Open: An Autobiography

Waves of emotion continue to wash over me, relief and elation and even a kind of hysterical serenity, because I’ve finally earned a brief respite from the critics, especially the internal ones.

LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, back at the house we’ve rented, I phone Gil, who couldn’t make the trip, because he needed to be home with his family after the long clay season. He wishes so much that he could have been here. He discusses the match with me, the ins and outs - it’s shocking how much he’s learned about tennis in such a short time. I phone Perry, and J.P., and then, trembling, I dial my father in Vegas.

Pops? It’s me! Can you hear me? What’d you think?

Silence.

Pops?

You had no business losing that fourth set.

Stunned, I wait, not trusting my voice. Then I say, Good thing I won the fifth set, though, right?

He says nothing. Not because he disagrees, or disapproves, but because he’s crying.

Faintly I hear my father sniffling and wiping away tears, and I know he’s proud, just incapable of expressing it. I can’t fault the man for not knowing how to say what’s in his heart. It’s the family curse.

· · ·

THE NIGHT OF THE FINAL is the famed Wimbledon Ball. I’ve heard about it for years, and I’m dying to go, because the men’s winner gets to dance with the women’s winner, and this year, as in most years, that means Steffi Graf. I’ve had a crush on Steffi since I first saw her doing an interview on French TV. I was thunderstruck, dazzled by her understated grace, her effortless beauty. She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good. Also, as if she was good, fundamentally, essentially, inherently good, brimming with moral rectitude and a kind of dignity that doesn’t exist anymore. I thought I saw, for half a second, a halo above her head. I tried to get a message to her after last year’s French Open, but she didn’t respond. Now, I can’t wait to twirl her across a dance floor, never mind that I don’t know how to dance.

Wendi knows about my feelings for Steffi, and she’s not at all jealous. We have an open relationship, she reminds me. We’re both over twenty-one. In fact, on the eve of the final, we both go to Harrods to buy my tuxedo, in case I need it, and Wendi jokes with the salesgirl that I only want to win so that I can dance with Steffi Graf.

And so, wearing black tie for the first time ever, with Wendi on my arm, I walk smartly into the ball. We’re instantly set upon by silver-haired British couples. The men have hair in their ears, and the women smell like old liqueur. They seem delighted by my win, but mainly because it means fresh blood in the club. Someone new to talk to at these dreadful, dreadful af-fairs, someone says. Wendi and I stand with our backs to each other, like scuba divers in a school of sharks. I struggle to decipher some of the thicker British accents. I try to make clear to one older woman who looks like Benny Hill that I’m quite excited about the traditional dance with the women’s champion.

Sadly, the woman says, that dance isn’t happening this year.

Say what?

The players haven’t embraced the dance quite so enthusiastically in years past. So it’s been canceled.

She sees my face fall. Wendi turns, sees it too, and laughs.

I don’t get to dance with Steffi, but there will be a kind of consolation match: a formal introduction. I look forward to it all night. Then it happens. Shaking her hand, I tell Steffi that I tried to reach her at last year’s French Open and I hope she didn’t misunderstand my intentions. I say, I’d really love to talk with you some time.

She doesn’t respond. She merely smiles, an enigmatic smile, and I can’t tell if she’s happy about what I’ve just said, or nervous.

14

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE A DIFFERENT PERSON now that I’ve won a slam. Everyone says so. No more Image Is Everything. Now, sportswriters assert, for Andre Agassi, winning is everything. After two years of calling me a fraud, a choke artist, a rebel without a cause, they lionize me. They declare that I’m a winner, a player of substance, the real deal. They say my victory at Wimbledon forces them to reassess me, to reconsider who I really am.

But I don’t feel that Wimbledon has changed me. I feel, in fact, as if I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.

I do feel happier in the summer of 1992, and more substantive, but the cause isn’t Wimbledon. It’s Wendi. We’ve grown closer. We’ve whispered promises to each other. I’ve accepted that I’m not meant to be with Steffi. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted, but I’ve devoted myself to Wendi, and vice versa. She doesn’t work, doesn’t go to school. She’s been to several colleges and none was right. So now she spends all her time with me.