Open: An Autobiography

As Nastase and I hit, Wendi watches from the net post. I’m nervous, Nastase is visibly bored - until he spots Wendi.

Hey, he says. Is this your girlfriend, Snoopy? Is this pretty thing over here your sweet-heart?

I stop. I glare at Nastase. I want to punch this big, stupid Romanian in the nose, even though he’s got two feet and 100 pounds on me. Bad enough that he calls me Snoopy, but then he dares to mention Wendi in such a disrespectful way. A crowd has gathered, two hundred people at least. Nastase begins playing to the crowd, calling me Snoopy again and again, teasing me about Wendi. And I thought my father was relentless.

Eight years old, hitting a few balls with my idol, Björn Borg At the very least, I wish I had the courage to say: Mr. Nastase, you’re embarrassing me, please stop. But all I can do is keep hitting harder. Hit harder. Then Nastase makes yet another wisecrack about Wendi, and that’s it, I can’t take any more. I drop my racket and walk off the court. Up yours, Nastase.

My father stares, openmouthed. He’s not angry, he’s not embarrassed - he’s incapable of embarrassment, and he recognizes his own genes when he sees them in action. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him prouder.

BESIDES THE OCCASIONAL EXHIBITION with a top-ranked player, my public matches are mostly hustle jobs. I have a slick routine to lure in the suckers. First, I pick a highly visible court, where I play by myself, knocking the ball all over the place. Second, when some cocky teenager or drunken guest strolls by I invite them to play. Third, I let them beat me, soundly.

Finally, in my most pitiful voice I ask if they’d like to play for a dollar. Maybe five? Before they know what’s happening, I’m serving for match point and twenty bucks, enough to keep Wendi in Cokes for a month.

Philly taught me how to do it. He gives tennis lessons and often hustles his students, plays them for the price of the lesson, then double or nothing. But Andre, he says, with your size and youth, you should be raking in the dough. He helps me develop and rehearse the routine.

Now and then it occurs to me that I only think I’m hustling, that people are happy to shell out for the show. Later they can brag to their friends that they saw a nine-year-old tennis freak who never misses.

I don’t tell my father about my side business. Not that he’d think it was wrong. He loves a good hustle. I just don’t feel like talking to my father about tennis any more than is absolutely necessary. Then my father stumbles into his own hustle. It happens at Cambridge. As we walk in one day, my father points to a man talking with Mr. Fong.

That’s Jim Brown, my father whispers to me. Greatest football player of all time.

He’s an enormous block of muscle wearing tennis whites and tube socks. I’ve seen him before at Cambridge. When he’s not playing tennis for money, he’s playing backgammon, or shooting craps - also for money. Like my father, Mr. Brown talks a lot about money. At this moment he’s complaining to Mr. Fong about a money match that fell through. He was supposed to play a guy, and the guy didn’t show. Mr. Brown is taking it out on Mr. Fong.

I came to play, Mr. Brown is saying, and I want to play.

My father steps forward.

You looking for a game?

Yeah.

My son Andre will play you.

Mr. Brown looks at me, then back at my father.

I ain’t playing no eight-year-old boy!

Nine.

Nine? Oooh, well, I didn’t realize.

Mr. Brown laughs. A few men within earshot laugh too.

I can tell that Mr. Brown doesn’t take my father seriously. Big mistake. Just ask that trucker lying in the road. I close my eyes and see him, the rain pelting his face.

Look, Mr. Brown says, I don’t play for fun, OK? I play for money.

My son will play you for money.

I feel a bead of sweat start down my armpit.

Yeah? How much?

My father laughs and says, I’ll bet you my fucking house.

I don’t need your house, Mr. Brown says. I got a house. Let’s say ten grand.

Done, my father says.

I walk toward the court.

Slow down, Mr. Brown says. I need to see some money up front.

I’ll go home and get it, my father says. I’ll be right back.

My father hurries out the door. I sit in a chair and picture him opening the safe and pulling out stacks of money. All those tips I’ve seen him count through the years, all those nights of hard work. Now he’s going to let it ride on me. I feel a heaviness in the center of my chest. I’m proud, of course, to think my father has such faith in me. But mainly I’m scared. What happens to me, to my father, to my mother and my siblings, not to mention Grandma and Uncle Isar, if I lose?