Open: An Autobiography

Philly sounds as though he feels supremely lucky.

I tell him how overjoyed I am for him and Marti, and I promise to get home as soon as I can. Brooke and I will come straight over and see my brand-new niece, I say, my voice catching in my throat.

The phone rings again. Is it an hour later? Three? In my memory it will always feel like part of the same foggy moment, though the two calls might be days apart. It’s my lawyers, they’re on speaker phone. Andre? Can you hear us? Andre?

Yes, I hear you. Go ahead.

Well, the ATP has read and carefully reviewed your heartfelt assertion of innocence. I’m pleased to say that your explanation has been accepted. Your failed test is thrown out.

Henceforth the matter will be considered closed.

I’m not suspended?

No.

I’m free to go on with my career? My life?

Yes.

I ask several more times. You’re sure? You mean, this is really over?

As far as the ATP is concerned, yes. They believe and accept your explanation. Gladly. I think everyone is eager to move on and put this behind them.

I hang up and stare into space, thinking again and again: New life.

I GO TO the 1998 French Open, and against Marat Safin, from Russia, I hurt my shoulder.

I always forget how weighty the ball can be on this particular clay. It’s like hitting a shotput.

The shoulder is agony, but I’m grateful for the hurt. I will never again take for granted the privilege of hurting on a tennis court.

The doctor says I have an impingement. Pressure on the nerve. I shut myself down for two weeks. No practice, no sparring, nothing. I miss the game. What’s more, I let myself miss it. I enjoy and celebrate missing it.

At Wimbledon I face Tommy Haas, from Germany. In the third set, during a fierce tiebreak, the linesman makes an atrocious blunder. Haas hits a ball clearly long and wide, but the linesman calls it in, giving Haas a commanding 6:3 lead. It’s the worst call of my career. I know the ball was out, know it without question, but all my arguing is for nothing. The other linesman and the umpire uphold the call. I go on to lose the tiebreak. Now I’m down two sets to one, a steep hole.

Officials pause the match, postpone the end because of darkness. Back at my hotel, on the news, I see that the ball was several inches out. I can only laugh.

The next day, taking the court, I’m still laughing. I still don’t care about the call. I’m just happy to be here. Maybe I don’t know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time: Haas wins the fourth set. Afterward, he tells reporters he grew up idolizing me. I used to look up to Agassi, he says - it’s a very special win for me because he won Wimbledon in 1992 and I can say I beat Andre Agassi, a former number one who’s won a couple of Grand Slams.

It sounds like a eulogy. Does the guy think he beat me or buried me?

And did anyone in the press room bother to tell him I’ve actually won three slams?

BROOKE LANDS A ROLE in an indie film called Black and White. She’s elated, because the director is a genius and the theme is race relations and she’ll get to ad-lib her lines and wear her hair in dreadlocks. She’s also living in the woods for a month, bunking with her fellow actors, and when we talk on the phone she says they all stay in character, 24:7. Doesn’t that sound cool?

Cool, I say, rolling my eyes.

On her first morning home, eating breakfast in the kitchen, she’s full of stories about Robert Downey Jr. and Mike Tyson and Marla Maples and other stars of the movie. I try to be interested. She asks about my tennis, and she tries to be interested. We’re tentative, like strangers. We’re not like spouses sharing a kitchen; more like teens sharing a hostel. We’re courteous, polite, even kind, but the vibe feels brittle, as if everything could shatter any minute.

I put another log in the kitchen fireplace.

So I have something to tell you, Brooke says. While I was away, I got a tattoo.

I spin around. You’re kidding.

We go to the bathroom where there’s more light, and she pulls down the waistline of her jeans and shows me. On her hip. A dog.

Did it cross your mind to run that by me?

The exact wrong thing to say. Controlling, she calls it. Since when does she need my per-mission to decorate her body? I go back to the kitchen, pour myself a second cup of coffee, and stare harder into the fire. Stare harder.

BECAUSE OF SCHEDULING CONFLICTS, Brooke and I couldn’t take our honeymoon right after the wedding. But now, with her done filming and me just done, it seems like the perfect time. We decide to go to Necker Island, in the British Virgin Islands, southeast of Indigo Island. It’s owned by billionaire Richard Branson, and he tells us we’ll love it.

He says, It’s an island paradise!