Open: An Autobiography

Something about these people, these emerald mountains, this Vermont air - I win the tournament. I wake soon after to discover that I’m number four in the world. But I’m too spent to celebrate. Between Pat and Davis Cup and the grind of the tour, I’m sleeping twelve hours a night.

I fly to New York in the late summer to play a minor tournament in New Jersey, a tune-up for the 1988 U.S. Open. I reach the final and face Tarango. I beat him soundly, a delicious victory, because I can still close my eyes and see Tarango cheating me when I was eight. My first loss. I’ll never forget. Each time I hit a winner I think, Fuck you, Jeff. Fuck. You.

At the U.S. Open I reach the quarters. I’m due to face Jimmy Connors. Before the match I approach him meekly in the locker room and remind him that we once met. In Las Vegas? I was four? You were playing at Caesars Palace? We hit some balls together?

Nope, he says.

Oh. Well. Actually, we met again, several times, when I was seven. I used to deliver rackets to you? My father strung your rackets whenever you came to town, and I’d bring them to you at your favorite restaurant on the Strip?

Nope, he says again, then lies back on a bench and pulls a long white towel over his legs and closes his eyes.

Dismissed.

This gibes with everything I’ve heard about Connors from other players. Asshole, they say. Rude, condescending, egomaniac prick. But I thought he’d treat me differently, I thought he’d show me some love, given our longtime connection.

Just for that, I tell Perry, I’m beating this guy in three easy sets - and he’s going to win no more than nine games.

The crowd is pulling for Connors. It’s the opposite of Stratton. Here, I’m cast as the bad guy. I’m the impertinent upstart who dares to oppose the elder statesman. The crowd wants Connors to defy the odds, and Father Time, and I’m standing in the way of that dream scenario. Each time they cheer I think: Do they realize what this guy is like in the locker room? Do they know what his peers say about him? Do they have any concept of how he responds to a friendly hello?

I’m cruising, winning easily, when a man in the upper bleachers calls out, C’mon, Jimmy, he’s a punk - you’re a legend! The words hang in midair for a moment, bigger and louder than the Goodyear Blimp overhead, and then twenty thousand fans guffaw. Connors cracks a sly smile, nods, and hits a ball as a souvenir to the man who yelled.

Now the crowd erupts. A standing ovation.

Running on adrenaline and anger, I punk the legend in the final set, 6:1.

After the match, I tell reporters about my pre-match prediction, and then they tell Connors.

He says: I enjoy playing guys who could be my children. Maybe he’s one of them. I spent a lot of time in Vegas.

In the semis I lose again to Lendl. I take him to a fourth set, but he’s too strong. Trying to wear him out, I wear myself out. Despite the best efforts of Limping Lenny and Pat the Spitting Chilean, I’m not able to stay with a man of Lendl’s caliber. I tell myself that when I get back to Vegas, the search must continue for someone, anyone, who can make me battle ready.

BUT NO ONE CAN MAKE me ready for the battle with the media, because it’s not really a battle, it’s a massacre. Each day brings another anti-Agassi screed in another magazine or newspaper. A dig from a fellow player. A diatribe from a sportswriter. A fresh piece of libel, served up as analysis. I’m a punk, I’m a clown, I’m a fraud, I’m a fluke. I have a high ranking because of a conspiracy, a cabal of networks and teenagers. I don’t rate the attention I get because I haven’t won a slam.

Millions of fans like me, apparently. I get potato sacks full of fan mail, including naked pictures of women with their phone numbers scrawled along the margin. And yet each day I’m vilified because of my look, because of my behavior, because of no reason at all. I absorb the role of villain-rebel, accept it, grow into it. The role seems like part of my job, so I play it. Before long, however, I’m being typecast. I’m to be the villain-rebel forever, in every match and every tournament.

I turn to Perry. I fly back east and visit him for a weekend. He’s studying business at Georgetown. We go out for big dinners, and he takes me to his favorite local bar, the Tombs, and over beers he does what Perry has always done. He reshapes my anguish, makes it more logical and articulate. If I’m a returner, he’s a reworder. First, he redefines the problem as a negotiation between me and the world. Then he clarifies the terms of the negotiation. He grants that it’s horrible to be a sensitive person who’s publicly excoriated every day, but he insists it’s only temporary. There’s a time limit to this torture. Things will get better, he says, the moment I start to win Grand Slams.