Open: An Autobiography

Then, at Lake Mead, we film several scenes against the watery backdrop.

It all seems silly, goofy, but harmless.

Back in Vegas we do a series of shots on the Strip, then around a swimming pool. As luck would have it, they choose the pool at good old Cambridge Racquet Club. Finally, we set up for one last shot at a Vegas country club. The director puts me in a white suit, then has me drive up to the front portico in a white Lamborghini. Step out of the car, he says, turn to the camera, lower your black sunglasses, and say, Image Is Everything.

Image Is Everything?

Yes. Image Is Everything.

Between takes I look around and in the crowd of spectators I see Wendi, the former ballgirl, my childhood crush, all grown up. Now she’s definitely come a long way since the Alan King tournament.

She’s carrying a suitcase. She’s just dropped out of college and she’s just come home.

You were the first person I wanted to see, she says.

She looks beautiful. Her brown hair is long, curly, and her eyes are impossibly green.

She’s all I can think about while the director is ordering me around. As the sun goes down, the director yells, Cut! That’s a wrap! Wendi and I jump into my new Jeep, the doors and top off, and go roaring away like Bonnie and Clyde.

Wendi says, What was that slogan they kept making you say into the camera?

Image Is Everything.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Beats me. It’s for a camera company.

WEEKS LATER I BEGIN TO HEAR this slogan twice a day. Then six times a day. Then ten. It reminds me of those Vegas windstorms, the kind that begin with a faint, ominous rust-ling of leaves, and ultimately turn into high-pitched, gale-force, three-day blows.

Overnight the slogan becomes synonymous with me. Sportswriters liken this slogan to my inner nature, my essential being. They say it’s my philosophy, my religion, and they predict it’s going to be my epitaph. They say I’m nothing but image, I have no substance, because I haven’t won a slam. They say the slogan is proof that I’m just a pitchman, trading on my fame, caring only about money and nothing about tennis. Fans at my matches begin taunting me with the slogan. Come on, Andre - image is everything! They yell this if I show any emotion. They yell it if I show no emotion. They yell it when I win. They yell it when I lose.

This ubiquitous slogan, and the wave of hostility and criticism and sarcasm it sets off, is excruciating. I feel betrayed - by the advertising agency, the Canon execs, the sportswriters, the fans. I feel abandoned. I feel the way I did when I arrived at the Bollettieri Academy.

The ultimate indignity, however, is when people insist that I’ve called myself an empty image, that I’ve proclaimed it, simply because I spoke the line in a commercial. They treat this ridiculous throwaway slogan as if it’s my Confession, which makes as much sense as arresting Marlon Brando for murder because of a line he uttered in The Godfather.

As the ad campaign widens, as this insidious slogan creeps its way into every article about me, I change. I develop an edge, a mean streak. I stop giving interviews. I lash out at linesmen, opponents, reporters - even fans. I feel justified, because the world is against me, the world is trying to screw me. I’m becoming my father.

When crowds boo, when they yell, Image is everything, I yell back. As much as you don’t want me here, that’s how much I don’t want to be here! In Indianapolis, after a particularly bad loss, and a sonorous booing, a reporter asks me what went wrong. You didn’t seem like yourself today, he says with a smile that isn’t a smile. Something bothering you?

I tell him, in so many words, to kiss my ass.

No one counsels me that you should never snap at reporters. No one bothers to explain that snapping, baring your fangs, makes reporters more rabid. Don’t show them fear, but don’t show them your fangs, either. Even if someone were to give me this sensible advice, I don’t know that I could take it.

Instead I hide. I act like a fugitive, and my accomplices in seclusion are Philly and J.P. We go every night to an old coffee shop on the Strip, a place called the Peppermill. We drink bottomless cups of coffee and eat slabs of pie and talk and talk - and sing. J.P. has made the leap from pastor to composer-musician. He’s moved to Orange County and rededicated his life to music. Along with Philly we belt out our favorite songs until the other customers at the Peppermill turn and stare.

J.P. is also a frustrated comedian, a devotee of Jerry Lewis, and he slips in and out of slapstick routines that leave Philly and me weak from laughter. We then try to out-slapstick J.P. We dance around the waitress, crawl along the floor, and eventually the three of us are laughing so hard that we can’t breathe. I laugh more than I’ve laughed since I was a boy, and even though it’s tinged with hysteria, the laughter has healing properties. For a few hours, late at night, laughter makes me feel like the old Andre, whoever that is.

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