick, the next next savior of American tennis, poor bastard. Also, there’s a hot new wunderkind from Switzerland named Roger Federer.
I’d like to win this tournament for my wife and six-month-old son, and yet I don’t worry about losing, don’t care if I lose, because of them. Each night, within minutes of coming home from the courts, as I’m cradling Jaden and cuddling Stefanie, I can barely recall if I won or lost. Tennis fades as quickly as the daylight. I almost imagine that the calluses on my playing hand are disappearing, the inflamed nerves in my back cooling and mending. I’m a father first, a tennis player second, and this evolution happens without my being aware.
One morning Stefanie goes off to buy groceries and get in a fast workout. She dares to leave me alone with Jaden. My first time flying solo.
You two going to be OK? she asks.
Of course.
I sit Jaden on the bathroom counter, lean him against the mirror, let him play with my toothbrush while I get ready. He likes to suck on the toothbrush while watching me shave my head with the electric shearers.
I ask him, What do you think of your bald daddy?
He smiles.
You know, son, I was once like you: long hair flowing in every direction. You’re not fooling anyone with that comb-over.
He smiles wider, no idea what I’m saying, of course.
I measure his hair with my fingers.
Actually, you look a little ratty there, buddy. You could use a clean-up.
I put a different attachment on the shearer, the attachment for trimming. When I run the shearer across Jaden’s little head, however, it leaves a bright stripe of scalp down the middle, as white as a baseline.
Wrong attachment.
Stefanie will murder me. I need to even this boy’s hair out before she gets home. But in my frantic attempt to even out the hair, I make it shorter. Before I know what’s happened, my son is balder than I. He looks like Mini-Me.
When Stefanie comes through the door she stops in her tracks and stares, saucer-eyed. What the—? Andre, she says, what on earth is the matter with you? I leave you alone for forty-five minutes and you shave the baby?
Then she lets fly a burst of histrionic German.
I tell her it was an accident. The wrong attachment. I beg her forgiveness.
I know, I say, it looks like I did this on purpose. I know I’m always joking about wanting to shave the world. But honest, Stefanie, this was a mistake.
I try to remind her of that old wives’ tale, that if you shave a child’s head the hair will grow back faster and thicker, but she holds up a hand and starts laughing. She’s bent over laughing. Now Jaden is laughing at Mommy laughing. Now we’re all giggling, rubbing Jaden’s head and mine, joking that the only one left is Stefanie, and she’d better sleep with one eye open. I’m laughing too hard to speak, and days later
, in the final of Key Biscayne, I beat Federer. It’s a good win. He’s as hot as anyone on tour. He came into this tournament with twenty-three wins so far this year.
It’s my fifty-first tournament victory, my seven hundredth victory overall. And yet I have no doubt I’ll remember this tournament less for beating Federer than for that one belly laugh. I wonder if the laugh had something to do with the win. It’s easier to be free and loose, to be yourself, after laughing with the ones you love. The right attachments.
I FALL INTO A NICE GROOVE with Darren in early 2002. We speak the same language, see the world in similar colors. Then he cements my trust, my unwavering confidence, by daring to fuss with my racket strings—and improving them.
I’ve always played with ProBlend, a string that’s half Kevlar, half nylon. You can reel in an eight-hundred-pound marlin with ProBlend. It never breaks, never forgives, but also never generates spin. It’s like hitting the ball with a garbage can lid. People talk about the game changing, about players growing more powerful, and rackets getting bigger, but the most dramatic change in recent years is the strings. The advent of a new elastic polyester string, which creates vicious topspin, has turned average players into greats, and greats into legends.
Still, I’ve always been reluctant to change. Now Darren urges me to try. We’re in Italy, at the Italian Open. I’ve just played Nicolas Kiefer, from Germany, in the first round. I’ve beaten him, 6–3, 6–2, and I’m telling Darren that I should have lost. I played lousy. I have no confidence on this dirt, I tell him. The clay game has passed me by.
Give the new string a go, mate.
I frown. I’m skeptical. I tried changing my racket once. It wasn’t pretty.
He puts the string on one of my rackets and says again, Just try.
In a practice session I don’t miss a ball for two hours. Then I don’t miss a ball for the rest of the tournament. I’ve never won the Italian Open before, but I win it now, because of Darren and his miracle string.
I SUDDENLY LOOK FORWARD TO the 2002 French Open. I’m excited, eager for the fight, and guardedly optimistic. I’m coming off a win, Jaden is sleeping a bit more, and I have a new weapon. In the fourth round I’m down two sets and a break to a wild card, a Frenchman named Paul-Henri Mathieu. He’s twenty, but he’s not in the shape I’m in. There’s no clock in tennis, son. I can be out here all day.
Down comes the rain. I sit in the locker room and reminisce about Brad yelling at me in 1999. I hear his tirade, word for word. When we walk back onto the court I’m smiling. I’m up 40–love, and Mathieu breaks me. I don’t care. I simply break back. In the fifth set he goes up, 3–1. Again I refuse to lose.
If it had been anyone but Agassi, Mathieu tells reporters afterward, I would have won.
Next I face Juan Carlos Ferrero, from Spain. Again it rains; this time I ask that the match be halted for the night. Ferrero is ahead, and he doesn’t want to stop. He gets surly when officials grant my request and suspend the match. The next day he takes his surliness out on me. I have a small opportunity in the third set, but he quickly closes it. He wins the set, and I can see his confidence rising off him like steam as he closes me out.
I feel peaceful walking with Darren off the court. I like the way I played. I made mistakes, my game sprang leaks, but I know we’ll work to patch them. My back is sore, but mostly from stooping to help Jaden walk. A wonderful soreness.
Weeks later we go to the 2002 Wimbledon, and my great new attitude abandons me, because my new string undoes me. On grass my newly augmented topspin makes the ball sit up like a helium balloon. In the second round I play Paradorn Srichaphan, from Thailand. He’s good, but not this good. He’s crushing everything I hit. He’s ranked number sixty-seven, and I think it’s impossible that he’ll beat me, and then he breaks me in the first set.
I try everything to get back on track. Nothing works. My ball is a cream puff, and Srichaphan devours it. I’ve never seen an opponent’s eyes grow quite so large as Srichaphan’s when he tees up my forehand. He’s swinging from his heels, and my only conscious, coherent thought is: I wish I could swing from my heels and be rewarded. How can I let everyone in this stadium know that this isn’t me, this isn’t my fault? It’s the strings. In the second set I make adjustments, fight back, play well, but Srichaphan is supremely confident. He thinks it’s his day, and when you think it’s your day, it usually is. He hits a wild shot that magically catches a piece of the back line, then wins a tiebreak, going up two sets. In the third set I surrender peacefully.
It’s cold comfort that, the same day, Pete loses.
Darren and I spend the next two days experimenting with different combinations of strings. I tell him I can’t continue with his new polyester, and yet he’s ruined me for the old string. If I have to go back to ProBlend, I say, I won’t play tennis anymore.
He looks grim. After being my coach for six months, he’s made one tiny adjustment to my strings, and he may have inadvertently hastened my retirement. He promises that he’ll do everything in his power to find a combination of strings that’s just right.
Find something, I tell him, that lets me swing from my heels and get rewarded. Like Srichaphan. Make me like Srichaphan.
Done, mate.
He works night and day and comes up with a combination he likes. We go to Los Angeles, and it’s perfection. I win the Mercedes-Benz Cup.
We go to Cincinnati and I play well, just not well enough to win. Then in D.C. I beat Enqvist, always a tough matchup for me. I then face another kid who’s supposed to be the next big thing—twenty-two-year-old James Blake. He plays pretty, graceful tennis, and I’m not in his league, not today. He’s simply younger, faster, a better athlete. He also thinks enough of my history, my accomplishments, to bring his A game. I like that he comes out loaded for bear. It’s flattering, even though it means I have no chance. The loss is nothing I can blame on my strings.
I go to the 2002 U.S. Open unsure what to expect from myself. I sail through the early rounds, and in the quarters I face Max Mirnyi, a Belarusian from Minsk. They call him the Beast, and it’s an understatement. He’s six foot five and hits a serve that’s among the scariest I’ve ever faced. It has a burning yellow tail, like a comet, as it arcs high above the net and then swoops down upon you. I have no answer for that serve. He wins the first set with beastly ease.
In the second set, however, Mirnyi makes several unforced errors, giving me a boost, a bit of momentum. I start to see his first serve a little better. We play high-quality tennis all the way to the finish, and when his last forehand flies long, I can’t believe it. I’m in the semis.
For my efforts I win a date with Hewitt, the number one seed, the winner of this year’s Wimbledon. More germane, he’s Darren’s former pupil. That Darren coached Hewitt for years adds an extra level of intensity and pressure. Darren wants me to beat Hewitt; I want to beat Hewitt for Darren. But in the first set I quickly fall behind, 0–3. I have all this information in my head about Hewitt, data from Darren and from past experience, but it takes a while to sort through the data and solve him. When I do, everything quickly changes. I storm back and win the first set, 6–4. I see the pilot light in Hewitt’s eyes go out. I win the second set. He rallies, wins the third. In the fourth set he suddenly can’t make a first serve, and I’m able to pounce on his second. Jesus, I’m in the final.
Which means Pete. As always, Pete. We’ve played thirty-three times in our careers, four times in slam finals. He’s got the overall edge, 19–14, and 3–1 in slam finals. He says I bring out the best in him, but I think he’s brought out the worst in me. The night before the final I can’t help but think of all the different times I thought I was going to beat Pete, knew I was going to beat Pete, needed to beat Pete, only to lose. And his success against me started right here, in New York, twelve years ago, when he stunned me in straight sets. I was the favorite then, as I am now.
Sipping Gil’s magic water before bed, I tell myself that this time will be different. Pete
hasn’t won a slam in more than two years. He’s nearing the end. I’m just starting over.
I climb under the covers and remember a time in Palm Springs, several years ago. Brad and I were eating at an Italian restaurant, Mama Gina’s, and we saw Pete eating with friends on the other side of the dining room. He stopped by and said hello on his way out. Good luck tomorrow. You too. Then we watched him through the restaurant window, waiting for his car. We said nothing, each of us thinking of the difference he’d made in our lives. As Pete drove away I asked Brad how much he thought Pete tipped the valet.
Brad hooted. Five bucks, tops.
No way, I said. The guy’s got millions. He’s earned forty mil in prize money alone. He’s got to be good for at least a ten spot.
Bet?
Bet.
We ate fast and rushed outside. Listen, I told the valet, give us the absolute truth: How much did Mr. Sampras tip you?
The kid looked at his feet. He didn’t want to tell. He was weighing, wondering if he was on a hidden-camera show.
We told the kid we had a bet riding on this, so we absolutely were insisting he tell us. Finally he whispered: You really want to know?
Shoot.
He gave me a dollar.
Brad put a hand on his heart.
But that’s not all, the kid said. He gave me a dollar—and he told me to be sure to give it to whichever kid actually brought his car around.
We could not be more different, Pete and I, and as I fall asleep the night before perhaps our final final, I vow that the world will see our differences tomorrow.
WE GET A LATE START, thanks to a New York Jets game that goes into overtime, delaying the TV broadcast, and this favors me. I’m in better shape, and I like that we’re going to be out on the court until midnight. But I immediately fall behind two sets. Another drubbing at the hands of Pete—I cannot believe this is happening.
Then I notice Pete looking wrung out. And old. I win the third set by a mile, and the whole stadium can feel the momentum slide my way. The crowd is crazy. They don’t care who wins, they just want to see an Agassi-Sampras five-setter. As the fourth set gets under way I know, deep in my heart, as I always know with Pete, that if I can get this thing to a fifth set, I’ll win. I’m fresher. I’m playing better. We’re the oldest players to meet in the U.S. Open final in more than thirty years, but I’m feeling like one of the teenagers who have lately been kicking ass on tour. I feel like part of the new generation.