Open: An Autobiography

I dump out my tennis bag, pull out the rest of the rackets, each one worth hundreds of dollars, and pass them around.

Here, help yourselves! I sure as hell won’t be needing them!

Then, reveling in how much lighter my tennis bag feels, I walk to the hotel where Philly and I are staying. I sit on one bed and Philly sits on the other, just like old times, in more ways than one. I tell him I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.

He doesn’t argue. He understands. Who better to understand? We knuckle down to details, making a plan. How to tell Nick, how to tell my father, how I can earn a living.

What do you want to do instead of playing tennis?

I don’t know.

We go out for dinner, talk it over, analyze where I stand financially - a few hundred dollars above zero. We joke that we’re getting close to potato-and-lentil-soup territory.

Back at the hotel the phone in our room is flashing. I have one message. The organizers of a tennis exhibition in North Carolina phoned to say a player canceled on them. They want to know if I can play. If I do, they’ll guarantee me $2,000.

Philly agrees it would be nice to walk away from tennis with a little coin in my pocket.

OK, I say. One last tournament. I better get some more rackets.

IN THE FIRST ROUND I draw a kid named Michael Chang. I grew up playing him. I played him all through juniors, and I’ve never lost to him. I’ve never even had problems with him. Also, he’s only fifteen, two years younger than I. He comes up to my navel. So this is just what the doctor ordered for my bruised psyche. A preordained beat-down. I walk onto the court, smiling.

Chang, however, has undergone some kind of metamorphosis since our last meeting.

He’s made a quantum leap in his game, and now he plays like a flea on speed. It takes everything I’ve got to beat him. Still, I do beat him. My first win in months. I decide to postpone my retirement. Just a few more weeks. I tell Philly I want to go to Stratton Mountain, where I did well last year. Stratton will be a fitting place for my last hurrah.

We fly up to Vermont with two fellow players, Peter Doohan and Kelly Evernden. Kelly says he grabbed the Stratton draw right before we left.

Anyone want to hear who he’ll be playing?

I do.

No, Andre. You don’t.

Uh-oh. Who did I draw?

Luke Jensen.

Fuck.

Luke’s the best junior in the world, by far the most promising kid on the tour. I sink in my seat and watch the clouds. Should have quit while I was ahead. Should have retired after Chang.

LUKE SERVES BOTH lefty and righty, which is why they call him Dual Hand Luke, and he can bring it 130 miles an hour from either side. But today, against me, his first serve is off, and I cane his second. I’m more surprised than he is when I scrape by him in three sets and advance.

Next up is Pat Cash - who just won Wimbledon, twelve days after I met my demise on Graveyard Court. Cash is a machine, a finely tuned athlete who moves well and covers the net like a hydra. I don’t even think about beating him, only about holding my own. But in the early going I find that he doesn’t have a lot of top on his ball, so I’m getting nice, clean, eye-level looks, hitting one winner after another. Since I have no chance to win, since I want only to be credible, I’m free, loose, and this makes Cash tight. He appears shocked by what’s unfolding. He’s missing first serves, which lets me cheat in a half step, put everything I’ve got behind my return. Every time I hit a ball past him, Cash glares across the net with an expression that says, This wasn’t in the plan. You’re not supposed to be doing this.

Foolishly, somewhat arrogantly, he spends more and more time at the net looking surprised, rather than going back to the baseline and thinking up a new strategy. After one of my better returns, he hits a so-so volley, and I pass him again. He stands with his hands on his hips, staring at me, radiating a sense of injustice.

Keep staring, I think. Keep it up.

Toward the end he’s giving me painfully easy targets, making his ball so beautifully hit-table, so marvelously strikable, that it all seems unfair. I have a legit chance of hitting a winner on every point. I just wanted to leave a mark, but I’m leaving a gash. I score a shocking upset, 7:6, 7:6.

Stratton Mountain, I conclude, is my magic mountain. My anti-Wimbledon. Last year I played above my level here, now I’m playing twice as well. The setting is breathtaking, laid back - and quintessentially American. Unlike those snooty Brits, these Strattonites know me, or at least the idealized me I want them to know. They don’t know about my struggles of the last twelve months, about my giving rackets to homeless men, about my pending retirement.