Open: An Autobiography

In 1991 we’re in Atlanta with Gil, celebrating my twenty-first birthday. We’re in a bar, a seedy old place in Buckhead, with cigarette-scorched pool tables and plastic beer mugs. The three of us are laughing, drinking, and even Gil, who never touches the stuff, is letting himself get tipsy. To record this night for posterity, Wendi has brought her camcorder. She hands it to me and tells me to film her shooting baskets at one of those tented arcade games. She’s going to school me, she says. I film her shooting for three seconds and then let the camera pan slowly down her body.

Andre, she says, please get the camera off my ass.

In comes a mob of loudmouths. Roughly my age, they look like a local football or rugby team. They make several rude remarks about me, then focus their attention on Wendi.

They’re drunk, crude, trying to embarrass me in front of her. I think of Nastase, doing the same thing fourteen years ago.

The rugby team slaps a stack of quarters on the edge of our pool table. One of them says, We got next. They walk off, smirking.

Gil puts down his plastic mug, picks up the quarters, and walks slowly to a vending machine. He buys a bag of peanuts and comes back to the table. Slowly he works his way through the peanuts, never taking his eyes off the rugby players, until they wisely decide to try another bar.

Wendi giggles and suggests that, in addition to his many functions and duties, Gil should be my bodyguard.

He already is, I tell her. And yet that word doesn’t cut it. That word isn’t adequate to what he is. Gil guards my body, my head, my game, my heart, my girlfriend. He’s the one immov-able object in my life. He’s my life guard.

I particularly enjoy when people - reporters, fans, kooks - ask Gil if he’s my bodyguard. A smile always plays across his lips as he says, Touch him and find out.

AT THE 1991 FRENCH OPEN I batter my way through six rounds and reach the final. My third slam final. I’m facing Courier, and I’m favored. Everyone says I’ll beat him. I say I’ll beat him. I need to beat him. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to make three slam finals in a row and not win.

The good news is, I know how to beat Courier. I beat him just last year at this same tournament. The bad news is, it’s personal, which makes me tight. We began in the same place, in the same barracks at the Bollettieri Academy, our bunk beds a few feet apart. I was so much better than Courier, so much more favored by Nick, that losing to him in the final of a slam will feel like the hare losing to the tortoise. Bad enough that Chang has won a slam before me. And Pete. But Courier too? I can’t let that happen.

I come out playing to win. I’ve learned from my mistakes at the last two slams. I cruise through the first set, winning 6:3, and in the second set, leading 3:1, I have break point. If I win this point I’ll have a choke hold on the set and match. Suddenly the rain starts to fall. Fans cover themselves and run for shelter. Courier and I retreat to the locker room, where we both pace like caged lions. Nick comes in and I look to him for advice, encouragement, but he says nothing. Nothing. I’ve known for some time that I continue with Nick out of habit and loyalty, and not for any real coaching. Still, in this moment, it’s not coaching I need but a show of humanity, which is one of the duties of any coach. I need some recognition of the adrenaline-charged moment in which I find myself. Is that too much to ask?

After the rain delay, Courier stations himself farther behind the baseline, hoping to take some of the steam off my shots. He’s had time to rest, and reflect, and recharge, and he storms back to keep me from breaking, then wins the second set. Now I’m angry. Furious. I win the third set, 6:2. I establish in Courier’s mind, and in my own, that the second set was a fluke. Up two sets to one, I can feel the finish line pulling me. My first slam. Six little games away.

As the fourth set opens, I lose twelve of the first thirteen points. Am I unraveling or is Courier playing better? I don’t know. I’ll never know. But I do know that this feeling is familiar.

Hauntingly familiar. This sense of inevitability. This weightlessness as momentum slips away.

Courier wins the set, 6:1.

In the fifth set, tied 4:4, he breaks me. Now, all at once, I just want to lose.

I can’t explain it any other way. In the fourth set I lost the will, but now I’ve lost the desire.

As certain as I felt about victory at the start of this match, that’s how certain I am now of defeat. And I want it. I long for it. I say under my breath: Let it be fast. Since losing is death, I’d rather it be fast than slow.

I no longer hear the crowd. I no longer hear my own thoughts, only a white noise between my ears. I can’t hear or feel anything except my desire to lose. I drop the tenth and decisive game of the fifth set, and congratulate Courier. Friends tell me it’s the most desolate look they’ve ever seen on my face.