Open (57 page)

I swear off newspapers and magazines.

In late summer I play the Mercedes-Benz Cup and I win. Jaden is now old enough to watch me play, and during the trophy ceremony he comes running onto the court, thinking the trophy is his. Which it is.

I go to Montreal and scratch and claw my way to the final against a Spanish kid everyone is talking about. Rafael Nadal. I can’t beat him. I can’t fathom him. I’ve never seen anyone move like that on a tennis court.

At the 2005 U.S. Open I’m a novelty, a sideshow, a thirty-five-year-old playing in a slam. It’s my twentieth year in a row at this tournament—many of this year’s players haven’t been alive twenty years. I remember playing Connors and knocking him out of his twentieth U.S. Open. I’m not the type to ask, Where did the years go? I know exactly where they went. I can feel every set in my spine.

I play Razvan Sabau, from Romania, in the first round. I’ve had my fourth and final cortisone shot of the year, so my back feels numb. I’m able to hit my meat-and-potatoes shot, which gives Sabau problems. When your basic shot hurts someone, when they’re falling behind on the shot you can make a hundred out of a hundred times, you know the day is going to be fine. It’s as though your jab is leaving marks on a guy’s jaw, and you still haven’t thrown your haymaker. I beat him in sixty-nine minutes.

Reporters say it was a massacre. They ask if I feel bad about beating him.

I say: I would never want to deprive anybody of the learning experience of losing.

They laugh.

I’m serious.

In the second round I play Ivo Karlovic, from Croatia. They list him as six foot ten, but he must have been standing in a ditch when they measured. He’s a totem pole, a telephone pole, which gives his serve a sick trajectory. When Karlovic serves, the box technically becomes twice as large.
The net becomes a foot lower. I’ve never played anyone so big. I don’t know how to prepare for an opponent his size.

In the locker room I introduce myself to Karlovic. He’s sweet, fresh-faced, starry-eyed about being in the U.S. Open. I ask him to raise his serving arm as high as he can, then I call Darren over. We crane our necks, looking up, trying to see the tips of Karlovic’s fingers. We can’t.

Now, I say to Darren, try to imagine a racket in that arm. And now imagine him jumping. And
now—
imagine where the face of the racket would be and imagine the ball zinging off that racket. It’s like he’s serving from the freaking blimp.

Darren laughs. Karlovic laughs. He says, I would trade you my reach for your return game.

Fortunately, I know Karlovic’s height will also be a liability for him at times in the match. Low balls will be problematic. Lunging won’t be easy. Also, Darren says Karlovic’s movement is dodgy. I remind myself not to spend energy worrying about how many times he aces me. Just wait for the one or two times he misses a first serve, then pounce on that second. Those will decide the match. And though Karlovic knows this also, I need to make him know it more. I need to make him feel it, by applying pressure on the second serve, which means never missing.

I beat him in straight sets.

In the third round I play Tomas Berdych, a tennis player’s player. I faced him before, nearly two years ago, in the second round of the Australian Open. Darren warned me: You’re about to play an eighteen-year-old kid who has real game, and you’d better be on it. He can rip the ball up both sides, he has a bomb of a serve, and in a few years he’s going to be top ten.

Darren wasn’t overselling it. Berdych was one of the best tennis players I’d faced all year. I beat him in Australia, 6–0, 6–2, 6–4, and felt fortunate. I thought: Good thing this is only best of five.

Now, surprisingly, Berdych hasn’t improved much since then. His decision-making still needs work. He’s like me before I met Brad: thinks he needs to win every point. He doesn’t know the value of letting the other guy lose. When I beat him, when I shake his hand, I want to tell him to relax, it takes some people longer than others to learn. But I can’t. It’s not my place.

Next I play Xavier Malisse, from Belgium. He moves admirably well and has a slingshot of an arm. He features a meaty forehand and an acing serve, but he’s not consistent. Also, his backhand is mediocre: it
looks as if it should be great, because he’s so comfortable hitting it, but he’s more interested in the way it looks than actually executing it. He simply cannot hit a backhand up the line, and if you can’t do that, you can’t beat me. I control the court too well. If you can’t hit a backhand up the line, I’ll dictate every point. An opponent has to move me, stretch me off the mark, put me in a position where I’m dealing with him, or else he’ll have to play on my terms. And my terms are harsh. Especially as I get older.

The night before the match, I have a drink with Courier at the hotel. He warns me that Malisse is playing well.

Maybe, I say, but I’m actually looking forward to it. You won’t hear me saying this often, but this is going to be fun.

The match
is
fun, like a puppet show. I feel as if I’m holding a string and each time I pull it, Malisse jumps. I’m astonished, yet again, by the connection between two players on a tennis court. The net, which supposedly separates you, actually links you like a web. After two bruising hours you’re convinced that you’re locked in a cage with your opponent. You could swear that his sweat is spraying you, his breath is fogging your eyes.

I’m up two sets to none, dominating. Malisse has no faith in himself. He doesn’t believe he belongs out here. But as the third set starts Malisse finally gets tired of being pulled from side to side. Such is life. He gets mad, plays with passion, and soon he’s doing things that surprise even himself. He’s hitting that backhand up the line, crisply, consistently. I glare at him with an expression that says, I’ll believe that if you keep doing it.

He keeps doing it.

I see relief in his face and body language. He still doesn’t think he’s going to win, but he does think he’s going to make a good show, and that’s enough. He takes the third set in a tiebreak. Now I’m livid. I have better things to do than stand out here with you for another hour. Just for that, I’m going to make you cramp.

But Malisse isn’t taking orders from me anymore. One set, one little set, has completely changed his demeanor, restored his confidence. He’s no longer afraid. He only wanted to make a good show, and he has, so now he’s playing with house money. In the fourth set our roles reverse, and he dictates the pace. He wins the set and ties the match.

In the fifth set, however, he’s spent, whereas I’m just beginning to draw on funds long deposited in the Bank of Gil. It isn’t close. Coming to the net, he smiles, accords me tremendous respect. I’m old, and he’s
made me older, but he knows that I’ve made him work, that I’ve forced him to dig deep and learn about himself.

In the locker room, Courier finds me, punches my shoulder.

He says, You called your shot. You told me you were going to have fun—you looked like you were having fun.

Fun. If I had fun, why do I feel as if I got hit by a truck?

I’
M READY FOR A MONTH IN A HOT TUB
, but my next match looms, and my opponent is playing like a man possessed. Blake. He smoked me the last time we met, in D.C., by getting and staying aggressive. Everyone says he’s grown steadily better since that day.

My only hope is that he doesn’t play aggressive this time out. Especially since it’s cooler. In cool weather the court in New York plays slower, which favors a guy like Blake, who’s so damned fast. On a slow court Blake can get to everything, and you can’t, and thus he can make you press. You feel a need to do more than you normally do, and from there everything goes haywire.

The moment we step onto the court, my worst nightmare comes true. Blake is Mr. Aggressive, standing inside the baseline on my second serves, taking full cuts off both wings, making me feel urgency right from the opening minute. He smothers me in the first set, 6–3. In the second set he gives me a second helping of the same: 6–3.

Early in the third set the match takes on shades of Malisse. Except I’m Malisse. I can’t beat this guy, I know I can’t, so I may as well just try to give a good show. Freed from thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic. I see Blake take a step back and register the change.
What just happened?
He’s been beating my brains in for seven straight rounds, and at the end of the eighth I land one sneaky punch, wobbling him just as the bell rings. Now he’s walking to his corner, unable to believe that his hobbled, demoralized opponent still has life.

Blake has a huge following in New York, and they’re all here tonight. Nike, which no longer endorses me, gives his supporters T-shirts and urges them to cheer. When I outplay Blake in the third, they stop cheering. When I win the set, they fall silent.

Throughout the fourth set, Blake’s panicking, no longer being aggressive. I can see him thinking, can almost
hear
him thinking: Damn, I can’t do anything right.

I win the fourth set.

Now that Blake has seen the benefits of my not thinking, he decides he’s going to try it. As the fifth set unfolds, he turns off his brain. At last, after nearly three hours, we meet on equal terms. We’re both on fire, and his on-fire is slightly better than my on-fire. In the tenth game he has a chance to serve out the match.

Then he starts thinking again. The contrarian brain. He presses, I hit three first-class returns, break him, and the crowd changes its mind. They chant,
An-
dre,
An-
dre.

I serve. I hold.

During the changeover the stadium sounds like a rock concert. My ears are ringing. My temples are pounding. It’s so loud that I wrap my head in a towel.

He serves. He holds. We’re going to a tiebreak.

I’ve heard old-timers say that the fifth set has nothing to do with tennis. It’s true. The fifth set is about emotion and conditioning. Slowly I leave my body. Nice knowing you, body. I’ve had several out-of-body experiences over my career, but this one is healthy. I trust my skill, and I step out of its way. I remove myself from the equation. At match point, 6–5, I hit a solid serve. He returns to my forehand. I hit a quality ball to his backhand. He’s moving around it, and I know
—mistake
. If he’s running around my quality ball, that means he’s pressing. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s putting himself out of position, letting the ball play him. He’s not giving himself an opportunity to hit the best possible shot. Thus I know that one of two things is about to happen. He’s going to be handcuffed by my ball and hit it weakly. Or he’s going to be forced into an error.

Either way, I have a pretty good idea the ball is coming right here. I look at the spot where it’s sure to land. Blake wheels, throws his lower torso out of the way and coldcocks the ball. It lands ten feet from where I expected. Winner.

I was completely wrong.

I do the only thing I can do. Walk back. Prepare for the next point.

At six–all we have a murderous rally, backhand to backhand, and I’m a big loose bag of rattling nerves. In a ten-stroke backhand rally, you know somebody’s going to raise the stakes at any moment, and you’re always sure it’s going to be your opponent. I wait. And wait. But with each stroke, Blake doesn’t raise the stakes. So it falls to me. I step in as if I’m going to cane the ball and instead I hit a backhand drop shot. I’m all in.

There are times in a match when you want to put just a solid, serviceable swing on the ball, but your blood is so full of adrenaline that you hit it big. This happens often to Blake, not with his swing but his speed. He runs faster than he means to run. He feels so much urgency that he sprints to a ball and gets there sooner than he anticipated. This is what happens now. Sprinting all-out for my backhand drop, he has the racket gripped in such a way that he’s going to have to dig, but instead he gets there so fast he doesn’t need to dig. Meaning, the ball is on him and he has the wrong grip. Instead of crushing the ball, as he should, he’s forced by his grip to punch the ball. Then he holds ground at the net, and I lace a backhand up the line. It passes him by a fair margin.

Now he’s serving at 6–7. I have match point again. He misses the first serve. I have a nanosecond to decide where he’s coming with his second serve. Aggressive? Safe? I decide he’s going to err on the side of safety. He’s going to roll it to my backhand. So how aggressive do I want to be? Where do I want to station myself? Should I make an irrevocable decision, stand where I can kill the ball if I’m correct, but where I won’t be able to reach it if I’m wrong? Or should I split the difference, stand in the middle ground, where I’ll be able to hit a moderately good shot on most serves, and a perfect shot on none?

If there is to be a final decision in this match, one final decision on this night of 100,000 decisions, I want that final decision to be mine. I irrevocably commit. He serves, as expected, to my backhand. It hangs just where I thought it would hang, like a soap bubble. I feel all the hairs on my body rise. I feel the crowd rise. I tell myself: Quality cut, rip it, rip it,
rip it, you fuck
. As the ball leaves my racket I track every inch of its flight. I see the shadow of the ball converging with the ball itself. As they slowly become one, I’m saying aloud: Ball, please please find a hole.

It does.

When Blake hugs me at the net, we know we’ve done something special. But I know it better, because I’ve played eight hundred more matches than he has. And this match stands apart from the others. I’ve never been more intellectually aware, never felt the need to be more intellectually aware, and I take a certain intellectual pride in the finished product. I want to sign it.

After they cut the tape off my feet, after the news conference, Gil and Perry and Darren and Philly and I go to P. J. Clarke’s for food and drinks. By the time I get back to the hotel it’s four in the morning. Stefanie is asleep. As I come in she sits up in bed and smiles.