Controversial Post: The effects of steroids in tennis

I had the opportunity a couple of days ago of having the unique experience of seeing what it’s like to play under the influence of steroids, and thought it would be interesting to document especially given the current press attention Andre Agassi’s memoir has been receiving lately.

I don't mean this to be an advertisement for steroids or drugs. Just to set it straight, I was taking steroids for health reasons and happened to play tennis during that period. And I didn’t play an important match. My brother tells me that the steroids I took aren’t performance enhancing (prednisone), but I’m certain they were in some form. I kept telling myself that I’m not crazy, and I know what I was feeling. It wasn’t like I thought I was going to play great tennis before I even started playing. I felt it on the court.

I don't recommend taking it just for the sake of improving your tennis. It has a certain perfection to it that it ruins part of the fun of playing. And it has a numbness to it, like it takes out all the mental challenges of playing tennis, which I suppose is why it worked so well. I’ve heard commentators mention that the mental side of tennis is directly related to physical fitness and I never believed it completely. I couldn’t understand why physical fitness would dictate why someone would miss an important point, for example.

But watching myself play, I noticed how much easier tennis is, without all the internal dialogue going on, when everything just happens to take care of itself for you. Because playing with steroids is like making everything more effortless than it should be. It affects all of the decision-making, every single shot selection and it makes you feel calmer.

It's kind of like a snapshot to what tennis would look like if fitness wasn't an issue, to see what it would look like if you happened to be in position for every ball. I’ve learned that fitness isn’t only about endurance. It’s about how much each shot takes out of you, and each rally. It does it somewhat in a fairytale sort of way, like it breaks so much of the normal thought processes and barriers that you have to fight off when playing tennis.

I don’t need to urge myself to get into position quicker and not be so sluggish, my feet are already doing the work for me. I don’t need to be so impatient or get worried when my opponent keeps returning my good shots, I can just keep him running side to side. I don’t need to be worried about being out of breath if I have to run too much, because I won’t be. I can play aggressively without overplaying, and I can run around as many backhands as I want to, and execute it correctly then make it back to the middle of the court.

Before I started playing, I already had some idea of what it would be like, not having to deal with tiredness but still I expected a similar type of match. The benefits ended up being so much more than that, to the point where the difference in how it makes you feel is so great that it can feel like you're playing better than you actually are. Errors tend to be meaningless, and internal comments tend to be restricted to whether I should hit closer to the lines or bring the margins in.

I'm in the warm-up and I start hitting the ball increasingly harder realizing that whether I hit it soft, or hit it hard, it feels exactly the same. So I may as well just hit everything harder then. It's an incredibly odd feeling that’s difficult to shake off at first because different shots are supposed to take different energy levels. Much of the excitement of hitting a full-paced shot is summoning all the energy of hitting it, putting all of the body weight into it. I didn't get as much joy from hitting winners as I usually do, not that same amazing rush that I get when I really do play great tennis. I think I felt a bit like a ball machine. I wonder if this is what it's like for players with technically competent, effortless shot production all the time.

Whether I hit first serves or second serves, it felt exactly the same. My racquet felt lighter than it usually does. At first it's an adjustment to make, realizing how much of the feel that you have for a particular shot and judgement is based on how hard you swing at the ball. I was scared of hitting the ball long and didn't know what to do entirely, and that's because I did hit some balls long. But I was getting better depth.

My fitness skills are normally not great. I don't do much exercise aside from playing tennis, though I have started playing more regularly recently. I wondered what it'd be like to play if I was an extremely fit player. I wonder if it's a little bit like this, but I can't imagine it'd be this good.

Every time I was hitting a shot, I was in position enough to rarely make any bad errors. I didn't even have to make any effort to get into position, I just happened to get there in time easily. If I happened to catch a ball late, I'd somehow be able to swing through my racquet fast enough to catch up to it and hit a good shot nonetheless.

I was shocked when I shanked a forehand once in the match, that’s how cleanly I was hitting the ball. I missed almost no half volleys from the baseline, because my reflexes were fast enough to get to it. It was quite a sight seeing all of my forehands with a low margin over the net, but amazingly almost never hitting the net.

I wondered how amazing I would have been today if I didn't have such a technically weak backhand. I basically sliced almost every single backhand, and they were weak slices as well, but consistent at least. If it wasn't for my backhand, I would have felt like a completely different player, at a standard that I thought I could never reach.

It wasn't overly important though, not today. I didn’t want to risk hitting a double-handed backhand, if my forehand was working this good. In the first two games of the match, I hadn't yet realized all of the things that I was capable of doing. My opponent hit almost every shot deliberately to my backhand at first, then I realized about four points in, that I could run around almost everything to hit a forehand. And it wouldn’t take any energy out of me, and I'd get there in time to hit a good shot, then get to the next shot without breaking a sweat, as long as I could get my racquet on it.

It seemed like I was incapable of hitting the net. Whenever a ball was low across the net, I somehow brushed over the top of it a little at the end, and that small change was enough to make everything go over the net. I felt like an awesome ball-striker, like one of those better-trained players that have such control that they can hit every shot with a similar trajectory. I think I could have given many of those players I've had trouble with a good run for their money since I tend to have a lot of problem with extremely consistent players.

I was pretty much capable of bashing the ball side-to-side on the forehand without lacking patience. I normally feel that if I go for a shot, then I need to get a reward from it and the pressure builds up immensely with each shot. Hitting too close to the lines after a while. Not here though. I just kept pounding away into the corners. I'm not sure how he managed to track all those balls down.

Occasionally I'd try to breathe louder or put my hand on my hip or something, pretend to gesture that I was feeling a little tired. He was sweating profusely after the match, and I had absolutely no sweat at all. Though if I were him, I would have never even been able to chase down that many balls.

The more the match went on, the more I realized how aggressively I was able to play from the forehand. Down-the-line shots were easy, and so were off-forehands though I tried not to play shots right on the line because that would be pointlessly risky if I could hang in longer rallies. In short, my forehand was amazing and I could pretty much do whatever I wanted with it.

I used to think that long rallies were boring, but in hindsight they're probably not for people who can handle them. I just normally can't, I think it'll ruin me for the end of the match even if not yet. Basically one gruelling rally where I'm breathing heavily afterwards could ruin me a whole match. In fact, it did once. I didn't even notice when a rally was long today.

After an even first couple of games, I dominated the rest of the set until I started overplaying at 30-0 on serve at 5-2 thinking I could do whatever I wanted. But I recovered quickly the following game and won the next game, bringing the margins in.