Open
Andre Agassi
The End
Pressure is how you know everything’s working, the doctor said. Words to live by, Doc.
| Location: 71 |
Color: yellow |
The finish line at the end of a career is no different from the finish line at the end of a match. The objective is to get within reach of that finish line, because then it gives off a magnetic force. When you’re close, you can feel that force pulling you, and you can use that force to get across. But just before you come within range, or just after, you feel another force, equally strong, pushing you away. It’s inexplicable, mystical, these twin forces, these contradictory energies, but they both exist.
| Location: 110 |
Color: yellow |
One thing I’ve learned in twenty-nine years of playing tennis: Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.
| Location: 117 |
Color: blue |
It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice. But if tennis is life, then what follows tennis must be the unknowable void. The thought makes me cold.
| Location: 124 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 2
My father says that when he boxed, he always wanted to take a guy’s best punch. He tells me one day on the tennis court: When you know that you just took the other guy’s best punch, and you’re still standing, and the other guy knows it, you will rip the heart right out of him. In tennis, he says, same rule. Attack the other man’s strength. If the man is a server, take away his serve. If he’s a power player, overpower him. If he has a big forehand, takes pride in his forehand, go after his forehand until he hates his forehand. My father has a special name for this contrarian strategy. He calls it putting a blister on the other guy’s brain. With this strategy, this brutal philosophy, he stamps me for life. He turns me into a boxer with a tennis racket. More, since most tennis players pride themselves on their serve, my father turns me into a counterpuncher—a returner.
| Location: 752 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 11
Andre, I won’t ever try to change you, because I’ve never tried to change anybody. If I could change somebody, I’d change myself. But I know I can give you structure and a blueprint to achieve what you want. There’s a difference between a plow horse and a racehorse. You don’t treat them the same. You hear all this talk about treating people equally, and I’m not sure equal means the same. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a racehorse, and I’ll always treat you accordingly. I’ll be firm, but fair. I’ll lead, never push. I’m not one of those people who expresses or articulates feelings very well, but from now on, just know this: It’s on, man. It is on. You know what I’m saying? We’re in a fight, and you can count on me until the last man is standing. Somewhere up there is a star with your name on it. I might not be able to help you find it, but I’ve got pretty strong shoulders, and you can stand on my shoulders while you’re looking for that star. You hear? For as long as you want. Stand on my shoulders and reach, man. Reach.
| Location: 2704 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 12
Qué lindo es soñar despierto, he says. How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you’re awake, Andre. Anybody can dream while they’re asleep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them. In other words, when in the final of a slam, I must dream. I must play to win.
| Location: 2785 |
Color: yellow |
for an added dash of inspiration, he’ll sometimes tell me to step aside, and he’ll lift his personal best—550 pounds. It’s an awesome sight to see a man put that much iron above his chest, and it always makes me think that anything is possible. How beautiful to dream. But dreams, I tell Gil, in one of our quiet moments, are so damned tiring. He laughs. I can’t promise you that you won’t be tired, he says. But please know this. There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.
| Location: 2795 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 13
He says nothing. Not because he disagrees, or disapproves, but because he’s crying. Faintly I hear my father sniffling and wiping away tears, and I know he’s proud, just incapable of expressing it. I can’t fault the man for not knowing how to say what’s in his heart. It’s the family curse.
| Location: 2995 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 14
But I don’t feel that Wimbledon has changed me. I feel, in fact, as if I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.
| Location: 3022 |
Color: yellow |
Brooke knows exactly what she wants. She sees her dreams and doesn’t falter in describing them, even if she’s having trouble figuring out how to make them come true. Five years older than I, she’s more worldly, more aware, and yet she also gives off an airy innocence, a neediness, which makes me want to protect her. She brings out the Gil in me, a side I didn’t know I had.
| Location: 3270 |
Color: yellow |
Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. He tells them: We are like blocks of stone … [T]he blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect.
| Location: 3290 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 15
When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent game-wise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose.
| Location: 3406 |
Color: yellow |
put it this way. It takes twenty-one sets to win a slam. That’s all. You need to win just twenty-one sets. Seven matches, best of five. That’s twenty-one. In tennis, like cards, twenty-one’s a winner. Blackjack! Focus on that number, and you won’t go wrong. Simplify, simplify. Every time you win a set, say to yourself, That’s one down. That’s one in my pocket. At the start of a tournament, count backward from twenty-one. That’s positive thinking, see? Of course, speaking for myself, when I’m playing blackjack, I’d rather win with sixteen, because that’s winning ugly. No need to win with twenty-one. No need to be perfect.
| Location: 3411 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 19
I try to talk myself out of it. I tell myself that you can’t be unhappy when you have money in the bank and own your own plane. But I can’t help it, I feel listless, hopeless, trapped in a life I didn’t choose, hounded by people I can’t see. And I can’t discuss any of it with Brooke, because I can’t admit to such weakness. Feeling depressed after a loss is one thing, but feeling depressed about nothing, about life in general, is another thing altogether. I can’t feel this way. I refuse to admit that I feel this way.
| Location: 4255 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 21
I think about something Mandela said once in an interview: No matter where you are in life, there is always more journey ahead. And I think of one of Mandela’s favorite quotes, from the poem Invictus, which sustained him during those moments when he thought his journey had been cut short: I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
| Location: 4844 |
Color: yellow |
Chapter 25
She laughs and laughs, and it feels good to make my sister laugh when every day does its best to make her cry.
| Location: 6137 |
Color: yellow |