Open (54 page)

It’s my fifty-first tournament victory, my seven hundredth victory overall. And yet I have no doubt I’ll remember this tournament less for beating Federer than for that one belly laugh. I wonder if the laugh had something to do with the win. It’s easier to be free and loose, to be yourself, after laughing with the ones you love. The right attachments.

I
FALL INTO A NICE GROOVE
with Darren in early 2002. We speak the same language, see the world in similar colors. Then he cements my
trust, my unwavering confidence, by daring to fuss with my racket strings—and improving them.

I’ve always played with ProBlend, a string that’s half Kevlar, half nylon. You can reel in an eight-hundred-pound marlin with ProBlend. It never breaks, never forgives, but also never generates spin. It’s like hitting the ball with a garbage can lid. People talk about the game changing, about players growing more powerful, and rackets getting bigger, but the most dramatic change in recent years is the strings. The advent of a new elastic polyester string, which creates vicious topspin, has turned average players into greats, and greats into legends.

Still, I’ve always been reluctant to change. Now Darren urges me to try. We’re in Italy, at the Italian Open. I’ve just played Nicolas Kiefer, from Germany, in the first round. I’ve beaten him, 6–3, 6–2, and I’m telling Darren that I should have lost. I played lousy. I have no confidence on this dirt, I tell him. The clay game has passed me by.

Give the new string a go, mate.

I frown. I’m skeptical. I tried changing my racket once. It wasn’t pretty.

He puts the string on one of my rackets and says again, Just try.

In a practice session I don’t miss a ball for two hours. Then I don’t miss a ball for the rest of the tournament. I’ve never won the Italian Open before, but I win it now, because of Darren and his miracle string.

I
SUDDENLY LOOK FORWARD TO
the 2002 French Open. I’m excited, eager for the fight, and guardedly optimistic. I’m coming off a win, Jaden is sleeping a bit more, and I have a new weapon. In the fourth round I’m down two sets and a break to a wild card, a Frenchman named Paul-Henri Mathieu. He’s twenty, but he’s not in the shape I’m in. There’s no clock in tennis, son. I can be out here all day.

Down comes the rain. I sit in the locker room and reminisce about Brad yelling at me in 1999. I hear his tirade, word for word. When we walk back onto the court I’m smiling. I’m up 40–love, and Mathieu breaks me. I don’t care. I simply break back. In the fifth set he goes up, 3–1. Again I refuse to lose.

If it had been anyone but Agassi, Mathieu tells reporters afterward, I would have won.

Next I face Juan Carlos Ferrero, from Spain. Again it rains; this time I ask that the match be halted for the night. Ferrero is ahead, and he doesn’t want to stop. He gets surly when officials grant my request and suspend the
match. The next day he takes his surliness out on me. I have a small opportunity in the third set, but he quickly closes it. He wins the set, and I can see his confidence rising off him like steam as he closes me out.

I feel peaceful walking with Darren off the court. I like the way I played. I made mistakes, my game sprang leaks, but I know we’ll work to patch them. My back is sore, but mostly from stooping to help Jaden walk. A wonderful soreness.

Weeks later we go to the 2002 Wimbledon, and my great new attitude abandons me, because my new string undoes me. On grass my newly augmented topspin makes the ball sit up like a helium balloon. In the second round I play Paradorn Srichaphan, from Thailand. He’s good, but not this good. He’s crushing everything I hit. He’s ranked number sixty-seven, and I think it’s impossible that he’ll beat me, and then he breaks me in the first set.

I try everything to get back on track. Nothing works. My ball is a cream puff, and Srichaphan devours it. I’ve never seen an opponent’s eyes grow quite so large as Srichaphan’s when he tees up my forehand. He’s swinging from his heels, and my only conscious, coherent thought is: I wish I could swing from my heels and be rewarded. How can I let everyone in this stadium know that this isn’t me, this isn’t my fault? It’s the strings. In the second set I make adjustments, fight back, play well, but Srichaphan is supremely confident. He thinks it’s his day, and when you think it’s your day, it usually is. He hits a wild shot that magically catches a piece of the back line, then wins a tiebreak, going up two sets. In the third set I surrender peacefully.

It’s cold comfort that, the same day, Pete loses.

Darren and I spend the next two days experimenting with different combinations of strings. I tell him I can’t continue with his new polyester, and yet he’s ruined me for the old string. If I have to go back to ProBlend, I say, I won’t play tennis anymore.

He looks grim. After being my coach for six months, he’s made one tiny adjustment to my strings, and he may have inadvertently hastened my retirement. He promises that he’ll do everything in his power to find a combination of strings that’s just right.

Find something, I tell him, that lets me swing from my heels and get rewarded. Like Srichaphan. Make me like Srichaphan.

Done, mate.

He works night and day and comes up with a combination he likes. We go to Los Angeles, and it’s perfection. I win the Mercedes-Benz Cup.

We go to Cincinnati and I play well, just not well enough to win. Then
in D.C. I beat Enqvist, always a tough matchup for me. I then face another kid who’s supposed to be the next big thing—twenty-two-year-old James Blake. He plays pretty, graceful tennis, and I’m not in his league, not today. He’s simply younger, faster, a better athlete. He also thinks enough of my history, my accomplishments, to bring his A game. I like that he comes out loaded for bear. It’s flattering, even though it means I have no chance. The loss is nothing I can blame on my strings.

I go to the 2002 U.S. Open unsure what to expect from myself. I sail through the early rounds, and in the quarters I face Max Mirnyi, a Belarusian from Minsk. They call him the Beast, and it’s an understatement. He’s six foot five and hits a serve that’s among the scariest I’ve ever faced. It has a burning yellow tail, like a comet, as it arcs high above the net and then swoops down upon you. I have no answer for that serve. He wins the first set with beastly ease.

In the second set, however, Mirnyi makes several unforced errors, giving me a boost, a bit of momentum. I start to see his first serve a little better. We play high-quality tennis all the way to the finish, and when his last forehand flies long, I can’t believe it. I’m in the semis.

For my efforts I win a date with Hewitt, the number one seed, the winner of this year’s Wimbledon. More germane, he’s Darren’s former pupil. That Darren coached Hewitt for years adds an extra level of intensity and pressure. Darren wants me to beat Hewitt; I want to beat Hewitt for Darren. But in the first set I quickly fall behind, 0–3. I have all this information in my head about Hewitt, data from Darren and from past experience, but it takes a while to sort through the data and solve him. When I do, everything quickly changes. I storm back and win the first set, 6–4. I see the pilot light in Hewitt’s eyes go out. I win the second set. He rallies, wins the third. In the fourth set he suddenly can’t make a first serve, and I’m able to pounce on his second. Jesus, I’m in the final.

Which means Pete. As always, Pete. We’ve played thirty-three times in our careers, four times in slam finals. He’s got the overall edge, 19–14, and 3–1 in slam finals. He says I bring out the best in him, but I think he’s brought out the worst in me. The night before the final I can’t help but think of all the different times I thought I was going to beat Pete, knew I was going to beat Pete, needed to beat Pete, only to lose. And his success against me started right here, in New York, twelve years ago, when he stunned me in straight sets. I was the favorite then, as I am now.

Sipping Gil’s magic water before bed, I tell myself that this time will be different. Pete hasn’t won a slam in more than two years. He’s nearing the end. I’m just starting over.

I climb under the covers and remember a time in Palm Springs, several years ago. Brad and I were eating at an Italian restaurant, Mama Gina’s, and we saw Pete eating with friends on the other side of the dining room. He stopped by and said hello on his way out. Good luck tomorrow. You too. Then we watched him through the restaurant window, waiting for his car. We said nothing, each of us thinking of the difference he’d made in our lives. As Pete drove away I asked Brad how much he thought Pete tipped the valet.

Brad hooted. Five bucks, tops.

No way, I said. The guy’s got millions. He’s earned forty mil in prize money alone. He’s got to be good for at least a ten spot.

Bet?

Bet.

We ate fast and rushed outside. Listen, I told the valet, give us the absolute truth: How much did Mr. Sampras tip you?

The kid looked at his feet. He didn’t want to tell. He was weighing, wondering if he was on a hidden-camera show.

We told the kid we had a bet riding on this, so we absolutely were insisting he tell us. Finally he whispered: You really want to know?

Shoot.

He gave me a dollar.

Brad put a hand on his heart.

But that’s not all, the kid said. He gave me a dollar—and he told me to be sure to give it to whichever kid actually brought his car around.

We could not be more different, Pete and I, and as I fall asleep the night before perhaps our
final
final, I vow that the world will see our differences tomorrow.

W
E GET A LATE START
, thanks to a New York Jets game that goes into overtime, delaying the TV broadcast, and this favors me. I’m in better shape, and I like that we’re going to be out on the court until midnight. But I immediately fall behind two sets. Another drubbing at the hands of Pete—I cannot
believe
this is happening.

Then I notice Pete looking wrung out. And old. I win the third set by a mile, and the whole stadium can feel the momentum slide my way. The crowd is crazy. They don’t care who wins, they just want to see an Agassi-Sampras five-setter. As the fourth set gets under way I know, deep in my heart, as I always know with Pete, that if I can get this thing to a fifth set, I’ll win. I’m fresher. I’m playing better. We’re the oldest players to meet in
the U.S. Open final in more than thirty years, but I’m feeling like one of the teenagers who have lately been kicking ass on tour. I feel like part of the new generation.

A private word with Pete Sampras after the final of the 2002 U.S. Open

At 3–4, Pete is serving, and I have two break points. If I win this game I’ll serve for the set. So this is it, the game of the match. He locks in, saves the first, and on the second break point I hit a scorching return at his shoes. I think the ball is well behind him—I’m already celebrating—but somehow he turns and finds it and hits a half-volley that flops and dies on my side of the net. Deuce.

I’m spooked. Pete closes out the game, then goes on to break me.

Now he’s serving for the match, and when Pete serves for a match, he’s a coldblooded killer. Everything happens very fast.

Ace. Blur. Backhand volley, no way to reach it.

Applause. Handshake at the net.

Pete gives me a friendly smile, a pat on the back, but the expression on his face is unmistakable. I’ve seen it before.

Here’s a buck, kid. Bring my car around.

I
OPEN MY EYES SLOWLY
. I’m on the floor beside my bed. I sit up to say good morning to Stefanie, then realize she’s in Vegas and I’m in St. Petersburg. No, wait—St. Petersburg was last week.

I’m in Paris.

No, Paris was after St. Petersburg.

I’m in Shanghai. Yes, that’s right, China.

I go to the window, draw back the curtains. A skyline designed by someone on mushrooms. A skyline that looks like a sci-fi Vegas. Every building is crazily different, and all set against a hard blue sky. It doesn’t matter where I am, strictly speaking, because parts of me are still in Russia and France and the last dozen places I’ve played. And the biggest part of me, as always, is home with Stefanie and Jaden.

No matter where I am, however, the tennis court is the same, and so is the goal—I want to be number one at the end of 2002. If I can put together a win here in Shanghai, one little win, I’ll be the oldest year-end number one in men’s tennis history, breaking Connors’s record.

He’s a punk—you’re a legend!

I want this, I tell myself. I don’t need it, but I do want it.

I order coffee from room service, then sit at the desk and write in my journal. It’s not like me to keep a journal, but I’ve recently begun one, and it’s quickly become a habit. I’m compelled to write. I’m obsessed with leaving a record, in part because I’ve developed a gnawing fear that I won’t be around long enough for Jaden to know me. I live on airplanes, and with the world becoming more dangerous, more unpredictable, I fear that I won’t be able to tell Jaden all that I’ve seen and learned. So every night, wherever I am, I jot a few lines to him. Random thoughts, impressions, lessons learned. Now, before going to the Shanghai stadium, I write: