Trophy Son Page 10

  I could feel him seething from across the net. He was scrambling hard, ripping his strokes with anger, desperate on every point. I hadn’t been thinking about putting my foot down on his neck, closing the third and final set decisively. I had been thinking about belly buttons.

  There’s momentum in matches and ninety-nine percent of the time, momentum in tennis works the same way as momentum for things with actual mass. A reversal doesn’t happen immediately. It slows then stops, then picks up speed in a new direction. I was down 5–2, trying to stay in the third set. He won it 6–3.

  The crowd wanted to see more tennis so they were fine with me dropping the third, but when I went down 1–3 in the fourth, they got on my side and got loud.

  I was the eighteen-year-old future of tennis having his breakout year. I had pushed Kovalchuk to the brink only months before. And I was an American. Playing in the US Open. In New York Fucking City.

  It was my serve, down 1–3 in the fourth. Behind my baseline I got a towel and looked over the tennis balls. The fans sensed I was falling out of the match and a chant started in the crowd. One side of the stadium yelled “Anton” then the other half responded “Stratis.” And back and forth it went, from side to side, like a tennis rally. I looked up, around the stadium, realizing the noise was for me, thousands of people trying to pick me up, dust me off, put some fight in me. I wanted to show gratitude so I whipped the towel like a lasso, the way I’d seen in old clips of Steelers fans in the 70s.

  I kept doing this while walking up to the baseline and the chant erupted into a frenzy of indecipherable screams. Every fan was standing, yelling, pumping fists. Nobody noticed the weather anymore. The hotter the better. The umpire called for quiet. I slammed an ace up the middle and the crowd yelled louder than before. They realized they had actual power, that if they worked hard enough, they could affect the match.

  One percent of the time momentum can reverse with zero gravity. I won the fourth set 6–3. The crowd saved me. I loved New York.

  I was so relieved at rescuing a win that I didn’t make any motion to the Nike suite. I also wanted to shake hands with my opponent and not clown around. When I took my seat courtside, I drank water and made a more subtle point to the suite with my racket. She laughed and clapped harder, but no shorts or sports bra came flying out.

  In the post-match presser, one reporter asked if I was in a relationship with Ana Stokke. As a reflex I said we’re just friends. It was a question about my life, not my tennis. It was the first time I felt like a celebrity. A mini one, anyway.

  After media and a shower, I dressed and took a moment to myself in the locker room. No messages on my phone from Ana so I typed one.

  She typed right back.

  I stared at my phone, reading and rereading. Good answer. I pressed the button to make this a phone call and she picked right up.

  “Congratulations. Great match. I’ve never had so much fun at the Open.”

  “Thanks for coming out. It was nice to have a familiar face in the crowd.”

  “I didn’t distract you?”

  “Only a little. It was good.”

  “You were fun to watch. You looked hot out there. Meaning good.”

  Could talking to girls really be this easy? What have I been missing? “Want to meet for dinner in the city tonight?”

  “Oh, I would love to but I can’t. I have a ton of stuff to do. I fly to New Zealand first thing tomorrow.”

  Crap. “Nine months?” I imagined punters in football jerseys running around New Zealand.

  “Yeah.”

  I wondered how far she’d be from Australia. I’d be there in January. “Maybe we’ll manage to see each other before too long.”

  “That would be nice.”

  I could feel it all slipping away. I was back to being the boy from Love in the Time of Cholera. She was being taken away from me, from our fate. “Ana?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just have this feeling.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Like a gypsy read my palm and told me we’re supposed to be together.” Strong stuff. Or stupid stuff, not sure.

  “Oh, that’s so sweet, Anton.”

  Her tone sounded like a college girl who’s been asked to a high school prom. Maybe I was only paranoid. This was the first time since Liz I’d ever verbalized affection for a girl and I had no idea what was happening and didn’t trust my instincts about anyone, especially the instinct that said things are okay. I expected at least some measure of reciprocity. “Well, I hope you have a good flight,” I said.

  “Send me the book.”

  “I will.”

  I hung up. This was the same gypsy who knew I’d play tennis.

  Which books could I send her? Definitely Love in the Time of Cholera. Great love story in the end, really. I could add Portnoy’s Complaint. Too dark, though. Basically porn. I’d have liked her to send it to me but I couldn’t send it to her. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison? Pretty dark too but good for a girl trying to fit in, maybe.

  “Atom Bomb.” It was Adam. He was getting all the rackets together for my next round. “Great match, my man.”

  “Thanks.” Maybe I could talk to Adam about Ana. He might understand. I hoped so. I missed Panos, off having a full life in college. Adam was my only choice.

  “Back to the hotel?” he said.

  “Want to meet for dinner tonight?” I said for the second time in five minutes.

  “Sure. And some PlayStation.”

  “Of course.”

  In the next round I lost to the fifth seed. It was a grinding five-set match. I didn’t play my best or my worst.

  The new rankings were published after the tournament. I was number thirty-two in the world.

  CHAPTER

  20

  I had a good hard court season that fall and the press coverage on me was positive. The analysts seemed to like me, think I was a good kid, good for the game. My play was compared to Patrick Rafter. Tall but with a low center of gravity, can serve and volley, speed to cover the court.

  I loved Rafter’s game but mine was never as pretty as his. Like I said, I was more like Safin, more power than finesse. Safin was still a favorable comparison for me. He was a great player but the career numbers don’t show how great he really was. He was able to stay focused on professional tennis for only a short window of time.

  I would serve and volley about as often as any player on the tour at that time, which wasn’t much. The game changed in the years before I was born. The change was partly due to better technology for the rackets, but even more it was due to better technology for the strings. Strings that could grip a tennis ball so that you could rip a swing with everything you had and put deadly spin on the ball. Gustavo Kuerten had the strings before anyone and won three French Opens before other players caught on.

  These days a player can out-strategize and out-execute a player like Rafa in a point, drive him way off the court, then Rafa from horrible position can rip a ball for a winner and take the point. Bullshit, really. In the old days, equipment didn’t allow that kind of firepower. The game wasn’t about “the shot.” It was about all the shots before “the shot.” Working a point. Some thinking.

  If tennis never allowed changes in technology, if the game never left wood rackets and gut strings, then McEnroe would have gone down as the best ever. He was the best at the old tennis, but technology caught him midcareer.

  The greatest athletes do fine with the old or the new technology. Sampras would have won majors in the woody era too. Now we have guys on the tour built specifically for the new era and they wouldn’t have won a match thirty-five years ago.

  I’d do all right in either generation but I prefer the old one because they didn’t train so much and winning certainly didn’t require drugs.

  I called Ana’s psychiatrist. His name was Peter Minkoff. Our first session was telephonic because I was at a hard court tournament in Croatia.

  “Ana speaks very highly of you,” I sa
id.

  “That’s kind of her. How are things in Croatia?”

  I would have been happy to talk more about Ana. “Going well. I’m in the finals tomorrow. I’m playing well. Feeling healthy.”

  “Your father is there?”

  “Yeah, it’s the same group, always. My dad, Gabe, Bobby and Adam.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said. It was quiet for a while.

  I said, just to be saying something, “So it’s the same.”

  “Right. And I assume that while you may not be looking to break routine entirely, you’re at least looking to change it, or inject something new into it. If you could wave a wand, pick a few things, where would you start? As an exercise, may I ask you to name three things right now that you would change?”

  Specific things I would change. Hmm. Amazingly, I hadn’t done this before, and I didn’t know where to begin. “Doctor, have you seen the movie The King’s Speech?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a scene where Geoffrey Rush is playing the therapist trying to help the king and he says to the king, ‘That’s what friends are for.’ You remember what the king said back to him?”

  “No.”

  “The king said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’”

  “I remember now.”

  “That’s a lot how I feel. I don’t have a place to turn that isn’t a person on my payroll. I don’t have a history of friendships. I don’t even know how they work.”

  “So where would you begin?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “The problem isn’t just about adding something to my routine. It’s way bigger. I have no real relationships and that’s not fixed by tweaking my schedule.”

  “That’s awfully defeatist for a tennis champion. I don’t mean tweaking your schedule. Of course you can make friends by making different decisions in your life.”

  Silence. Maybe a full minute.

  He said, “How did you meet Ana?”

  “I had to go to war with Dad just so I could go out to a restaurant for three hours. I met her there.”

  “Sounds like a new routine.”

  “It was a one-off.”

  “Make it more.”

  “Doc, I’m in a new city every two weeks.”

  “You have friends on the tour? Players near your age?”

  “Sort of. A couple.”

  “Anton, I’m not saying this is an add-water-have-friends type of thing. I’m saying you have to open yourself up to it. Clearly you want relationships, so be open to the small ways that will help you make friends. It could be the little choices of sitting at an empty table for lunch or the table with two people already sitting. Think about those choices when they come to you.”

  “Ana’s still got months in New Zealand,” I blurted out. With busy schedules and different time zones we almost never talked but emailed and texted a lot and usually got back to each other within twenty-four hours.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “I told her I thought it was fate that we would be together.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Stupid.”

  “You believe in fate?” he said.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never thought about taking a firm position on fate. It’s just that sometimes I feel the force of it.”

  “The force of it.”

  “Like I’m on a train, on the rails, moving fast. Sometimes it makes me feel good and sometimes not. Sometimes I feel like I’m bracing for impact, inevitable, and I can picture it like it’s already played out thousands of times. Actors in a Broadway play that do it all over, night after night.” I had my laptop out. I wanted to see the face of Peter Minkoff so I entered the name in a Google search. “Other times I feel like the train is taking me somewhere good. Somewhere I’m supposed to be.”

  “That’s interesting, Anton. I’m sure every train ride has both some good and bad.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Though I think the analogy breaks down when you talk about the rails. You’re not fastened to anything.”

  He was affiliated with some hospital in New York and there was a photo of him on a page of physician bios. He was late fifties, handsome and kindly, like a less effete Mr. Rogers. I said, “Intellectually, I get that. Emotionally, we have some work to do.”

  The next day I won the tournament. From the moment of match point there was a tour official on the court for me. Drug test. If I had needed to go to the bathroom before the awards ceremony, he’d have followed me out, kept eyes on me the whole time and taken the pee.

  I stayed on court for the ceremony though, and afterward the official and I walked off together. He was discreet, standing by the exit of the court, holding a clipboard, tour credentials around his neck and an official T-shirt. He walked behind me into the locker room where there was another official to meet us.

  “Would you like to shower first, Mr. Stratis?”

  I knew how that worked. They would stand right in front of the shower, curtain open, staring in, still holding the clipboard. “No, thanks.”

  If I couldn’t pee, he’d give me water and watch me until I could pee. If I got hungry, he’d get me food to eat, but never leave me alone until he got my pee. “This way, then.”

  We walked to a toilet stall. One official handed me a cup with the cap off and held the stall door open. I peed in the cup, handed it back and they sealed it up. We all signed the paperwork on the clipboard and that was that.

  They tested at lots of tournaments. It was random which ones. After a match the loser is tested. If you keep winning, you get the test after the finals. Croatia was my fourth test while on the drugs. Made me so damn nervous.

  PART II

  maybe … the gypsy lied

  —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

  CHAPTER

  21

  I was nineteen years old. Plenty old enough to vote. Plenty old enough to fight. I was at Wimbledon, holding a world ranking near thirty, trying to move up, and Wimbledon was the place where every player wanted it a little more. It had tradition to the point of stuffiness so players simultaneously wanted to be accepted and also to stuff it right back to them by winning their damn tournament.

  I’d won three tournaments, smaller ones, but had never gone deep at a major. I was rolling at Wimbledon and rolled right into Kovalchuk in the semifinals, our first meeting since I had pushed him at the Miami Open.

  In Miami, the feeling had been electric, the crowd had been with me, my adrenaline surging, and I had put it all to good use, a man possessed.

  Wimbledon was different. I was in possession of myself. I didn’t go for big, risky shots like a player hoping to pull off an upset. I was calm, even steely, played my regular game the way I’d play it against anyone. The crowd was neutral and hushed the way Wimbledon crowds are. The match was two professionals, focused, lining up against each other in quiet fury.

  He beat me in five sets, but I knew he was more afraid of me after that match. When we shook hands at the net I could see that he felt he’d beaten me for the last time, that I would run him down like a racehorse on the last stretch when his ears go flat back and the ground is a blur underneath. Ilya would watch me go by, helpless. I was fourteen years younger. He had to know someone was coming for him.

  I didn’t think much about getting caught myself then because nineteen-year-olds believe in invincibility and immortality, or at least they aren’t conscious of the truth, but eventually someone would have to come defeat me, kill me. Of course they would.

  After the match, I saw Mom and Dad for dinner. We went to a restaurant which we never did until the tournament was over for me.

  “Anton, how are you feeling, honey? Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the room to lie down?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Your muscles must be getting tight.”

  “I’m good.”

  Dad drank his wine and said, “He could play another five sets right now, dear.”

  Mom travelled to all the majors, but that’
s only four tournaments each year so it was uncommon for her to be at the post-match meal. Dad had a near-photographic memory when it came to recounting the match, remembering exactly when certain points happened, even going shot by shot through the point. I guessed it was an expression of love. Getting through the commentary without acting like a disinterested teenage brat was a special challenge.

  “Well, we’ll get you back to the room early for some rest. Maybe we can watch a movie together?”

  “Sure,” I said. I ate steak with potatoes and water.

  I didn’t feel that close to Mom then. I loved her, she loved me, but she took a backseat in my tennis life and tennis was nearly the totality of me. Her role as co-parent, let alone primary parent, ended by the time I was six years old, and I resented her for signing over her place with me so easily. From my perspective, it seemed too easy.

  “Do you feel like drama or comedy?” she said.

  “Drama,” I said. I didn’t care, but if I said I didn’t care then conversation about which type of movie would go on another ten minutes.

  “Oh, good, me too. I looked through the on-demand menu and there are some great ones.”

  Dad ate. When we weren’t talking about tennis at the table, he got his bites in.

  If I were one of the millions of kids living in a home below the poverty line, or living in a country where my family, friends and I were on the run from genocidal warriors, then I would understand my unhappiness, could draw a straight line from poverty and genocide to despair.

  I looked across to two loving parents dedicated to me, who loved me in their ways. I looked down at a $45 steak. Only a very selfish and bad person would feel less than fortunate. Less than happy.

  But a person is happy in his life only if he finds meaning in it, and meaning in life is positively correlated with choice in life. While I wasn’t conscious of that fact then, I suffered from it unknowingly.

  CHAPTER

  22

  I clicked through photos of Ana with Ryan Hall walking the red carpet in Los Angeles for the premier of her movie. There were about twenty photos and in most of them his hand was on the lowest part of her lower back. Ryan Hall had a part in the same film but Ana was the star. He had the same agent as Ana and the damned agent kept plopping them in the same films together. Apparently agents did that, Ana had explained to me.