Trophy Son(6)

Our training got more and more that way. Beat me, love me. Like Ike Turner.





CHAPTER

4

Dad had been both my trainer and coach from the beginning. He had done the same for Panos who was slightly smaller and less physical than I was. Panos grew to be 6'1", two inches shorter than I would be, but he was quick and could have been a great player. The problem was that Dad made what he thought were mistakes in the way that he disciplined Panos and he wouldn’t make those mistakes with me. He had been inconsistent with Panos, let him have too many glimpses of life not under Dad’s thumb. He made sure early on with me.

Mom and Dad always let me read. They encouraged it. If I couldn’t go anywhere physically, I could at least take a journey with a book. When I read a book I liked, I would then read everything else by that author so my reading came in phases defined by the writer. I had a Hemingway phase, Faulkner, John Irving, Nelson DeMille. When I was fourteen, I was in the middle of my Dickens phase.

I loved Dickens. Unfairness, unhappiness, suffering, heroes and villains, glimmers of hope at love and of a way out. David Copperfield was the best and the best of that was the opening line, the idea of being the hero of your own life. I thought so much back then about whether or not I would be the hero of my own life. Now I understand how turned around my interpretation of that line was. Back then I took it as a mandate to succeed, win tournaments, be the best. But being the number one tennis player doesn’t make me the hero of my own life. It makes me the hero of someone else’s life. Maybe Dad’s.

Being the hero of my own life is about something else, something internal. It’s about who has their hands on the steering wheel that’s inside me. It needed to be me and it never was then, and I didn’t understand that until much later.

At fourteen I equated heroism with winning at tennis. I was determined and successful.

Dad wanted to manage me the way Richard Williams managed Venus and Serena. He wanted to develop me in secret, apart from the tennis tour, then I would be this enigma who one day sprang onto the circuit and kicked everyone’s ass.

But men develop differently than women. Female prodigies can dominate the pros as early as fifteen. Men take several more years to mature physically and I think mentally too. There was no way to keep me in secret that long. I needed to improve by playing matches with good players. That meant playing satellite tournaments. I started to win. A lot. I got noticed.

I was not yet fifteen and won a competitive sixteen-and-under tournament in Florida. I was playing great then, and I was happy. Not because of my tennis results but because of the life of travel. Travel was new to me and new stuff made me happy. I hadn’t learned to hate hotels yet. The palm trees, flat terrain and big skies of Florida still felt exotic and were a pleasant benefit of my hard work.

Dad and I would sit in first class where I’d look through magazine pages of impossibly blue waters, white sand and tan legs. Pictures of healthy indulgences that were restorative and deserved. Achievement and reward. Those places were never our destination but I loved those magazines and studied them.

“Anton!”

“Yes?”

“I’m with USTA Magazine.”

“Hi.” I was walking off the court after the quick ceremony at the net for my tournament win. Dad saw us from the bleachers but the reporter got to me first.

“May I ask you some questions?”

“Sure,” I said.

“What will you do after winning a match like this?”

“Take a shower. Eat something.” My answer was so moronic I realized it may even have sounded flip. “I think Dad and I are flying home to Philadelphia tonight.” This sounded more sophisticated.

The reporter held up a recording device. “Which pro do you admire most, past or present?”

I thought Agassi, Rafter, McEnroe, Federer. My game wasn’t much like any of theirs, I just liked them. My game was more like Marat Safin. Tall guy, big serve, moved well, ugly but good two-handed backhand. I was trying to pick one of my favorites when Dad stepped up to us and said, “Anton’s not like anyone else. He’s a unique talent.”

The reporter said, “You must be Mr. Stratis. Congratulations on your son’s win today.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m with USTA Magazine. I’m hoping to ask a few questions for an article we’d like to run on Anton.”

Dad wanted to say no. Every blood vessel in his body was pumping no but the interview was already somewhat under way which meant he’d have to cut it off right in the guy’s face and that could result in bad publicity. All he wanted was no publicity for me.

I had not been expected to go far in this tournament, let alone win it, so Dad was in as great a mood as I’d ever seen him and this carried the moment. “Sure,” he said. “Five minutes.”

Back then, in conversations I always stood with my head tipped down a bit and I’d look ahead at the other person the way people look over reading glasses that are perched on the bridge of their nose.

It wasn’t that I was shy. It was that I was handsome and I’d never gotten anything but scorn from Dad for being handsome. It’s one thing not to emphasize positive feedback on looks. It’s another to actively de-emphasize it.

Dad knew attention to looks diluted attention to tennis. Not just the potential distraction of girls, but he didn’t want me to have anything of personal value other than skill on the court. He’d prefer me ugly. Obedient and focused like a dog.