Open (55 page)

I close the journal, walk out of the room, and get clipped by Jiri Novak, from the Czech Republic. Humiliating. Worse, I can’t leave the country and go home. I have to hang around an extra day to play a kind of consolation match.

Back at the hotel, choked with emotion, I write again to Jaden:

A
T THE END OF THE YEAR
, as expected, Hewitt is number one. I tell Gil we need to take it up a notch. He outlines a new regimen for the older me. He pulls ideas from his da Vinci notebooks, and we spend weeks working solely on my deteriorating lower body. Day in, day out, he stands over me as I build my legs, yelling,
Big thunder! Australia’s calling!

Weak legs command, Gil says. Strong legs obey.

By the time we board the Ambien Express, Vegas to Melbourne, I feel as if I could run or swim there. I’m the second seed in the 2003 Australian Open, and I come out growling, ferocious. I reach the semis and beat Ferreira in ninety minutes. In six matches I’ve dropped only one set.

In the final I face Rainer Schuettler, from Germany. I win three straight sets, losing only five games and tying the most lopsided victory ever at the Australian Open. My eighth slam, and it’s my best performance ever. I tease Stefanie that it’s like one of her matches, the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing her kind of dominance.

As they hand me the trophy, I tell the crowd: There’s not a single day that’s guaranteed to us, and certainly days like this are very rare.

Someone says later that I sounded as if I’d had a near-death experience.

More like a near-life experience. It’s how a person talks when he almost didn’t live.

I’m the oldest player in thirty-one years to win a slam, and reporters won’t let me hear the end of it. Again and again, before I leave Australia, reporters ask if I have a plan for retirement. I tell them I don’t plan endings any more than I plan beginnings. I’m the last of a generation, they say. Last of the 1980s Mohicans. Chang announces he’s retiring. Courier is already three years into his retirement. People treat me like a codger, because Stefanie is expecting again and it’s well known that we tool around Vegas in a minivan. Still, I feel eternal.

Ironically, my lack of flexibility seems to be stretching out my career. It helps my durability. Since I can’t turn well, I always keep the racket close to my body, always keep the ball out in front of me. Thus, I don’t put unnecessary stress and torque on my frame. With such form, Gil says, my body might have another three years in it.

A
FTER A SHORT BREATHER IN
V
EGAS
, we fly to Key Biscayne. I’ve won this tournament two years in a row, five times overall, and nothing can stop me. I reach the final and beat Moyá, my old adversary from the French Open, who’s ranked number five. Straight sets. My sixth win here, which tops Stefanie’s record. Again, I tease her about finally doing something better than she did it. She’s so competitive, however, I know not to tease her too much.

P
LAYING IN THE
U.S. M
EN’S
C
LAY
C
OURT
C
HAMPIONSHIPS
, in Houston, I just need to reach the finals and I’ll be ranked number one again. And I do. I beat Jürgen Melzer, 6–4, 6–1, and go out with Darren and Gil to celebrate. I throw down several vodka-cranberries. I don’t care
that I’m playing in the final against Roddick tomorrow—I’m already ranked number one.

Which is why I beat him. That perfect blend of caring and not caring, the best preparation.

Days before my thirty-third birthday, I’m the oldest player ever ranked number one. I fly to Rome, feeling like Ponce de León, and get off the plane feeling a geriatric twinge in my shoulder. In the first round I play poorly, but don’t dwell on it, put it out of my mind. Weeks later, at the 2003 French Open, my shoulder is still sore, but my practices are crisp. Darren says I’m a force.

In the second round, I’m on the Suzanne Lenglen Court, a court filled with bad memories. Losing to Woodruff in 1996. Losing to Safin in 1998. I’m playing a kid from Croatia, Mario Ancic. I lose the first two sets and trail in the third. He’s nineteen years old, six foot five, a serve-and-volleyer with no fear of me. The Lenglen court is supposed to be denser, slower, but today the ball is moving fast. I’m having an unusually hard time controlling it. I gather myself, however, and win the next two sets. In the fifth, exhausted, my shoulder falling off, I have match point four times, and lose them all. I double fault three of them. I beat the kid, at last, but only because he’s slightly more afraid of losing than I am.

I’m in the quarters against Guillermo Coria, from Argentina, another youngster. He says publicly I’m his idol. Listen, I tell reporters, I’d rather not be his idol and play him on hard court than be his idol and play him on clay. How I hate this dirt. I lose four of the first five games. Then I win the set. How I love this dirt.

Coria shows no emotion, however. In the second set he jumps out to a 5–1 lead. He misses nothing. He’s fast and getting faster. Was I ever that fast? I try to confuse him, rush the net—to no avail. He’s just better than me today. He knocks me out of the tournament, and out of the number one slot.

In England, at a warm-up tournament before Wimbledon, I beat Peter Luczak, from Australia. It’s the one thousandth match of my career. When someone tells me this, I feel an overpowering need to sit down. I have a glass of wine with Stefanie and try to run my mind over all one thousand matches. I remember every one of them, I tell her.

Of course, she says.

For Stefanie’s birthday I take her to see Annie Lennox in London. She’s one of Stefanie’s favorites, but tonight she’s my muse. Tonight she’s
singing, speaking, directly to me. In fact I make a point to tell Gil that we’ll need to include some Lennox on
Belly Cramps 2
. I might listen to her before every match.

My two greatest sources of strength, Gil and Stefanie, sitting in my box at the 2003 Australian Open

Shortly after winning the 2003 Australian Open

I’
M ONE OF THE FAVORITES
at the 2003 Wimbledon. How? No father has won Wimbledon since the 1980s. Fathers don’t win slams. In the third round I play Younes El Aynaoui, from Morocco. He’s a new father too. I joke with reporters that I look forward to playing a man who gets as little sleep as I.

In his pre-match instructions Darren says: When you get this guy bled out to the backhand, early in the match, when you see him hit his slice, be sure to take it out of the air. That way you’ll put him on notice that he can’t get away with safe shots from a defensive position. He needs to hit something special. That’s how you’ll send him a message early and force him into errors later in the match.

Good advice. I quickly grab a lead, two sets to one, but El Aynaoui won’t cave. He pours it on in the fourth, gets three set points. I don’t want this thing going five. I refuse to let it go five. The final points of the fourth set are grueling, and I do everything required, everything Darren advised. When it’s over, when I’ve won the set and match, I’m wiped out. I have a day off, but I know it’s not nearly enough.

In the fourth round I face Mark Philippoussis, an Australian kid with tons of talent and a reputation for squandering it. His serve is big, infamously big, and never bigger than today. He’s topping out at 140 miles an hour. He aces me forty-six times. Still, the match goes where we both know it’s going, a fifth set. At 3–4, he’s serving, and somehow I have break point. He misses the first serve. I taste the victory. He unloads a 138-mile-per-hour second serve, straight up the middle. Obscene speed, but that’s right where I thought he’d hit it. I put the racket out, reflex the ball back to him, and he can only stand and watch. He almost gets whiplash. And yet it lands a half inch behind the baseline. Out.

Had it fallen in, I’d have had the break, the momentum, and I’d be serving for the match. But it’s not to be. Now, believing he can win, Philippoussis stands a little taller, and breaks me. It’s all gone in a blink. One minute, I’m almost serving for the match, the next minute he’s raising his arms in conquest. Tennis.

In the locker room my body feels different. Grass has become an ordeal, and a five-setter on grass leaves me physically shattered. Also, the courts at Wimbledon are playing truer this year, which has meant longer rallies, more movement, more lunging and bending. My back is suddenly an issue. It’s never been good, but now it’s actively, troublingly bad. Pain runs from my back, down my butt, circumvents my knee, then reconnects with my shin and shoots down to my ankle. I’m grateful that I haven’t beaten Philippoussis, that I haven’t advanced in the tournament, because I’d have to forfeit the next match.

A
S THE
2003 U.S. O
PEN GETS UNDER WAY
, Pete announces his retirement. He stops several times during his news conference to collect himself. I find myself deeply affected as well. Our rivalry has been one of the lodestars of my career. Losing to Pete has caused me enormous pain, but in the long run it’s also made me more resilient. If I’d beaten Pete more often, or if he’d come along in a different generation, I’d have a better record, and I might go down as a better player, but I’d be less.

For hours after Pete’s news conference I feel a sharp loneliness. I’m the last one standing. I’m the last American slam winner still playing. I tell reporters: You sort of expect to leave the dance with the ones you came with. Then I realize this is the wrong analogy, because I’m not leaving the dance—they are. I’m still dancing.

I reach the quarters. I face Coria, who knocked me out of the French Open. I’m itching to lace them up, get out there, but we’re delayed for days by rain. Holed up in the hotel, there is nothing to do but wait and read. I watch raindrops slide down the window, each one as gray as the hairs of my stubble. Each raindrop seems like a minute forever melting away.

Gil forces me to drink Gil Water and rest. He says it’s going to be good, but he knows. Time is running out. Finally the clouds part and we’re on the court and Coria isn’t the same guy I saw in Paris. He has a leg injury, which I exploit. I run him, merciless, grind him down to dust, and win the first two sets.

In the third set I have four match points—and lose them all. I look to the box and see Gil, squirming. In my entire career he’s never once taken a bathroom break during one of my matches. Never. Not once. He says he doesn’t want to take the chance that I’ll look to my box and not see him
there and panic. He deserves better than this. I refocus. I click the lens left, then right, and serve out the match.

There is no time to rest. All the rain has shrunk the tournament schedule. I have to play the semifinal the next day, against Ferrero, who just won the French Open. He has so much confidence, it’s shooting from his pores. He’s a hundred years younger than I am, and it shows. He puts me away in four sets.