Open: An Autobiography

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.