Open: An Autobiography

The Italian Open is on red clay, a surface that feels unnatural to me. I’ve only played on green clay, which is sort of fast. Red clay, I tell Nick, is hot glue and wet tar laid across a bed of quicksand. You can’t put a guy away on this red-clay shit, I complain at our first practice.

He smirks. You’re going to be fine, he says. You just have to get used to it. Don’t be impatient, don’t try to finish every point.

I don’t have the slightest idea what he means. I lose in the second round.

We fly to Paris for the French Open. More red clay. I manage to win my first-rounder, but get spanked in the second. Again, Philly and I try to see something of the city, to improve ourselves. We go to the Louvre. The sheer number of paintings and sculptures daunts us. We don’t know where to turn, how to stand. We can’t comprehend all that we’re seeing. We pass from room to room, dumbstruck. Then we come to a piece that we understand all too well. It’s a painting from the Italian Renaissance and it depicts a young man, naked, standing on a cliff.

With one hand he clutches a bare, breaking tree limb. With the other he holds a woman and two infants. Wrapped around his neck is an old man, perhaps his father, who also grasps a sack of what looks like money. Below them lies an abyss strewn with the bodies of those who couldn’t hold on. Everything depends on this one naked man’s strength - his grip.

The longer you look, I tell Philly, the tighter that old guy’s arm around the hero’s neck feels.

Philly nods. He looks up at the man on the cliff and says softly: Hang in there, bro.

IN JUNE 1987 we go to Wimbledon. I’m scheduled to play a Frenchman, Henri Leconte, on Court 2, known as the Graveyard Court because so many players have suffered fatal losses there. It’s my first time at the most hallowed venue in tennis, and from the moment we arrive I dislike it. I’m a sheltered teenager from Las Vegas with no education. I reject all that’s alien, and London feels as alien as a place can be. The food, the buses, the venerable tradi-tions. Even the grass of Wimbledon smells different from the grass back home, what little there is of it.

More off-putting, Wimbledon officials appear to take a haughty, high-handed pleasure in telling players what to do and what not to do. I resent rules, but especially arbitrary rules. Why must I wear white? I don’t want to wear white. Why should it matter to these people what I wear?

Above all, I take offense at being barred and blocked and made to feel unwanted. I need to show a badge to get into the locker room - and not the main locker room at that. I’m playing in this tournament, but I’m treated as an intruder, not even allowed to practice on the courts where I’ll be competing. I’m restricted to indoor courts up the street. Consequently the first time I ever hit a ball on grass is the first time I play Wimbledon. And what a shock. The ball doesn’t bounce right, doesn’t bounce at all, because this grass isn’t grass, but ice slathered with Vaseline. And I’m so afraid of slipping that I tiptoe. When I look around, to see if the British fans have noticed my discomfort, I get a scare: they’re right on top of me. The building is like a dollhouse. Add my name to the list of those who’ve expired on Graveyard Court. Leconte euthanizes me. I tell Nick that I’m never coming back. I’ll hug my father again before I embrace Wimbledon.

· · ·

STILL IN A FOUL MOOD, I travel several weeks later to Washington, D.C. In the first round, playing Patrick Kuhnen, I come up empty. Bone dry. After the long slog across Europe I have nothing left. The travel, the losses, the stress, it’s all sapped me. Plus, the day is op-pressively hot and I’m not physically fit. I’m wholly unprepared, so I become unpresent. When we’re tied at one set apiece, I leave the court, mentally. My mind departs my body and goes floating out of the arena. I’m long gone when the third set starts. I lose 6:0.

I walk to the net and shake Kuhnen’s hand. He says something, but I can’t see or hear him. He’s a blob of energy at the end of a tube. I grab my tennis bag and stumble out of the arena. I walk across the street, into Rock Creek Park, into some woods, and when I feel sure no one is around, I berate the trees.

I can’t take this shit anymore! I’m fucking done! I quit!

I keep walking, walking, until I come to a clearing, where I find myself surrounded by a group of homeless men. Some are sitting on the ground, some are stretched out on logs, sleeping. Two are playing cards. They all look like trolls in a fairy tale. I walk up to one who seems fairly alert. I unzip my bag and remove several Prince rackets.

Here, man, you want these? Do you? Because I don’t have any use for them anymore.

The man isn’t sure what’s happening, but he’s pretty confident that he’s finally met someone crazier than himself. His buddies shuffle over and I tell them, Gather round, fellas, gather round. It might be a hundred degrees in the shade, but it’s Christmas Eve.