Mind, Set, and Match

To play up to your ability, stop playing - and start thinking.

Day two, 8 a.m. The stretching specialist, Scott Pucek, organizes us into pairs and doles out those rubber crazy balls - the kind that pet owners pitch to their bewildered, tongue-dragging mutts. He tells us to bounce the ball back and forth to each other. The goal is to see if we can pounce fast enough to catch it. We throw easily at first, then harder. And then harder. It's only the second day, and already we want to win at warm-ups.

The staff knows that sometimes it's necessary to throw water on our competitive fires. Peter Carpenter is a case in point. A muscle-bound anesthesiologist from the Philadelphia area, he's making his second visit to the camp. His raw passion for the game and his unlimited capacity for pain are noteworthy even by Bollettieri's standards. Last year, however, he drove himself so hard that his body fell apart. First he underwent full-body spasms. Then he suffered a temporary case of Bell's palsy.

This year, he's brought his family. The instructors are relieved. But Carpenter, restricted to a mere eight hours of tennis a day, is miserable.

Carpenter is a living, breathing billboard for that outer edge where unchecked competitive fury becomes raw, scary, and maybe dangerous. He reminds the rest of us that too much is too much. But how much is enough? What makes for balance?

Jim Schreiber, who beat me so easily on day one, is trying to find his own competitive peace. Just two weeks ago, he sold his company, Tuscan Dairy Farm, the largest consumer dairy in metropolitan New York. He's hoping that his monetary windfall will afford him the chance to develop his softer side. But evidently that's down the road a ways. Right now, he wants nothing more than to kick Peter Carpenter's ass.

"I can get inside his head," Schreiber tells me. "Carpenter wants to smash the ball, but I won't let him."

Schreiber, who in the mid-'60s was a highly ranked player on Brown University's varsity tennis team, is well past his prime. But no one thinks this contest will be a mismatch, because Schreiber is convinced that he won't beat himself. Too bad the rest of us can't make that claim.

Get mad. And get even.

Near the end of my third day here, I pause to take stock. At sundown on day one, I was among the walking wounded: A trainer had to drill through several of my toenails to pop dime-sized blood blisters. This morning, my feet were holding up, but my game was bottoming out. No tips, no scrap of advice could penetrate my cerebrum:

"Get the racket back early."

"Swing low to high."

"Follow through!"

This afternoon, however, I sense that I might be over the hump, and some of the others seem to agree. When Brooks tells us to play a game of "keep the ball in play," Schreiber not only claims me as his partner; he also challenges Peter Carpenter and another ace ground-stroker, Chicara Yamada, to a wager. The rules: After a player hits a shot, he clears the court so his partner can play the next ball. The rotation continues until someone flubs a shot. The first team to 11 points wins. Losers buy the first round.

I don't fall apart immediately, but when Carpenter and Yamada smoke us two games in a row (putting us four beers in the hole), Schreiber unilaterally declares defeat. He sends me packing to join Carpenter, and he takes Yamada.

Betrayed, humiliated, and fast losing pocket money, I arrive at an emotion heretofore unplumbed: I'm deeply pissed off! Raging hormones might not be the antidote for my poor play, but a funny thing happens: The anger kills my self-consciousness. I go all out, yet I'm relaxed. Suddenly Carpenter and I come storming back. When I drive a stinging forehand cross-court past Yamada, my partner screams in astonishment, "All right, all right! 10-9!"

Alas, the next point goes their way, when Schreiber wallops an outright winner. But the other three have won their beers, and I've won something that's almost as refreshing: a taste of redemption.

End of the week: Do you have a weapon?

The last day. There's no final tournament, no contrived wrap-up. We end with drills - and a not-so-fuzzy message. "Are you ever going to hit the ball like that?" asks Calvin Cole, a staff instructor, as we watch a video of Agassi clobbering forehands. "No, of course not. So what are we telling you? Simply this: Develop a weapon." Put another way: Find a part of the game that you can love, and work it.

I realize that I won't be leaving Florida with an explosive game that will rock my big brother. But I have discovered my weapon. It isn't glamorous, but it's potentially formidable. I find it during a single point near day's end.

Evan Drutman, a New York lawyer, and I are playing "King of the Court": Play one point, and the winner stays to take on the next in line. If Drutman wins, I'm gone.