Break Point : THE SECRET DIARY OF A PRO TENNIS PLAYER (eBook)

JANUARY 4, 2005 Auckland, New Zealand A Qantas 747 airliner sets tire marks on the Auckland airport runway. Sweat is dripping from my forehead. I have both a backache and headache. For the past 14 hours after leaving Los Angeles International Airport - 14 hours in a machine 30,000 feet above a deep blue sea - I've been crammed into a coach seat. Now I've finally arrived in New Zealand, my eleventh trip to this part of the Pacific. This is crazy. I'm restless, anxious, barely self-contained as I realize how far I have just traveled to play in a tennis competition. When you're on the tour for 12 years, more than occasionally you have what can only be characterized as Trips from Hell. I had occupied the last seat on the plane, 72H, and it didn't even fully recline. I felt like a packed sardine, knees to my chest, no elbow room, limited food and drink offerings. When we finally landed, I was dehydrated and delirious. This is just two days after I'd celebrated New Year's in L.A. with friends and family, making this trip more sentimental and emotional than most. Spadea arriving in New Zealand, on New Year's I was dancing on the ceiling, now I'm squealing, appealing, praying and kneeling, but 2005 has begun, Vince gotta continue the run, gonna have more fun than when I turned 21. This is the unglamorous side of a tennis professional's life. The travel is one of the main reasons you see so few players over 30 years old on the tour these days. When players start thinking of retirement, especially champions like Sampras and Pat Rafter, who have earned more money and glory than they could expect in ten lifetimes, it's the excessive travel that curtails their careers more than anything else. The time spent in airports, on planes, in taxis - and the delays of missing luggage and drivers who get lost on the way to the tournament hotel or courts - wears on one's stamina and patience. Bjrn Borg retired for the first time at 25, Sampras retired for good at the 'old' age of 31, and Rafter, at 29. This life of being constantly on the road, away from family and friends for ten months of the year - that's right, ten months is the length of one pro tennis season - gets to you every now and then. It's getting to me right now, and I'm preparing to play just my first tournament of the season. I'd played my last tournament of 2004 at the end of October, and then I was on the American Davis Cup team that played the finals into December in Spain. So I'd had less than one month of an off-season - if you can call practicing twice a day for two of those weeks and working out every day in the gym downtime. Okay, so you're thinking, 'What a spoiled brat this guy is. He gets to fly to New Zealand and Australia to play tennis, and he's complaining about it.' But what some of you might not realize is that there's a major difference between taking a relaxing vacation and traveling to 'go to work.' This journey is costing me around $7,000 in airplane tickets, hotel rooms, and coaching fees for three weeks in which I will play two tournaments, one here in New Zealand, and then the big one in Australia, the first Grand Slam of 2005, the Australian Open. Usually, I also play the tournament in Adelaide beforeAuckland, but this year, because of my short off-season, I decided to skip that one. I've made this exact trip 11 times now - no questions asked - having missed it only in 1993 when I was just starting out on tour, and in 1997 because I had a back injury. In 2002, I made the trip Down Under, but my slump had dropped my ranking so low I had to try to qualify for the Australian Open.