Open: An Autobiography

I stretch as though I’m about to play a match. I shake out my legs, then suggest a stroll.

Yes, Brooke says, that sounds like a lovely idea. She takes a sip of wine, smiles casually, no idea what’s coming. We walk for ten minutes until we reach a part of the beach where we can’t see any sign of civilization. I crane my neck to make sure no one is coming. No tourists.

No paparazzi. The coast is clear. I think of that line from Top Gun. I had the shot, there was no danger, so I took it.

I fall a few steps behind Brooke and drop to one knee on the sand. She turns, looks down, and all the color drains from her face as the colors of the sunset grow more vivid.

Brooke Christa Shields?

She’s mentioned in conversation many times that any man who proposes to her had better use her full legal name, Brooke Christa Shields. I never knew why, and never thought to ask, but now it comes back to me.

I repeat, Brooke Christa Shields?

She puts a hand on her forehead. Wait, she says. What? Are you - ? Wait. I’m not ready.

That makes two of us.

She’s wiping away tears as I pull the ring box from my pocket and crack it open and remove the ring and slide it onto her finger.

Brooke Christa Shields? Will you -

She’s pulling me to my feet. I’m kissing her and thinking, I really wish I’d thought this through. Is this the person that Andre Kirk Agassi is supposed to spend the next ninety years with?

Yes, she says. Yes, yes, yes.

Wait, I think. Wait, wait, wait.

SHE SAYS SHE WANTS a do-over.

One day later she tells me she was in such shock on the beach, she couldn’t hear me.

She wants me to repeat the proposal, word for word.

I need you to say it again, she insists, because I can’t believe it really happened.

Me neither.

She’s planning the wedding before we’re off the island. And when we get back to Los Angeles, I resume the unplanned, unceremonious end of my tennis career. I moonwalk through one tournament after another. I’m losing in early rounds, and therefore I’m home a lot, which tickles Brooke. I’m placid, numb, and I have plenty of time to talk about wedding cakes and invitations.

We fly to England for the 1996 Wimbledon. Just before the start of the tournament Brooke insists we go for high tea at the Dorchester hotel. I beg off, but she insists. We’re surrounded by older couples, all wearing tweed and bowties and ribbons. Half of them look asleep. We eat finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off, heaping plates of egg salad and scones with jam and butter - all things expressly engineered to clog the human artery, without the benefit of tasting good. The food is making me cranky, and the setting feels ridiculous, like a children’s tea party in a nursing home. But just as I’m about to suggest that we ask for the check I notice that Brooke’s ecstatic. She’s having a grand time. She wants more jam.

In the first round I face Doug Flach, ranked number 281, a qualifier who’s in over his head, though you’d never know it to watch him against me. He plays as if he’s channeling Rod Laver, and I play like Ralph Nader. We’re on Graveyard Court. By now you’d think I’d have my own plaque here. I lose as fast as I can, and Brooke and I hurry back to Los Angeles, to engage in more deep conversations about Battenburg lace and chiffon-lined tents.

As summer approaches, there is only one elaborate pageant that interests and inspires me. And it’s not my wedding. It’s the Atlanta Olympics. I don’t know why. Maybe it feels like something new. Maybe it feels like something that has nothing to do with me. I’ll be playing for my country, playing for a team with 300 million members. I’ll be closing a circle. My father was an Olympian, now me.

I plan a regimen with Gil, an Olympian’s regimen, and give all-out effort in our training sessions. I spend two hours with Gil each morning, then hit with Brad for two hours, then run up and down Gil Hill in the hottest part of the day. I want the heat. I want the pain.

As the Games begin, sportswriters kill me for skipping the opening ceremonies. Perry kills me for it too. But I’m not in Atlanta for opening ceremonies, I’m here for gold, and I need to hoard what little concentration and energy I can muster these days. The tennis is being played in Stone Mountain, an hour’s drive from the opening ceremonies downtown. Stand around in the Georgia heat and humidity, wearing a coat and tie, waiting for hours to walk around the track, then drive to Stone Mountain and give my best? No. I can’t. I’d love to experience the pageantry, to savor the spectacle of the Olympics, but not before my first match.

This, I tell myself, is focus. This is what it means to put substance above image.