On a September day in Flushing Meadows, Queens, Gary Wilensky runs into an old friend.
The US Open has always been an unofficial reunion for the local tennis scene. But now, in 1992, the crowds have grown along with notable celebrity appearances.
Everyone is on the lookout for Barbra Streisand, who was spotted the day before, in a floppy white hat and round John Lennon glasses, mooning in the stands over Andre Agassi. In the morning papers, she was pictured in the locker room, sandwiched between Michael Bolton and Agassi, who—in his gold chains and Nike animal prints—glinted with his own Hollywood decadence.
Celebrity gossip. Paparazzi at the Open. Agassi’s “Just Do It” campaign on billboards and all over TV. Tennis has a renewed sex appeal with a narrative to match. Agassi, the stud; Pete Sampras, the handsome young underdog. The epic rivalry of Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. And the prodigy, Jennifer Capriati—who, a few months earlier, replaced Mary Lou Retton as every little girl’s Olympic hero, ringing in the nineties in her Stars and Stripes windbreaker at the Barcelona games, raising her gold medal as high as her hair-sprayed wall of bangs. In a year, eighteen-year-old Seles will be stabbed on the court by a deranged Graf fan, and in two years Capriati will become a cautionary tale, but in this moment, both represent tennis’s emerging new star: the teenage girl.
All of this is good for Gary Wilensky. Group lessons twice a week. Private coaching. Tournament prep. Over the years, his clientele has morphed from mainly adults to mainly adolescent and teenage girls. For a certain type of Manhattan parent, tennis has always been the athletic arm of social etiquette, a necessary part of the budding socialite’s curriculum. For others, it has more recently become the female equivalent of high school football—a sport that legitimizes underage players as professionals at the highest level, attracts college recruiters to midrange players, and if nothing else, earns adult admiration in summer communities. All of this translates to $600 a head, per semester, for Gary Wilensky’s junior program, his semiprivate weekly clinic comprised mainly of Manhattan private school kids.
Fifteen years earlier, he drummed up business with ads in the back of New York magazine, right next to the lonely hearts listings.
TIME FOR TENNIS! GARY WILENSKY GETS MORE PEOPLE INVOLVED IN TENNIS THAN ANYONE ELSE IN NEW YORK.
Now, in 1992, it’s all word of mouth; the clients come to him. He runs his own program, renting out court time around the city and fielding calls from wealthy parents, some of them famous, most of them rich, all of them eager to get their child into one of his clinics.
Unlike other coaches, Gary has no professional tennis experience and isn’t known for his skill as a player. Others are more artful, esteemed, technical, or physically demanding of their students. Gary is fun. He’s an entertainer, a clown with a sack full of gags, doling out carnival prizes on the courts, and showing up for lessons in the occasional costume.
Manhattan kids aren’t used to being treated as kids—and Gary knows this. He knows that distracting them from their anxieties, rather than tapping into them, is the secret to making even the most resistant young students fans of the sport. And those who love the game get better at it, which is what their parents pay for.
His reputation as a Pied Piper for prep school players was only bolstered this year when he was hired as the varsity coach for Brearley, one of the city’s elite all-girls schools. On top of that, he’s got a private coaching gig training a gifted high school senior, the Daughter, who has risen in the tournament ranks since she started with him the year before. Within the year, her name will be linked to his in news stories around the country, but for now she is best known in tournament circles for her tennis ability.
“Gary?” A female voice rises above the hot-dog steam in the concession area. A woman whose long reddish-brown curls tangle with a wild bedroom quality materializes before him. “Gary, is that you?”
The sex therapist. Erica Goodstone used to work around the corner from Midtown Tennis, where Gary taught in the late seventies and early eighties. On Friday nights she attended his tennis mixers—a weekly singles event where a game of mixed doubles held the promise of something more. He’d toss a few balls, set up some matches, provide a table of “refreshments” for post-game mingling, and pack the courts on an otherwise quiet night.
Early on, Erica noticed Gary’s cleverness in arranging matches. He had a natural ability to read people, easily detecting their strengths and weaknesses. As a therapist, she admired that.
They became friends. Not great friends or intimate partners, but that level of friendship reserved for two single adults who enjoy each other’s company enough to dismiss the notion that one party might want something different from the other. At least this was true for Erica, who had only platonic feelings for Gary.
Once they drove to the Concord Resort Hotel in the Catskills, where Gary was performing playing tennis on roller skates at an exhibition.
Another time they went to a movie, Peter Weir’s The Last Wave, about a murder trial tied to apocalyptic premonitions. When they came out of the theater, Gary’s car had been involved in a hit-and-run. It was bent out of shape, totaled. It looked like a wave had crashed over it. Erica expected him to be upset, but instead he laughed.
His is a two-frequency laugh, one that syncs up with outside laughter and one that abrades it, an undercackle that suggests a secondary motive. A joke about his joke and how easy it is to manipulate someone else’s response.
Now, over the pop of tennis balls and intermittent roars, Erica and Gary exchange updates. The practice is expanding. Business is good. You’ll never believe who I just saw. And have you heard from —?
They have plenty of mutual friends from the local tennis scene. One, Gary claims, has spoken ill of Erica.
“She says you’re the most selfish person she’s ever met,” he tells her, although Gary Wilensky has a tendency to lie. It’s a game in his repertoire. There are others.
The last time Erica saw Gary was in the late eighties at another US Open. (Graf and Sabatini, or was it Becker and Lendl?) They’d sat in the stands and discussed his dating life.
He was seeing someone and it was going well, great even. What excited him wasn’t the relationship itself, but what it produced. A new game: bondage, restraints—not for him, but for his partner. Gary was in control and delighted by it. Considering her line of work, Erica wasn’t fazed by any of this, though she noted his desire for dominance. In her practice she found that heterosexual men more commonly preferred the subservient role, a relief from the gender expectations foisted upon them from the outside world.
“Are you still dating the same person?” Erica asks Gary now, a different Gary than he was before.
He is more guarded this year, older-looking. His hair is grayer, his skin rawer since he’s shaved off his mustache.
Gary Wilensky shakes his head. “I’m just coaching girls now.”