Mr. Brown turns to look me up and down, as if he must have missed something the first time. He walks back toward me and starts firing questions.
How much do you play?
Every day.
No—how long do you play at one time? An hour? Couple of hours?
I see what he’s doing. He wants to know how fast I get tired. He’s trying to size me up, game-planning for me.
My father’s back. He’s got a fistful of hundreds. He waves it in the air. Suddenly Mr. Brown has had a change of heart.
Here’s what we’ll do, Mr. Brown tells my father. We’ll play two sets, then decide how much to bet on the third.
Whatever you say.
We play on Court 7, just inside the door. A crowd has gathered, and they cheer themselves hoarse as I win the first set, 6–3. Mr. Brown shakes his head. He talks to himself. He bangs his racket on the ground. He’s not happy, which makes two of us. Not only am I thinking, in direct violation of my father’s cardinal rule, but my mind is spinning. I feel as if I might have to stop playing at any moment, because I need to throw up.
Still, I win the second set, 6–3.
Now Mr. Brown is furious. He drops to one knee, laces his sneakers.
My father approaches him.
So? Ten grand?
Naw, Mr. Brown says. Why don’t we just bet $500.
Whatever you say.
My body relaxes. My mind grows quiet. I want to dance along the baseline, knowing I won’t have to play for $10,000. I can swing freely now, without thinking about consequences. Without thinking at all.
Mr. Brown, meanwhile, is thinking more, playing a less relaxed game. He’s suddenly junking, drop-shotting, lofting lobs, angling the ball at the corners, trying backspin and sidespin and all sorts of trickery. He’s also trying to run me, back and forth, wear me out. But I’m so relieved not to be playing for the entire contents of my father’s safe that I can’t be worn out, and I can’t miss. I beat Mr. Brown 6–2.
Sweat running down his face, he pulls a wad from his pocket and counts out five crisp hundreds. He hands them to my father, then turns to me.
Great game, son.
He shakes my hand. His calluses feel rougher—thanks to me.
He asks what my goals are, my dreams. I start to answer, but my father jumps in.
He’s going to be number one in the world.
I wouldn’t bet against him, Mr. Brown says.
NOT LONG AFTER BEATING MR. BROWN, I play a practice match against my father at Caesars. I’m up 5–2, serving for the match. I’ve never beaten my father, and he looks as if he’s about to lose much more than $10,000.
Suddenly he walks off the court. Get your stuff, he says. Let’s go.
He won’t finish. He’d rather sneak away than lose to his son. Deep down, I know it’s the last time we’ll ever play.
Packing my bag, zipping the cover on my racket, I feel a thrill greater than anything I felt after beating Mr. Brown. This is the sweetest win of my life, and it will be hard to top. I’ll take this win over a wheelbarrow full of silver dollars—and Uncle Isar’s jewels thrown on top—because this is the win that made my father finally sneak away from me.
3
I’M TEN, playing in the nationals. Second round. I lose badly to some kid who’s older, who’s supposed to be the best in the country. Not that this makes it easier. How can losing hurt so much? How can anything hurt so much? I walk off the court wishing I were dead. I stagger out to the parking lot. As my father gathers our stuff and says goodbye to the other parents, I sit in the car, crying.
A man’s face appears in the car window. Black guy. Smiling.
Hey there, he says. My name’s Rudy.
Same name as the man who helped my father build his backyard tennis court. Strange.
What’s your name?
Andre.
He shakes my hand.
Nice to meet you, Andre.
He says he works with the great champion Pancho Segura, who coaches kids my age. He comes to these big tournaments to scout kids for Pancho. He puts his arms through the window, leans heavily on the car door, sighs. He tells me that days like this are tough, he knows, very tough indeed, but in the end these days will make me stronger. His voice is warm, thick, like hot cocoa.
That kid who beat you, why, that kid’s two years older than you! You’ve got two years to reach that kid’s level. Two years is an eternity—especially when you’re working hard. Do you work hard?
Yes, sir.
You’ve got so much ahead of you, son.
But I don’t want to play anymore. I hate tennis.
Ha, ha! Sure you do. Right now. But deep down, you don’t really hate tennis.
Yes, I do.
You just think you hate it.
No, I hate it.
You’re saying that because you’re hurting right now, hurting like heck, but that just means you care. Means you want to win. You can use that. Remember this day. Try to use this day as motivation. If you don’t want to feel this hurt again, good, do everything you can to avoid it. Are you ready to do everything?
I nod.
Fine, fine. So go ahead and cry. Hurt a while longer. But then tell yourself, that’s it, time to get back to work.
OK.
I wipe my tears on my sleeve and thank Rudy and when he walks away I’m ready to practice. Bring on the dragon. I’m ready to hit balls for hours. If Rudy were standing behind me, whispering encouragement in my ear, I think I could beat that dragon. Suddenly my father climbs behind the wheel of the car and we drive slowly away, like the head car in a funeral procession. The tension in the car is so thick that I curl up on the backseat and close my eyes. I think about jumping out, running away, finding Rudy and asking him to coach me. Or adopt me.
I HATE ALL THE junior tournaments, but I hate nationals most of all, because the stakes are higher, and they’re held in other states, which means airfare, motels, rental cars, restaurant meals. My father is shelling out money, investing in me, and when I lose, there goes another piece of his investment. When I lose I set back the whole Agassi clan.
I’m eleven, playing nationals in Texas on clay. I’m among the best in the nation on clay, so there’s no way I’m going to lose, and then I lose. In the semis. I don’t even reach the final. Now I have to play a consolation match. When you lose in the semis they make you play a match to determine third and fourth place. Worse, in this particular consolation match I’m facing my archnemesis, David Kass. He’s ranked just below me, but somehow becomes a different player when he sees me across that net. No matter what I do, Kass beats me, and today is no different. I lose in three sets. Again I’m shattered. I’ve disappointed my father. I’ve cost my family. I don’t cry, however. I want to make Rudy proud, so I manage to choke back the tears.
At the awards ceremony a man hands out the first-place trophy, then second, then third. Then he announces that this year a sportsmanship trophy will be awarded to the youngster who exhibits the most grace on the court. Incredibly, he says my name—maybe because I’ve been biting my lip for an hour. He’s holding the trophy toward me, waving me to come and get it. It’s the last thing in the world I want, a sportsmanship trophy, but I take it from the man and thank him and something shifts inside me. It is an awfully cool trophy. And I have been a good sport. I walk out to the car, clutching the trophy to my chest, my father a step behind me. He says nothing, I say nothing. I concentrate on the click-clack of our footsteps on the cement. Finally I break the silence. I say, I don’t want this stupid thing. I say it because I think it’s what my father wants to hear. My father comes alongside me. He rips the trophy from my hands. He lifts it over his head and throws it on the cement. The trophy shatters. My father picks up the biggest piece and throws it on the cement, smashing it into smaller pieces. Now he collects the pieces and throws them into a nearby dumpster. I don’t say a word. I know not to say a word.
IF ONLY I COULD play soccer instead of tennis. I don’t like sports,
but if I must play a sport to please my father, I’d much rather play soccer. I get to play three times a week at school, and I love running the soccer field with the wind in my hair, calling for the ball, knowing the world won’t end if I don’t score. The fate of my father, of my family, of planet earth, doesn’t rest on my shoulders. If my team doesn’t win, it will be the whole team’s fault, and no one will yell in my ear. Team sports, I decide, are the way to go.
My father doesn’t mind my playing soccer, because he thinks it helps my footwork on the court. But I recently hurt myself in a soccer scrimmage, pulled a muscle in my leg, and the injury forces me to skip tennis practice one afternoon. My father isn’t happy. He looks at my leg, then me, as if I injured myself on purpose. But an injury is an injury. Even he can’t argue with my body. He stomps out of the house.
Moments later my mother looks at my schedule and realizes I have a soccer game this afternoon. What do we do? she says.
The team is counting on me, I tell her.
She sighs. How do you feel?
I think I can play.
OK. Put on your soccer uniform.
Do you think Pops will be upset?
You know Pa. He doesn’t need a reason to be upset.
She drives me to the soccer game and leaves me there. After a few jogs up and down the field, my leg feels good. Surprisingly good. I dart in between defenders, fluid, graceful, calling for the ball, laughing with my teammates. We’re working toward a common objective. We’re in this together. This feels right. This feels like me.
Suddenly I look up and see my father. He’s at the edge of the parking lot, stalking toward the field. Now he’s talking to the coach. Now he’s yelling at the coach. The coach is waving to me. Agassi! Out of the game!
I sprint off the field.
Get in the car, my father says. And get out of that uniform.
I run to the car and find my tennis clothes on the backseat. I put them on and walk back to my father. I hand him my soccer uniform. He walks onto the field and throws the uniform at the coach’s chest.
As we drive home my father says without looking at me: You’re never playing soccer again.
I beg him for a second chance. I tell my father that I don’t like being by myself on that huge tennis court. Tennis is lonely, I tell him. There’s nowhere to hide when things go wrong. No dugout, no sideline, no neutral corner. It’s just you out there, naked.
He shouts at the top of his lungs: You’re a tennis player! You’re going to be number one in the world! You’re going to make lots of money. That’s the plan, and that’s the end of it.
He’s adamant, and desperate, because that was the plan for Rita, Philly, and Tami, but things never worked out. Rita rebelled. Tami stopped getting better. Philly didn’t have the killer instinct. My father says this about Philly all the time. He says it to me, to Mom, even to Philly—right to his face. Philly just shrugs, which seems to prove that Philly doesn’t have the killer instinct.
But my father says far worse things to Philly.
You’re a born loser, he says.
You’re right, Philly says in a sorrowful tone. I am a born loser. I was born to be a loser.
You are! You feel sorry for your opponent! You don’t care about being the best!
Philly doesn’t bother to deny it. He plays well, he has talent, but he just isn’t a perfectionist, and perfection isn’t the goal in our house, it’s the law. If you’re not perfect, you’re a loser. A born loser.
My father decided that Philly was a born loser when Philly was about my age, playing nationals. Philly didn’t just lose; he didn’t argue when his opponents cheated him, which made my father turn bright red and scream curses in Assyrian from the bleachers.
Like my mother, Philly takes it and takes it, and then every once in a great while he blows. The last time it happened, my father was stringing a tennis racket, my mother was ironing, and Philly was on the couch, watching TV. My father kept after Philly, mercilessly nagging him about his performance at a recent tournament. All at once, in a tone I’d never heard him use, Philly screeched, You know why I don’t win? Because of you! Because you call me a born loser!
Philly started panting with anger. My mother started crying.
From now on, Philly continued, I’ll just be a robot, how’s that? Would you like that? I’ll be a robot and feel nothing and just go out there and do everything you say!
My father stopped stringing the racket and looked happy. Almost peaceful. Jesus Christ, he said, you’re finally getting it.
Unlike Philly, I argue with opponents all the time. I sometimes wish I had Philly’s knack for shrugging off injustice. If an opponent cheats me, if he pulls a Tarango, my face gets hot. Often I get my revenge on the next point. When my cheating opponent hits a shot in the center of the court, I call it out and stare at him with a look that says: Now we’re even.
I don’t do this to please my father, but it surely does. He says, You have a different mentality than Philly. You got all the talent, all the fire—and the luck. You were born with a horseshoe up your ass.
He says this once a day. Sometimes he says it with conviction, sometimes admiration—sometimes envy. I blanch when he says it. I worry that I got Philly’s good luck, that I stole it from him somehow, because if I was born with a horseshoe up my ass, Philly was born with a black cloud over his head. When Philly was twelve he broke his wrist while riding his bike, broke it in three places, and that was the beginning of a long stretch of unbroken gloom. My father was so furious with Philly that he made Philly keep playing tournaments, broken wrist and all, which worsened Philly’s wrist, made the problem chronic, and ruined his game forever. Favoring his broken wrist, Philly was forced to use a one-handed backhand, which Philly believes is a terrible habit, one he couldn’t break after the wrist healed. I watch Philly lose and think: Bad habits plus bad luck—deadly combination. I also watch him when he comes home after a hard loss. He feels so rotten about himself, you can see it all over his face, and my father drives that rottenness down deeper. Philly sits in a corner, beating himself up over the loss, but at least it’s a fair fight, one on one. Then along comes my father. He jumps in and helps Philly gang up on Philly. There is name-calling, slapping. By rights this should make Philly a basket case. At the very least it should make him resent me, bully me. Instead, after every verbal or physical assault at the hands of himself and my father, Philly’s slightly more careful with me, more protective. Gentler. He wants me spared his fate. For this reason, though he may be a born loser, I see Philly as the ultimate winner. I feel lucky to have him as my older brother. Feeling lucky to have an unlucky older brother? Is that possible? Does that make sense? Another defining contradiction.
PHILLY AND I spend all our free time together. He picks me up at school on his scooter and we go riding home across the desert, talking and laughing above the engine’s insect whine. We share a bedroom at the back of the house, our sanctuary from tennis and Pops. Philly is as fussy about his stuff as I am about mine, so he paints a white line down the center of the room, dividing it into his side and mine, ad court and deuce court. I sleep in the deuce court, my bed closest to the door. At night, before we turn out the lights, we have a ritual I’ve come to depend on. We sit on the edges of our beds and whisper across the line. Philly, seven years older, does most of the talking. He pours out his heart, his self-doubts and disappointments. He talks about never winning. He talks about being called a born loser. He talks about needing to borrow money from Pops so that he can continue to play tennis, to keep trying to turn pro. Pops, we both agree, is not a man you want holding your marker.
Of all the things that trouble Philly, however, the great trauma of his life is his hairline. Andre, he says, I’m going bald. He says this in the same way he would tell me the doctor has given him four weeks to live.
But he won’t lose his hair without a battle. Baldness is one opponent Philly will fight with all he’s got. He thinks the reason he’s going bald is that h
e’s not getting enough blood to his scalp, so every night, at some point during our bedtime talks, Philly stands upside down. He puts his head on the mattress and lifts his feet, balancing himself against the wall. I pray it will work. I plead with God that my brother, the born loser, won’t lose this one thing, his hair. I lie to Philly and tell him that I can see his miracle cure working. I love my brother so much, I’d say anything if I thought it would make him feel better. For my brother’s sake, I’d stand on my own head all night.
After Philly tells me his troubles, I sometimes tell him mine. I’m touched by how quickly he refocuses. He listens to the latest mean thing Pops said, gauges my level of concern, then gives me the proportionate nod. For basic fears, a half nod. For big fears, a full nod with a patented Philly frown. Even when upside down, Philly says as much with one nod as most people say in a five-page letter.
One night Philly asks me to promise him something.
Sure, Philly. Anything.
Don’t ever let Pops give you any pills.
Pills?
Andre, you have to hear what I am telling you. This is really important.
OK, Philly, I hear you. I’m listening.
Next time you go away to nationals, if Pops gives you pills, don’t take them.
He already gives me Excedrin, Philly. He makes me take Excedrin before a match, because it’s loaded with caffeine.
Yeah, I know. But these pills I’m talking about are different. These pills are tiny, white, round. Don’t take them. Whatever you do.
What if Pops makes me? I can’t say no to Pops.
Yeah. Right. OK, let me think.
Philly closes his eyes. I watch the blood rushing to his forehead, turning it purple.
OK, he says. I got it. If you have to take the pills, if he makes you take them, play a bad match. Tank. Then, as you come off the court, tell him you were shaking so bad that you couldn’t concentrate.
OK. But Philly—what are these pills?
Speed.
What’s that?
A drug. Gives you lots of energy. I just know he’s going to try to slip you some speed.