Open: An Autobiography

SOMETIMES A WORKOUT WITH GIL is actually a conversation. We don’t touch a single weight. We sit on the free benches and free-associate. There are many ways, Gil says, of getting strong, and sometimes talking is the best way. When he’s not teaching me about my body, I’m teaching him about tennis, the life on tour. I tell him how the game is organized, the circuit of minor tournaments and the four majors, or Grand Slams, that all players use as yardsticks. I tell him about the tennis calendar, how we start the year on the other side of the world, at the Australian Open, and then just chase the sun. Next comes clay season, in Europe, which culminates in Paris with the French Open. Then comes June, grass season, and Wimbledon. I stick out my tongue and make a face. Then come the dog days, the hard-court season, which concludes with the U.S. Open. Then the indoor season - Stuttgart, Paris, the World Championships. It’s all very Groundhog Day. Same venues, same opponents, only the years and scores are different, and over time the scores all run together like phone numbers.

I try to tell Gil about my psyche. I start at the beginning, the central truth.

He laughs. You don’t actually hate tennis, he says.

I do, Gil, I really do.

He gets a look on his face, and I wonder if he’s thinking he might have quit his job at UN-LV too soon.

If that’s true, he says, why play?

I’m not suited for anything else. I don’t know how to do anything else. Tennis is the only thing I’m qualified for. Also, my father would have a fit if I did anything different.

Gil scratches his ear. This is a new one on him. He’s known hundreds of athletes, but he’s never known one who hated athletics. He doesn’t know what to say. I reassure him that there’s nothing to be said. I don’t understand it myself. I can only tell him how it is.

I also tell Gil about the Image Is Everything debacle. I feel, somehow, that he needs to know, so he’ll understand what he’s got himself into. The whole thing still makes me angry, but now the anger has seeped down deep. Hard to talk about, hard to reach. It feels like a spoonful of acid in the pit of my stomach. Hearing about it, Gil feels angry too, but he has less trouble accessing his anger. He wants to act on it, right now. He wants to punch out an advertising exec or two. He says: Some slap-dick on Madison Avenue puts together a silly ad campaign, and gets you to say a line into a camera, and it means something about you?

Millions of people think so. And say so. And write so.

They took advantage of you, he says. Plain and simple. Not your fault. You didn’t know what you were saying, you didn’t know how it would be taken and twisted and misinterpreted.

Our talks carry beyond the weight room. We go out for dinner. We go out for breakfast.

We’re on the phone six times a day. I call Gil late one night and we talk for hours. As the conversation winds down he says, Do you want to come over tomorrow and get in a workout?

I’d love to, but I’m in Tokyo.

We’ve been talking for three hours and you’re in Tokyo? I thought you were across town. I feel guilty, man. I’ve been keeping you all this - .

He stops himself. He says, You know what? I don’t feel guilty. Nah. I feel honored. You needed to talk to me, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Tokyo or Timbuktu. I get it. All right, man, I get it.

From the start, Gil keeps a careful record of my workouts. He buys a brown ledger and marks down every rep, every set, every exercise - every day. He records my weight, my diet, my pulse, my travel. In the margins he draws diagrams and even pictures. He says he wants to chart my progress, compile a database he can refer to in the coming years. He’s making a study of me, so he can rebuild me from the ground up. He’s like Michelangelo appraising a block of marble, but he’s not put off by my flaws. He’s like da Vinci getting it all down in his notebooks. I see in Gil’s notebooks, in the care he takes with them, in the way he never skips a day, that I inspire him, and this inspires me.

It goes without saying that Gil will travel with me to many tournaments. He needs to watch my conditioning in matches, monitor my food, make sure I’m always hydrated. (But not just hydrated. Gil has a special concoction of water, carbs, salt, and electrolytes that I need to drink the night before every match.) His training doesn’t end on the road. If anything, it becomes more important on the road.

Our first trip together, we agree, will be February 1990, to Scottsdale. I tell Gil we’ll need to be there a couple of nights before the tournament starts, for the hit-and-giggle.

Hit-and-what?

It’s an exhibition with some celebrities to raise money for charity, to make corporate sponsors feel good, to entertain the fans.

Sounds fun.

What’s more, I tell him, we’re going to drive over in my new Corvette. I can’t wait to show him how fast it goes.