Sunday, October 4, 2020 - Sporting reflections: Andre Agassi’s Open - “The End” - from the U.S. Open - August 31, 2006

I first felt compelled to read Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open, earlier this year. I could have sworn that it was at my parent’s house, and I spent an afternoon looking for it, but without any luck. Two months later I felt the pull to read it again, and this time I wouldn’t give up until I found it. I had spent the last two weeks of March, and the entire month of April, and the first three weeks of May in the Midwest, away from New York, and I had decided that I wasn’t going back to New York without Open.

I played tennis only in spots while growing up. And though I was on the middle school team in eighth grade, after one season, I quickly decided that I’d focus all of the attention and energy that I had reserved for athletics on one sport: soccer.

I played again a few times with a few friends ––– here and there, while in college; and also once or twice over at the clay courts along Riverside Park circa 2014 and 2015, but I never made the time to commit to consistently re-learning and enjoying the game again. Still, there must have been something unresolved within me –––-– stemming from my thirteen-year-old self, who had ditched the tennis racket and shorts with pockets and committed to the soccer cleats (and goalkeeper gloves), who needed to be heard.

Find Agassi’s book, Open, read it –––– find it now, read it now, I kept thinking, until one afternoon, I found it. Once I was back in New York, as the city was settling into its early shutdown rhythm and slowed pace, I set the book atop my refrigerator and didn’t touch it. As I had a copy of Open, I knew that I had access to a few of Agassi’s reflections, and maybe this was enough for a while –––– just to know that I could, at any moment, actually begin reading. Two more months passed.

Then one morning in August I read the introduction, “The End” –––– in which Agassi describes his preparations for the final match of his career that he would win, a 2006 U.S. Open second round draw against Marcos Baghdatis. It’s four hours! And went like this: 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5.

The third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs of Open’s first page, below: More reflections to follow.

“I’m a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if ninety-six. After three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body, especially in the morning. Consequently my mind doesn’t feel like my mind. Upon opening my eyes I’m a stranger to myself, and while, again, this isn’t new, in the mornings it’s more pronounced. I run quickly through the basic facts. My name is Andre Agassi. My wife is Stefanie Graf. We have two children, a son and a daughter, five and three. We live in Las Vegas, Nevada, but currently reside in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City, because I’m playing in the 2006 U.S. Open. My last U.S. Open. In fact my last tournament ever. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.

As this last piece of identity falls into place, I slide to my knees and in a whisper I say: Please let this be over.

Then: I’m not ready for it to be over.”