Open: An Autobiography

I TURN THIRTY-FIVE just before Rome. Stefanie and the children come with me to Italy. I want to get out with Stefanie, see the Colosseum, the Pantheon, but I can’t. When I came here as a boy, and as a young man, I was too consumed by inner torments and shyness to leave the hotel. Now, though I’d love to see the sights, my back won’t permit it. The doctor says one long walk on pavement can mean the difference between the cortisone lasting three months or one.

I win my first four matches. Then I lose to Coria. Disgusted with myself, I feel guilty about getting a standing ovation. Again, reporters press the question of retirement.

I say: I only think about it fourteen times a year, because that’s how many tournaments I play each year.

In other words: That’s how many times I’m forced to sit through these news conferences.

In the first round of the 2005 French Open, I play Jarkko Nieminen, from Finland. Simply by stepping on the court, I set a record. My fifty-eighth slam. One more than Chang, Connors, Lendl, Ferreira. More than anyone in the open era. My back, however, is in no mood to com-memorate the occasion. The cortisone has worn off. Serving is painful, standing is painful.

Breathing is work. I think about walking to the net and forfeiting. But this is Roland Garros. I can’t walk off this court, not this one. They’ll have to carry me off this court atop my racket.

I swallow eight Advils. Eight. During the changeover I cover my face with a towel while biting on another towel to quell the pain. In the third set Gil knows something is terribly wrong.

After hitting the ball, I don’t sprint back to the center of the court. In all these years he’s never seen me fail to sprint back to the center of the court. It’s unthinkable, tantamount to him taking a men’s-room break during one of my matches. Afterward, walking with Gil to a restaurant, I’m bent over like a giant shrimp. He says: We can’t keep taking and taking from your body.

We pull out of Wimbledon, try to get ready for the summer hard courts. It’s necessary, but feels like a gamble. Now I’ll devote all my time and do all my work for fewer tournaments, which means the margin of error will be narrower, the pressure greater. The losses will hurt more.

Gil buries himself in his da Vinci notebooks. He’s proud that I’ve never injured myself in his gym, and now I can see that, as my body ages, he’s tense. His streak is on the line.

Some lifts you just can’t do anymore, he says. Others you’ll need to do twice as much.

We spend hours and hours in the weight room, discussing my core. From here until the finish line, Gil says, it’s all about your core.

BECAUSE I’VE PULLED OUT OF WIMBLEDON, newspapers and magazines print a fresh batch of eulogies. At an age when most tennis players -

I swear off newspapers and magazines.

In late summer I play the Mercedes-Benz Cup and I win. Jaden is now old enough to watch me play, and during the trophy ceremony he comes running onto the court, thinking the trophy is his. Which it is.

I go to Montreal and scratch and claw my way to the final against a Spanish kid everyone is talking about. Rafael Nadal. I can’t beat him. I can’t fathom him. I’ve never seen anyone move like that on a tennis court.

At the 2005 U.S. Open I’m a novelty, a sideshow, a thirty-five-year-old playing in a slam.

It’s my twentieth year in a row at this tournament - many of this year’s players haven’t been alive twenty years. I remember playing Connors and knocking him out of his twentieth U.S.

Open. I’m not the type to ask, Where did the years go? I know exactly where they went. I can feel every set in my spine.

I play Razvan Sabau, from Romania, in the first round. I’ve had my fourth and final cortisone shot of the year, so my back feels numb. I’m able to hit my meat-and-potatoes shot, which gives Sabau problems. When your basic shot hurts someone, when they’re falling behind on the shot you can make a hundred out of a hundred times, you know the day is going to be fine. It’s as though your jab is leaving marks on a guy’s jaw, and you still haven’t thrown your haymaker. I beat him in sixty-nine minutes.

Reporters say it was a massacre. They ask if I feel bad about beating him.

I say: I would never want to deprive anybody of the learning experience of losing.

They laugh.

I’m serious.

In the second round I play Ivo Karlovic, from Croatia. They list him as six foot ten, but he must have been standing in a ditch when they measured. He’s a totem pole, a telephone pole, which gives his serve a sick trajectory. When Karlovic serves, the box technically becomes twice as large. The net becomes a foot lower. I’ve never played anyone so big. I don’t know how to prepare for an opponent his size.

In the locker room I introduce myself to Karlovic. He’s sweet, fresh-faced, starry-eyed about being in the U.S. Open. I ask him to raise his serving arm as high as he can, then I call Darren over. We crane our necks, looking up, trying to see the tips of Karlovic’s fingers. We can’t.