Open: An Autobiography

Gil and Philly and I don’t want to deal with the press, the crowds, Paris. We don’t enjoy feeling alien, getting lost, having people stare at us because we speak English. So we lock ourselves in my hotel room, turn up the air-conditioning and send out for McDonald’s and Burger King.

Nick, however, gets a nasty case of cabin fever. He wants to go out, see the sights. Guys, he says, we’re in Paris! Eiffel Tower? The frickin’ Louvre?

Been there, done that, Philly says.

I don’t want to go near the Louvre. And I don’t have to. I can close my eyes and see the scary painting of the man hanging from the cliff while his father clutches at his neck and his other loved ones hang from his limbs.

I tell Nick, I don’t want to see anything or anyone. I just want to win this fucking thing and go home.

I MARCH THROUGH THE EARLY ROUNDS, playing well, and then run into Courier again. He wins the first set in a tiebreak but falters and gives me the second. I take the third and then, in the fourth, he curls up and dies, 6:0. His face turns red. His face turns Hot Lava.

I want to tell him: I hope that was enough cardio for you. But I don’t. Maybe I’m maturing.

Without question I’m getting stronger.

Next up is Chang. The defending champ. I play with a chip on my shoulder, because I still can’t believe he’s won a slam before me. I envy his work ethic, admire his court discipline - but I just don’t like the guy. He continues to say without compunction that Christ is on his side of the court, a blend of egotism and religion that chafes me. I beat him in four.

In the semis I play Jonas Svensson. He has a massive serve that kicks like a mule, and he’s never afraid to come to the net. He plays better on fast surfaces, however, so I feel good about catching him on the clay. Since he has a big, looping forehand, I decide early that I’m going to bum-rush his backhand. Again and again I go to that vulnerable backhand, seizing a quick lead, 5:1. Svensson doesn’t recover. Set, Agassi. In the second set I grab a 4:0 lead.

He breaks back to 3:4. That’s as close as I let him get. To his credit, he finds a ray of confidence and wins the third set. Normally I’d be rattled. But this year I look to my box and see Gil.

I replay his parking lot speech, and win the fourth set, 6:3.

I’m in the final - at last. My first final at a slam. I’m facing Gomez, from Ecuador, whom I just beat weeks ago. He’s thirty, on the verge of retiring - in fact, I thought he was retired. At last, the newspapers say, Agassi is going to realize his potential.

THEN, CATASTROPHE STRIKES. The night before the final, I’m taking a shower and I feel the hairpiece Philly bought me suddenly disintegrate in my hands. I must have used the wrong kind of conditioner. The weave is coming undone - the damned thing is falling apart.

In a state of abject panic I summon Philly to my hotel room.

Fucking disaster, I tell him. My hairpiece - look!

He examines it.

We’ll let it dry, then clip it in place, he says.

With what?

Bobby pins.

He runs all over Paris looking for bobby pins. He can’t find any. He phones me and says, What the hell kind of city is this? No bobby pins?

In the hotel lobby he bumps into Chris Evert and asks her for bobby pins. She doesn’t have any. She asks why he needs them. He doesn’t answer. At last he finds a friend of our sister Rita, who has a bag full of bobby pins. He helps me reconfigure the hairpiece and set it in place, and keeps it there with no fewer than twenty bobby pins.

Will it hold? I ask.

Yeah, yeah. Just don’t move around a lot.

We both laugh darkly.

Of course I could play without my hairpiece. But after months and months of derision, criticism, mockery, I’m too self-conscious. Image Is Everything? What would they say if they knew I’ve been wearing a hairpiece all this time? Win or lose, they wouldn’t talk about my game. They would talk only about my hair. Instead of a few kids at the Bollettieri Academy laughing at me, or twelve thousand Germans at Davis Cup, the whole world would be laughing. I can close my eyes and almost hear it. And I know I can’t take it.

WARMING UP BEFORE THE MATCH, I pray. Not for a win, but for my hairpiece to stay on. Under normal circumstances, playing in my first final of a slam, I’d be tense. But my tenu-ous hairpiece has me catatonic. Whether or not it’s slipping, I imagine that it’s slipping. With every lunge, every leap, I picture it landing on the clay, like a hawk my father shot from the sky. I can hear a gasp going up from the crowd. I can picture millions of people suddenly leaning closer to their TVs, turning to each other and in dozens of languages and dialects saying some version of: Did Andre Agassi’s hair just fall off?