Most embarrassing (for me) and most impressive (for Andre), though, weren’t those trademarked two-handed backhands, nor his blistering forehands, but something else entirely—a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as it were. I could see them coming from across the court. Like anyone who’s played the game for a while, I can read—with my eyes, and my ears, and especially by noting what kind of path the ball is taking over the net toward me—what kind of shot my opponent is hitting. The most obvious options are a flat ball that bounces more or less where it should, a heavy topspin shot that’s going to nosedive on my side of the net and then kick up high and mighty, or a slice cut with underspin that skids and drastically slows down upon impact. So I saw Andre’s right hand go high behind him before chopping down low, sending the ball floating my way, slow and low, giving me plenty of time to get into place to dig it out with a wicked topspin cross-court backhand. Advantage, theoretically, me, right?
Here’s the thing: That ball never came anywhere near my racquet. I was swinging—through thin air—at the ball I was expecting, the ball virtually anyone I’ve ever played with delivered to me when swinging their racquet like this. What I actually got was magic—a ball that essentially died upon impact with the ground, a grass-court bounce on a hard court. I should have dropped my racquet and broken into applause, truly; instead, I burst out laughing again.
“What?!” Andre yelled from across the net. “It’s just a drop shot. Do you want me to hit it harder?”
After a half hour or so of this—the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all, the ecstacy (his shots) and the agony (my shots), I waved the white flag, and Andre and I walked to the side of the court, where two of the Emirates cabin crew were waiting for us with cold towels for our faces and ice water in crystal glasses perched on a tray.
After Andre dispensed some more advice (it seems that what I need to do in tennis more than anything, really, is to quiet down my body), I had one last question for him. It was about what he’d said up in the suite, about always being honest about how he felt about the game. It’s something Andre has a lot to say about in his autobiography, Open—truly not only one of the greatest books about tennis ever written, but one of the best, most open and honest memoirs I’ve ever read.
