In the first round I play Andrei Pavel, from Romania. My back seizes up midway through the match, but despite standing stick straight I manage to tough out a win. I ask Darren to arrange a cortisone shot for the next day. Even with the shot, I don’t know if I’ll be able to play my next match.
I certainly won’t be able to win. Not against Marcos Baghdatis. He’s ranked number eight in the world. He’s a big strong kid from Cyprus, in the midst of a great year. He’s reached the final of the Australian Open and the semis of Wimbledon.
And then somehow I beat him. Afterward I’m barely able to stagger up the tunnel and into the locker room before my back gives out. Darren and Gil lift me like a bag of laundry onto the training table, while Baghdatis’s people hoist him onto the table beside me. He’s cramping badly. Stefanie appears, kisses me. Gil forces me to drink something. A trainer says the doctors are on the way. He turns on the TV above the table and everyone clears out, leaving just me and Baghdatis, both of us writhing and groaning in pain.
The TV shows highlights from our match. SportsCenter.
In my peripheral vision I detect slight movement. I turn to see Baghdatis extending his hand. His face says, We did that. I reach out, take his hand, and we remain this way, holding hands, as the TV flickers with scenes of our savage battle.
We relive the match, and then I relive my life.
Finally the doctors arrive. It takes them and the trainers half an hour to get Baghdatis and me on our feet. Baghdatis leaves the locker room first, gingerly, leaning against his coach. Then Gil and Darren lead me out to the parking lot, enticing me forward a few more steps with the thought of a cheeseburger and a martini at P. J. Clarke’s. It’s two in the morning.
Christ, Darren says, as we emerge into the parking lot. The car is all the way over there, mate.
We squint at the lone car in the middle of the empty parking lot. It’s several hundred yards away. I tell him I can’t make it.
No, of course not, he says. Wait here and I’ll bring it around.
He runs off.
I tell Gil that I can’t stay upright. I need to lie down while we wait. He sets my tennis bag on the cement and I sit, then lie back, using the bag as a pillow.
I look up at Gil. I see nothing but his smile and his shoulders. I look just beyond his shoulders at the stars. So many stars. I look at the light stanchions that rim the stadium. They seem like bigger, closer stars.
Suddenly, an explosion. A sound like a giant can of tennis balls being opened. One stanchion goes out. Then another, and another.
I close my eyes. It’s over.
No. Hell no. It will never really be over.
· · ·
I’M HOBBLING THROUGH THE LOBBY of the Four Seasons the next morning when a man steps out of the shadows. He grabs my arm.
Quit, he says.
What?
It’s my father—or a ghost of my father. He looks ashen. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in weeks.
Pops? What are you talking about?
Just quit. Go home. You did it. It’s over.
He says he prays for me to retire. He says he can’t wait for me to be done, so he won’t have to watch me suffer anymore. He won’t have to sit through my matches with his heart in his mouth. He won’t have to stay up until two in the morning to catch a match from the other side of the world, so he can scout some new wonderboy I might soon have to face. He’s sick of the whole miserable thing. He sounds as if—is it possible?
Yes, I see it in his eyes.
I know that look.
He hates tennis.
He says, Don’t put yourself through this anymore! After last night, you have nothing left to prove. I can’t see you like this. It’s too painful.
I reach out and touch his shoulder. I’m sorry, Pops. I can’t quit. This can’t end with me quitting.
THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE MATCH, I get an anti-inflammatory injection, but it’s different from the cortisone. Less effective. Against my third-round opponent, Benjamin Becker, I’m barely able to remain standing.
I look at the scoreboard. I shake my head. I ask myself over and over, How is it possible that my final opponent is a guy named B. Becker? I told Darren earlier this year that I wanted to go out against somebody I like and respect, or else against somebody I don’t know.
And so I get the latter.
Becker takes me out in four sets. I can feel the tape of the finish line snap cleanly across my chest.
U.S. Open officials let me say a few words to the fans in the stands and at home before heading into the locker room. I know exactly what I want to say.
With Stefanie, Jaden, and Jaz in the fall of 2006
Marcos Baghdatis congratulates me after the second round of the 2006 U.S. Open
Centre Court, Wimbledon, 2000
I’ve known for years. But is still takes me a few moments to find my voice.
The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. Over the last twenty-one years I have found loyalty: You have pulled for me on the court, and also in life. I have found inspiration: You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I have found generosity: You have given me your shoulders to stand on, to reach for my dreams—dreams I could have never reached without you. Over the last twenty-one years I have found you, and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life.
It’s the highest compliment I know how to pay them. I’ve compared them to Gil.
In the locker room it’s deathly quiet. I’ve noticed through the years that every locker room is the same when you lose. You walk in the door—which slams open, because you’ve pushed it harder than you needed to—and the guys always scatter from the TV, where they’ve been watching you get your ass kicked. They always pretend they haven’t been watching, haven’t been discussing you. This time, however, they remain gathered around the TV. No one moves. No one pretends. Then, slowly, everyone comes toward me. They clap and whistle, along with trainers and office workers and James the security guard.
Only one man remains apart, refusing to applaud. I see him in the corner of my eye. He’s leaning against a far wall with a blank look on his face and his arms tightly folded.
Connors.
He’s now coaching Roddick. Poor Andy.
It makes me laugh. I can only admire that Connors is who he is, still, that he never changes. We should all be so true to ourselves, so consistent.
I tell the players: You’ll hear a lot of applause in your life, fellas, but none will mean more to you than that applause—from your peers. I hope each of you hears that at the end.
Thank you all. Goodbye. And take care of each other.
THE BEGINNING
RAIN HAS BEEN FALLING OFF AND ON ALL DAY.
Stefanie peers at the sky and says, What do you think?
Come on, I say—let’s try. I’m willing if you are.
Willing. She frowns. She’s always willing, but she can’t speak for her calf, which has been giving her problems since she retired. Especially lately. She looks down. Darned calf. She has a charity match in Tokyo next week. She’s playing to raise money for a kindergarten she’s opened in Eritrea, and even though it’s only an exhibition she wants to do well. She feels the old pressure to do well. Also, she can’t help but wonder how much game she has left.
I wonder the same thing about myself. It’s been a year since I walked off the court for the last time at the U.S. Open. It’s autumn, 2007.
So we’ve been planning all week to get out there, hit with each other, but now the day has come and it’s the one rainy day all year in Vegas.
We can’t build a fire in the rain.
Stefanie looks again at the overcast sky. Then at the clock. Busy day, she says. She has to pick up Jaden at school. We only have this small window.
IF THE RAIN DOESN’T LET UP, if we don’t hit, I might go down to my school, because that’s where I go whenever I have time. I can’t b
elieve how it’s grown: a 26,000-square-foot education complex with 500 students and a waiting list of eight hundred.
The $40 million campus features everything the kids could want. A high-tech TV production studio. A computer room with dozens of PCs along the walls and a big, white, fluffy couch. A topflight exercise room with machines as fancy as those at the most exclusive clubs in Vegas. There’s a weight room, a lecture hall, and bathrooms as modern and clean as the ones in the city’s finest hotels. Best of all, the place is still freshly painted and pristine, just as sparkling as it was on opening day. Students, parents, the neighborhood, everyone respects the school because everyone owns it. The area hasn’t completely rebounded since we arrived. While I was giving a tour recently, someone was shot across the street. And yet in eight years not one window has been broken, not one wall has been sprayed with graffiti.
Everywhere you look are little touches, subtle details that signify this school is different, this place is about excellence, through and through. On the front window is etched one large word, our unofficial school motto: BELIEVE. Every classroom is flooded with soft natural daylight. Indirect, southern, bounced from skylights to high-tech reflectors, it’s a diffuse glow that’s ideal for reading and concentrating. Teachers never need to flick a light switch, which saves energy and money, but also spares students the headaches and general gloom caused by standard flu-orescents, which I remember all too well.
Our grounds are designed like a college campus, with intimate quads and welcoming common areas. The walls are stone—muted purple and pale salmon quartzite from local quarries—and the walkways are lined with delicate plum trees, leading to one beautiful holly oak, a symbolic Tree of Hope, which we planted even before the groundbreaking. First things first, our architects figured, so they planted the Tree of Hope, then asked construction workers to keep the tree watered and lighted while they built the school around it.
The land on which the school sits is narrow, only eight acres, but the lack of space actually suited the architects’ overall scheme. They wanted the flow of the campus to symbolize a short, serpentine journey. Like life. Wherever students stand, they can turn one way and see a glimpse of where they’ve been, or turn the other and see a hint of where they’re headed. Kindergarteners and elementary schoolers can gaze at the tall high school buildings, waiting for them—though they can’t hear the voices of the older kids. We don’t want to scare them. High schoolers can glance back at the primary classrooms from which they set out—though they can’t hear the high-pitched screaming on the playground. We don’t want to disturb them.
The architects, local guys named Mike Del Gatto and Rob Gurdison, threw themselves into this project. They spent months researching the history of the neighborhood, examining charter schools throughout the nation, experimenting with ideas. Then they stayed up night after night, brainstorming around a ping-pong table in Mike’s basement. They built the first cardboard-plywood model of the school on that ping-pong table, unaware of any coincidence or irony.
It was their idea to have the buildings teach, to tell stories. We told them the stories we wanted told. In the middle school we wanted enormous photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and, of course, Mandela, with their inspirational words painted on raised glass beneath their portraits. Since most of our students are African American, we asked Mike and Rob to embed bricks of marbled glass in one wall, depicting the Big Dipper, and to the right one single brick of glass, representing the North Star. The Big Dipper and the North Star were beacons for runaway slaves, pointing them to freedom.
My small contribution to the aesthetics of the school: in the common area of the high school building I wanted a gleaming black Steinway. When I delivered the piano, all the students gathered around and I shocked them by playing Lean on Me. What delighted me most was that the students didn’t know who I was. And when their teachers told them, they weren’t all that impressed.
I dreamed of a school with the fewest possible dry routines, a place that fostered serendipity. A place where serendipity was the norm. And it’s happened. On any given day something cool is likely to happen at Agassi Prep. President Bill Clinton might drop by and take a turn teaching history. Shaquille O’Neal might be the substitute in physical education. You might bump into Lance Armstrong walking the halls, or Muhammad Ali wearing a visitor badge, shadow-boxing a freshman. You might look up at any moment and see Janet Jackson or Elton John standing in the door of a classroom, or members of Earth, Wind & Fire auditing. More serendipity: When we dedicate the gymnasium, the NBA All-Star Game will be taking place in Vegas. We’ll invite the rookie and sophomore All-Stars to play their traditional pickup game on our floor—the first game ever played at Agassi Prep. The kids will love that.
Our educators are the best, plain and simple. The goal in hiring them was to find sharp, passionate, inspired men and women who were willing to lay it on the line, to get personally involved. We ask one thing of every teacher: to believe that every student can learn. It sounds like a painfully obvious concept, self-evident, but nowadays it’s not.
Of course, because Agassi Prep has a longer day and a longer year than other schools, our staff might earn less per hour than staffs elsewhere. But they have more resources at their fingertips, and so they enjoy greater freedom to excel and make a difference in children’s lives.
We thought it important that students wear uniforms. Tennis shirt with khaki pants, shorts, or skirt, in official school colors—burgundy and navy. We think it creates less peer pressure, and we know it saves our parents money in the long run. Every time I walk into the school I’m struck by the irony: I’m now the enforcer of a uniform policy. I look forward to the day when some Wimbledon official happens to be in Vegas and asks for a tour. I can hardly wait to see the look on his or her face when I mention my school’s strict dress code.
We have another code that might be my favorite feature of the school. The Code of Respect that begins each day. Whenever I’m down there I poke my head into a random classroom and ask the children to stand with me and recite.
The essence of good discipline is respect.
Respect for authority and respect for others.
Respect for self and respect for rules.
It is an attitude that begins at home,
Is reinforced at school,
And is applied throughout life.
I promise them that if they memorize that simple code, keep it close to their hearts, they will go very far.
Walking the halls, peering into the classrooms, I can see how the children value this place. I can hear it in their voices, discern it in their postures. From the teachers and staff I’ve heard their stories, and I know the many ways this school enriches their lives. Also, we ask them to write personal essays, which we excerpt in the program for the yearly fundraiser. Not all the essays are about trials and hardships. Far from it. But those are the ones I remember. Like the girl living alone with her frail mother, who’s been unable to work for years due to an incurable lung disease. They share a cockroach-infested apartment in a neighborhood ruled by gangs, so school is the girl’s refuge. Her grades, she says with touching pride, are outstanding, because I rationalized that if I did well in school no one would question what was going on at home, and I wouldn’t have to tell my story. Now, at seventeen, despite being forced to watch my mother deteriorate, to have lived with The Bloods and cockroaches, to work to support my family, I am college bound.
Another senior writes about her painful relationship with her father, who’s spent much of her childhood in jail. Recently, when he got out, she went to meet him and found him painfully thin, living with a haggard woman in a broken motor home that reeked of sewage and crystal meth. Desperate not to repeat the mistakes of her parents, the girl pushes herself to succeed at Agassi Prep. I won’t let myself down the way others have. It’s up to me to change the course of my future and I will never give up.
Not long ago, while walking through the high school, I was f
lagged down by a boy. He was fifteen, shy, with soulful eyes and chubby cheeks. He asked if he could speak to me privately.
Of course, I said.
We stepped into an alcove off the main hallway.
He didn’t know where to start. I told him to start at the beginning.
My life changed a year ago, he said. My father died. He was killed. Murdered, you know.
I’m so sorry.
After that, I really lost my way. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
His eyes grew cloudy with tears.
Then I came to this school, he said. And it gave me direction. It gave me hope. It gave me a life. So I’ve been keeping an eye out for you, Mr. Agassi, and when you came by, I had to introduce myself and tell you—you know. Thanks.
I hugged him. I told him that it was I who needed to thank him.
IN THE UPPER GRADES, the focus is squarely on college. The kids are told again and again that Agassi Prep is only a stepping-stone. Don’t get comfortable, we tell them. College is the main goal. Should they happen to forget, reminders are everywhere. College banners line the walls. A main hallway is named College Street. A metal sky bridge between the two main buildings has never been used, and never will be used, until the first seniors receive their diplomas and embark for college in 2009. Walking across that bridge, the seniors will enter a secret room, sign their names in a ledger, and leave notes to the next class, and the next, and all senior classes to come. I can see myself addressing that first senior class. I’m already working with J.P. and Gil, obsessing over my speech.