Trophy Son(24)

The first thing I noticed when taking the court against Ilya was that there were fifty times more cameras than I’d ever played in front of before. Flashes popped and shutters clicked like a swarm of locusts. There were the big TV kind of cameras pumping the match out to homes around the world. I saw John McEnroe. He looked right at me so I waved. Even in repose he always had this intense furrow in his brow like he was going to serve one up the middle on you. He just nodded back to me and the nod seemed to say, “You’re an American. Don’t disappoint me.”

I took my chair courtside and I wasn’t rattled at all. I wanted to get out there and crank my serve up, blow everyone’s hair back. I had inhuman, synthetic strength running through me, new muscles I hadn’t experienced before, and I was still very impressed with myself.

Against the world number one I had nothing to lose. I took the court and played big and aggressive. I went for my serves, my forehands, even my backhands and they were all landing. I played up by the baseline, dictating points, pushing Ilya back into the fans.

He was feeling around for my weak spots. He’d never played me before, probably hadn’t seen much of a scouting report on me so he had to find my weaknesses in real time. He was a more seasoned, smarter match player than I was but his smarts wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t impose his will.

I kept pounding the ball, ripping low percentage service returns that went in anyway.

He was such a pro. I got a few raised eyebrows from him but he didn’t rattle. He was used to lower ranked players going for broke against him. That can win some games but it’s hard for those low percentages to survive a whole match. He wanted to keep fighting, keep probing me, wait for the match to settle in.

I took the first set.

At the changeover, he looked up at his player box to his coach. I knew he was thinking, “Who is this kid?” It was the same reaction as my first-round opponent. He wasn’t having an off day and I wasn’t having a fluke. I was a big, strong, fast player with lots of weapons and I was pushing him around, controlling the match. It wouldn’t be enough for him to step it up. He needed something from me. He needed me to take my foot off the gas. This match would be determined by me, not him, and I could see he knew that. It was the first glimmer of concern in his expression.

I started the second set the same way I started the first. The drugs had a beautiful effect on me. I had no soreness and was stronger but that was only half of it. It was also psychological.

My body was an endless well. I could keep scooping out buckets of water and never run dry. That gave me the confidence to go pick a fight because I knew I couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t get tired, couldn’t lose my breath even for a moment no matter how hard I ran. Picking a fight, metaphorically, on the tennis court is a powerful thing. Most fights never actually happen. It’s just that one person shows a greater willingness to fight and so then he’s the winner.

I broke his serve then held mine to go up 3–0 in the second set. It’s a best of three sets match so I was three games from beating this guy. McEnroe might smile, even hug me. This was my match to lose.

And it was that subtle shift in how to think about the moment that changed the match. After all my great play, I had something to lose now. I let him back in. Instead of going for everything, I gave myself a few more inches from the line, bigger margin, better percentages, but he got to my shots just a little bit more easily and rather than just managing to get my shots back, he got them back with purpose, with a plan. Now I was the one lunging, reacting to missiles coming in at angles. He won the second and third sets. Match to the world number one.

I felt great anyway. No win had ever made me feel better than this loss had. For a set and a half I had controlled play with the best player in the world. I had all the pieces, I needed only to put them together and keep them together, then I would dominate the tour.

Dad had seen everything I had felt. He entered me in hard court and clay court tournaments around Europe for the summer. It was time to travel, be a real pro.

*

Every aspect of the tour required conditioning. I needed to condition myself to life in hotels, to living out of a suitcase for months at a time, to surroundings that slid past me like an Epcot trip around the world.

Looking back these years later, I wish I had done more to experience life then. All those cities, people. I never once went to a museum, a show, an urban park. Weeks at a time in Paris every year and all I ever did was make nonstop trips between the courts and the hotel room where I ate, slept, played PlayStation and read books. The irony was that the farther I got from home as my travel world expanded, the more my professional shell constricted.

My time in foreign cities was spent in an impenetrable bubble, like travelling in the Popemobile, only the bubble wasn’t so much to prevent threats to my security but threats to my focus. All of this reinforced my one-dimensional self. It was an opportunity blown.

I would still count paces down hallways to the elevator, stripes in a carpet pattern, the number of French fries on a plate next to my cheeseburger. I’d sit to lunch with Adam and after a period of silence he’d say, “How many, Anton,” and I’d laugh then say, “Thirty-four. Thirty-four French fries.”

In the early years I didn’t socialize much at all with other players. Lots of guys on tour would get together in each other’s rooms to play poker, watch movies, play video games. I was socially timid and it didn’t help that I was a few years younger than everyone. I just read a lot of books which was something I had in common with absolutely no one else.