Open: An Autobiography

Minutes later a FedEx envelope arrives with a letter from Nick. It says no more than the newspaper story. I read it a few dozen times before putting it in a shoe box. I go to the mirror.

I don’t feel all that bad. I don’t feel anything. Numb. As if the cortisone has spread from my wrist to engulf my being.

I drive over to Gil’s and sit with him in the gym. He listens and feels bad and angry right along with me.

Well, I say, I guess it’s Break-Up-With-Andre time. First Wendi, now Nick.

My entourage is thinning faster than my hair.

THOUGH IT MAKES NO SENSE, I’d like to get on the court again. I want the pain that only tennis provides.

But not this much pain. The cortisone has completely worn off, and the needle-razor feeling in my wrist is simply too much. I see a new doctor, who says the wrist needs surgery. I see another doctor, who says more resting might do the trick. I side with the rest doctor. After four weeks of rest, however, I step on a court and realize with one swing that surgery is my only option.

I just don’t trust surgeons. I trust very few people, and I especially dislike the notion of trusting one perfect stranger, surrendering all control to one person whom I’ve only just met. I cringe at the thought of lying on a table, unconscious, while someone slices open the wrist with which I make my living. What if he’s distracted that day? What if he’s off? I see it happening on the court all the time—half the time it’s happening to me. I’m in the top ten, but some days you’d think I was a rank amateur. What if my surgeon is the Andre Agassi of medicine?

What if he doesn’t have his A game that day? What if he’s drunk or on drugs?

I ask Gil to be there in the operating room during my surgery. I want him to act as sentry, monitor, backstop, witness. In other words, I want him to do what he always does. Stand guard. But this time wearing a gown and mask.

He frowns. He shakes his head. He doesn’t know.

Gil has several endearingly dainty qualities, like his horror of the sun, but the most endearing is his squeamish streak. He can’t abide the sight of needles. He gets the willies when he has to have a flu shot.

For me, however, he’ll rally. He says, I’ll tough it out.

I owe you, I tell him.

Never, he says. No such thing as debts between us.

On December 19, 1993, Gil and I fly to Santa Barbara and check into the hospital. As nurses flutter about, prepping me, I tell Gil that I feel so nervous, I might pass out.

Then they won’t need to give you the gas.

This could be it, Gil, the end of my tennis career.

No.

Then what? What will I do?

They put a mask over my nose and mouth. Breathe deeply, they say. My eyelids are heavy. I fight to keep them open, fight against the loss of control. Don’t go away, Gil. Don’t leave me. I stare at Gil’s black eyes, above his surgical mask, watching, unblinking. Gil is here, I tell myself. Gil’s got this. Gil’s on duty. Everything’s going to be all right. I let my eyes close, let a kind of mist swallow me, and a half second later I’m waking and Gil is leaning over me, saying the wrist was worse than they thought. Much worse. But they cleaned it out, Andre, and we’ll hope for the best. That’s all we can do, right? Hope for the best.

I TAKE UP RESIDENCE on the green chenille double-stuffed goose-down couch, remote in one hand, phone in the other. The surgeon says I must keep my wrist elevated for several days, so I lie with it propped on a large, hard pillow. Though I’m on powerful pain pills, I still feel wounded, worried, vulnerable. At least I have something to distract me. A woman. A friend of Kenny G’s wife, Lyndie.

I met Kenny G through Michael Bolton, whom I met while playing Davis Cup. We were all at the same hotel. Then, out of the blue, Lyndie phoned me and said she’d met the perfect woman.

Well, I like perfect.

I think you two will really hit it off.

Why?

She’s beautiful, brilliant, sophisticated, funny.

I don’t think so. I’m still trying to get over Wendi. Plus, I don’t do setups.

You’ll do this setup. Her name is Brooke Shields.

I’ve heard of her.

What have you got to lose?

Plenty.

Andre.

I’ll think about it. What’s her number?

You can’t phone her. She’s in South Africa, doing a film.

She must have a phone.

Nope. She’s in the middle of nowhere. She’s in a tent, or a hut, in the bush. You can only reach her by fax.

She gave me Brooke’s fax number and asked for mine.

I don’t have a fax. It’s the only gadget I don’t have in the house.

I gave her Philly’s fax number.

Then, just before my surgery, I got a call from Philly.

You have a fax here at my house—from Brooke Shields?

And so it began. Faxes back and forth, a long-distance correspondence with a woman I’d never met. What began oddly became progressively more odd. The pace of the conversation was outrageously slow, and this suited us both—neither of us was in any hurry. But the enormous geographical distance also led us to quickly let down our guard. We segued within a few faxes from innocent flirting to innermost secrets. Within a few days our faxes took on a tone of fondness, then intimacy. I felt as if I were going steady with this woman I’d never met or spoken to.

I stopped phoning Barbra.

Now, immobilized, my bandaged wrist propped on the pillow, I have nothing to do but obsess about the next fax to Brooke. Gil comes over some days and helps me work through several drafts. I’m intimidated by the fact that Brooke graduated from Princeton with a degree in French literature, whereas I dropped out of ninth grade. Gil brushes aside such talk, pumps up my confidence.

Besides, he says, don’t worry about whether she likes you. Worry about whether you like her.

Yeah, I say. Yeah. You’re right.

So I ask him to rent the collected works of Brooke Shields, and we have a two-man film festival. We make popcorn, dim the lights, and Gil puts in the first movie. The Blue Lagoon.

Brooke as a prepubescent mermaid, stranded with a boy on an island paradise. A retelling of Adam and Eve. We rewind, fast-forward, freeze-frame, debate if Brooke Shields is my type.

Not bad, Gil says. Not bad at all. She’s definitely worth another fax.

The courtship via fax continues for weeks, until Brooke sends a short fax saying she’s finished filming her movie and she’s coming back to the U.S. She’ll be here in two weeks. She lands at LAX. By coincidence I have to be in Los Angeles the day after she arrives. I’m filming an interview with Jim Rome.

WE MEET AT HER HOUSE. I race there straight from the studio, still wearing the heavy TV makeup from my interview with Rome. She throws open the door, looking very much the movie star, wearing a flowing scarfy thing around her neck. And no makeup. (Or at least less than I.) But her hair is chopped short, which gives me a jolt. All this time I’ve been picturing her with long, flowing hair.

I cut it for a part, she says.

In what? Bad News Bears?

Her mother appears from nowhere. We shake hands. She’s cordial, but stiff. I get a strange vibe. I know, instinctively, regardless of what happens, this woman and I will never get along.

I drive Brooke to dinner. Along the way I ask, Do you live with your mother?

Yes. Well, no. Not really. It’s complicated.

It always is with parents.

We go to Pasta Maria, a little Italian joint on San Vicente. I ask to be seated in a corner of the restaurant, so we can have privacy, and it doesn’t take long before I forget about Brooke’s mother, her haircut, everything. She has remarkable poise, and charisma, and she’s surprisingly funny. We both laugh when the waiter comes to our table and asks, Have you two ladies had a chance to look over the menu?

Might be time for a haircut, I say.

I ask about the movie Brooke just wrapped in Africa. Does she like being an actress? She talks with passion about the adventure of filmmaking, the fun of working with talented actors and directors, and it strikes me that she’s the polar opposite of Wendi, who never knew what she wanted. Brooke knows exactly what she wants. She sees her dreams and doesn’t falter in describing them, even if she’s having trouble figuring out how to make them come true.

Five years older than I, she’s more worldly, more aware, and yet she also gives off an airy innocence, a neediness, which makes me want to protect her. She brings out the Gil in me, a side I didn’t know I had.

We say most of the same things we’ve said by fax, but now, in person, over plates of pasta, they sound different, more intimate. There is nuance now, subtext, body language, and pheromones. Also, she’s making me laugh, a lot, and making herself laugh. She has a lovely laugh. As with my wrist surgery, three hours pass in a millisecond.

She’s exceptionally kind and sweet about my wrist, examining the inch-long pink scar, touching it lightly, asking questions. She’s also empathetic, because she’s facing surgery too, on both her feet. Her toes are damaged from years of dance training, she says, and doctors will need to break them and reset them. I tell her about Gil standing guard in the operating room with me, and she asks, joking, if she can borrow him.

We discover that, despite our outwardly different lives, we share similar starting points.

She knows what it’s like to grow up with a brash, ambitious, abrasive stage parent. Her mother has been her manager since Brooke was eleven months old. The difference: her mother still manages her. And they’re nearly broke, because Brooke’s career is slumping. The Africa movie was the first big job she’s landed in a while. She does coffee commercials in Europe just to pay the mortgage. She says things like this, startlingly candid, as if we’ve known each other for decades. It’s not only that we’ve softened the ground with faxes. She’s just naturally open, all the time, I can tell. I wish I could be half as open. I can’t tell her much about my own inner torments, though I can’t avoid admitting that I hate tennis.

She laughs. You don’t actually hate tennis.

Yes.

But you don’t hate hate it.

I do. I hate it.

We talk about our travels, our favorite foods, music, movies. We bond over one recent movie, Shadowlands, the story of British writer C. S. Lewis. I tell Brooke that the movie struck a chord with me. There was Lewis’s close relationship with his brother. There was his sheltered life, walled off from the world. There was his fear of risk and the pain of love. But then one singularly brave woman makes him see that pain is the price of being human, and well worth it. In the end Lewis tells his students: Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. He tells them: We are like blocks of stone … [T]he blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. Perry and I have seen the movie twice, I tell Brooke, and we’ve memorized half the lines. I’m moved that Brooke too loves Shadowlands. I’m slightly awed that she’s read several of Lewis’s books.

Well after midnight, lingering over empty coffee cups, we can no longer ignore the impatient stares of the waiters and restaurant owner. We need to go. I drive Brooke home, and on the sidewalk outside her house I have a feeling that her mother is watching us through an upstairs curtain. I give Brooke a chaste kiss and ask if I can call her again.

Please do.

As I walk away she notices a hole in my jeans, at the small of my back. She sticks her finger through the hole, scratching my tailbone with her nail. She flashes a sly grin before running inside.

I drive my rental car along Sunset Boulevard. I’d planned to head back to Vegas, never dreaming the date would go so well or last so long, but it’s too late to catch a flight. I decide to stop for the night at the next hotel I come to, which turns out to be a Holiday Inn that’s seen better days. Ten minutes later I’m lying in a musty room on the second floor, listening to traffic hissing along Sunset and the 405. I try to review the date—and, more importantly, to reach some conclusions about it, about what it means. But my eyelids are heavy. I fight to keep them open, fight as always the loss of control, which feels like the ultimate loss of choice.

15

MY THIRD DATE WITH BROOKE is the night before her foot surgery. We’re in Manhattan, in the ground-floor sitting room of her brownstone. We’re kissing, on the verge, but first I need to tell her the truth about my hair.

She can sense that I have something on my mind. What’s wrong? she asks.

Nothing.

You can tell me.

It’s just that I haven’t been completely honest with you.

We’re lying on a couch. I sit up, punch a pillow, take a breath. Still searching for the right words, I look at the walls. They’re decorated with African masks, eyeless faces with no hair.

They’re eerie. Also, vaguely familiar.

Andre, what is it?

This isn’t easy to admit, Brooke. But, look, I’ve been losing my hair for quite some time and I wear a hairpiece to cover it up.

I reach out, take her hand, put it on my hairpiece.

She smiles. I had a feeling, she says.

You did?

It’s no big deal.

You’re not just saying that?

It’s your eyes I find attractive. And your heart. Not your hair.

I stare at the eyeless, hairless faces and wonder if I’m falling.

I GO WITH BROOKE to the hospital and wait for her in the recovery room. I’m there when they wheel her in, her feet bandaged like mine before a match, and I’m there when she wakes up. I feel an enormous surge of protectiveness, and tenderness—which ebbs when she gets a phone call from her close friend, Michael Jackson. I can’t fathom her continuing friendship with Jackson, given all the stories and accusations. But Brooke says he’s just like us. Another prodigy who didn’t have a childhood.

I follow Brooke home and spend days at her bedside while she recuperates. Her mother finds me one morning on the floor beside Brooke’s bed. She’s scandalized. Sleeping on the floor? It simply isn’t done. I tell her that I prefer sleeping on the floor. My back. She walks away in a huff.

I kiss Brooke good morning. Your mother and I are getting off on the wrong foot.

We look down at her feet. Poor choice of words.

I need to leave. I’m due in Scottsdale for my first tournament since the surgery.

See you in a few weeks, I tell her, kissing her again, holding her.

I HAVE AN EASY DRAW IN SCOTTSDALE, but this doesn’t make me any less fearful.

Here comes the first real test of my wrist—what if it’s not healed? What if it’s worse? I have a recurring nightmare about being in the middle of a match and my hand falling off. I’m in my hotel room, closing my eyes, trying to visualize the wrist being fine and the match going well, when there’s a knock at the door.

Who is it?

Brooke.

With two broken feet, she rallied to be here.

I win the tournament, feeling no pain.

WEEKS LATER, Pete and I agree to do a simultaneous interview with a magazine reporter. Pete comes to my hotel room, where the interview is to take place, and he’s shocked to meet Peaches.

What the hell? Pete says.

Pete, meet Peaches. She’s an old parrot I rescued from a Vegas pet store that was going out of business.

Nice bird, Pete says mockingly.

She is a nice bird, I say. She doesn’t bite. She imitates people.

Like who?

Like me. She sneezes like me, talks like me—except she has a better vocabulary. I crack up every time the phone rings. Peaches yells, Telephone! Tel-ephone!

I tell Pete that back in Vegas I have a whole menagerie. A cat named King, a rabbit named Buddy, whatever it takes to fend off the loneliness. No man is an island. He shakes his head. Apparently he doesn’t find tennis as lonely as I do.

We do the interview, and suddenly I feel as if I’m in the room with two parrots. At least when I bullshit a reporter, I do it with some flair, a little color. Pete sounds more robotic than Peaches.

I don’t bother telling Pete, but I consider Peaches an integral part of my team, which is ever growing, ever changing, a constant experiment. I lost Nick and Wendi, but I’ve added Brooke and Slim, a bright, sweet kid from Vegas. We went to grade school together. We were born a day apart—at the same hospital. Slim is a good guy, if a lost soul, so I put him to work as my personal assistant. He watches my house, lets in the pool guy and the various handy-men, sorts the mail, and answers fan requests for photos and autographs.

Now I think I might need to add a manager to the team. I pull Perry aside and ask him to take a look at my current management, see if they’re overcharging me. He reviews the contracts and says that indeed I could do better. I put my arms around him, thank him—then get an idea. Why don’t you be my manager, Perry? I need someone I trust.

I know he’s busy. He’s in his second year at the University of Arizona Law School, busting his ass. But I ask him to please consider taking this on, at least part-time.

I don’t need to ask twice. Perry wants the job, and he wants to start right away. He’ll work between classes, he says. Mornings, weekends, whenever. Aside from being a great opportunity, the job will enable him to whittle down what he owes me. I loaned Perry the money for law school because he didn’t want to ask his father. He sat before me one night, telling me how his father uses money to control people, especially Perry. I have to break free of my father, Perry said. I’ve got to break free, Andre, once and for all.

There are few pleas I could find more compelling. I wrote him a check on the spot.

As my new manager, Perry’s primary task is finding me a new coach, someone to replace Nick. He draws up a short list of candidates, and at the top of the list is a guy who’s just written a book about tennis: Winning Ugly.

Perry hands me the book, urges me to read it.

I shoot him a dirty look. Thanks, no thanks. No more school for me.

Besides, I don’t need to read the book. I know the author, Brad Gilbert. I know him well.

He’s a fellow player. I’ve faced him many times, including weeks ago. His game is the opposite of mine. He’s a junker, meaning he mixes speeds, uses change of pace, misdirection, guile. He has limited skills, and takes a conspicuous pride in this fact. If I’m the classic underachiever, Brad’s the consummate overachiever. Rather than overpowering opponents, he frustrates them, preys on their flaws. He’s preyed on me plenty. I’m intrigued, but it’s not feas-ible. Brad’s still playing. In fact, due to my surgery and my time away from the game, he’s ranked higher than I.

No, Perry says, Brad is nearing the end of his career. He’s thirty-two, and maybe he’s open to the idea of coaching. Perry repeats that he’s deeply impressed with Brad’s book and thinks it contains the kind of practical wisdom I need.

In March 1994, when we’re all in Key Biscayne for the tournament, Perry invites Brad to dinner at an Italian restaurant on Fisher Island. Café Porte Chervo. Right on the water. One of our favorites.

It’s early evening. The sun is just disappearing behind the masts and sails of the boats at the dock. Perry and I are early, Brad is right on time. I’d forgotten how distinctive looking he is. Dark, rugged, he’s certainly handsome, but not classically so. His features aren’t chiseled; they look molded. I can’t shake the idea that Brad looks like Early Man, that he just jumped from a time machine, slightly out of breath from discovering fire. Maybe it’s all his hair that makes me think this. His head, arms, biceps, shoulders, face are covered with black hair.

Brad has so much hair, I’m both horrified and jealous. His eyebrows alone are fascinating. I think: I could make a beautiful toupee out of just that left eyebrow.

The maître d’, Renato, says we can sit on the terrace overlooking the dock.

I say, Sounds great.

No, Brad says. Uh-uh. We have to sit inside.

Why?

Because of Manny.

Excuse me? Who’s Manny?

Manny Mosquito. Mosquitoes—yeah, I have a real thing about them, and trust me, Manny is here, Manny is out in force, and Manny likes me. Look at them all! Swarms! Look! No, I need to sit inside. Far from Manny!

He explains that mosquitoes are the reason he’s wearing jeans instead of shorts, even though it’s a hundred degrees and muggy. Manny, he says one last time, with a shudder.

Perry and I look at each other.

OK, Perry says. Inside it is.

Renato puts us at a table by the window. He hands us menus. Brad scans his and frowns.

Problem, he says.

What?

They don’t carry my beer. Bud Ice.

Maybe they have—

Got to have Bud Ice. It’s the only beer I drink.

He stands and says he’s going to the market next door to buy some Bud Ice.

Perry and I order a bottle of red wine and wait. We say nothing while Brad’s gone. He returns in five minutes with a six of Bud Ice, which he asks Renato to put on ice. Not the refrigerator, Brad says, because that’s not cold enough. On ice, or else in the freezer.

When Brad is finally settled, half a cold Bud Ice down his gullet, Perry starts.

So, listen, Brad, one reason we wanted to meet with you is, we want to get your take on Andre’s game.

Say what?

Andre’s game. We’d like you to tell us what you think.

What I think?

Yes.

You want to know what I think of his game?

That’s right.

You want me to be honest?

Please.

Brutally honest?

Don’t hold back.

He takes an enormous swallow of beer and commences a careful, thorough, brutal-as-advertised summary of my flaws as a tennis player.

It’s not rocket science, he says. If I were you, with your skills, your talent, your return and footwork, I’d dominate. But you’ve lost the fire you had when you were sixteen. That kid, taking the ball early, being aggressive, what the hell happened to that kid?

Brad says my overall problem, the problem that threatens to end my career prema-turely—the problem that feels like my father’s legacy—is perfectionism.

You always try to be perfect, he says, and you always fall short, and it fucks with your head. Your confidence is shot, and perfectionism is the reason. You try to hit a winner on every ball, when just being steady, consistent, meat and potatoes, would be enough to win ninety percent of the time.

He talks a mile a minute, a constant drone, not unlike a mosquito. He builds his argument with sports metaphors, from all sports, indiscriminately. He’s an avid sports fan, and an equally avid metaphor fan.

Quit going for the knockout, he says. Stop swinging for the fences. All you have to be is solid. Singles, doubles, move the chains forward. Stop thinking about yourself, and your own game, and remember that the guy on the other side of the net has weaknesses. Attack his weaknesses. You don’t have to be the best in the world every time you go out there. You just have to be better than one guy. Instead of you succeeding, make him fail. Better yet, let him fail. It’s all about odds and percentages. You’re from Vegas, you should have an appreciation of odds and percentages. The house always wins, right? Why? Because the odds are stacked in the house’s favor. So? Be the house! Get the odds in your favor. Right now, by trying for a perfect shot with every ball, you’re stacking the odds against yourself. You’re assuming too much risk. You don’t need to assume so much risk. Fuck that. Just keep the ball moving.

Back and forth. Nice and easy. Solid. Be like gravity, man, just like motherfucking gravity.

When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent game-wise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose. Again, since you’re from Vegas, put it this way. It takes twenty-one sets to win a slam. That’s all. You need to win just twenty-one sets. Seven matches, best of five. That’s twenty-one. In tennis, like cards, twenty-one’s a winner. Blackjack! Focus on that number, and you won’t go wrong. Simplify, simplify. Every time you win a set, say to yourself, That’s one down. That’s one in my pocket. At the start of a tournament, count backward from twenty-one. That’s positive thinking, see? Of course, speaking for myself, when I’m playing blackjack, I’d rather win with sixteen, because that’s winning ugly. No need to win with twenty-one. No need to be perfect.

He’s been speaking for fifteen minutes. Perry and I haven’t interrupted, haven’t glanced at each other, haven’t sipped our wine. At last Brad drains his second beer and announces: Where’s the head in this place? I have to take a leak.

The moment he’s gone I tell Perry: That’s our guy.

Absolutely.

When Brad returns, the waiter comes for our order. Brad asks for penne arrabbiata with grilled chicken and mozzarella.

Perry orders chicken parmesan. Brad looks at Perry with disgust. Bad call, he says.

The waiter stops writing.

What you want to do, Brad says, is order a chicken breast, separate, then order all your mozzarella and sauce on the side. See, that way the chicken breast is fresh, not soggy, plus you can control your chicken-to-cheese-and-sauce ratio.

Perry thanks Brad for the menu coaching, but says he’ll stick with his order. The waiter looks to me. I point at Brad and say: I’ll have whatever he’s having.

Brad smiles.

Perry clears his throat and says, So Brad. Would you have any interest in maybe becoming Andre’s coach?

Brad thinks it over. For three seconds. Yeah, he says. I think I’d like that. I think I can help you.

I ask, When can we start?

Tomorrow, Brad says. I’ll meet you on the courts at ten in the morning.

Huh. Well. That might a problem. I never play before one.

Andre, he says, we start at ten.

I’M LATE, OF COURSE. Brad looks at his watch.

Thought we said ten?

Man, I don’t even know what ten a.m. means.

We start hitting, and Brad starts talking. He doesn’t stop, as though the hours between last night’s monologue and this morning’s workout have been a mere intermission. He’s picking apart my game, anticipating and analyzing my shots as I make them. The main point he stresses is the backhand up the line.

The second you get a chance to take a backhand up the line, he says, you’ve got to do it.

That’s your money shot. That’s your equity shot. You can pay a lot of bills with that shot.

We play a few games, and he stops every other point to come to the net and tell me why I just did the dumbest possible thing.

What’d you do that for? I know it’s a killer shot, but every shot doesn’t have to be killer.

Sometimes the best shot is a holding shot, an OK shot, a shot that gives the other guy a chance to miss. Let the other guy play.

I like the way this feels. I respond to Brad’s ideas, his enthusiasm, his energy. I find peace in his claim that perfectionism is voluntary. Perfectionism is something I chose, and it’s ruining me, and I can choose something else. I must choose something else. No one has ever said this to me. I’ve always assumed perfectionism was like my thinning hair or my thickened spinal cord. An inborn part of me.

After a light midday meal I put my feet up, watch TV, read the papers, sit under a shade tree—then go out and win my match against Mark Petchey, a British kid my age. My next match is against Becker, who’s now being coached by Nick. After saying publicly that he couldn’t imagine coaching any of my rivals, Nick is now coaching one of my archrivals. In fact, Nick’s sitting in Becker’s box. Becker is serving big, as always, 135 miles an hour, but with Nick in his corner, I’m juiced with adrenaline and able to handle anything he dishes up. And Becker knows it. He stops competing and plays to the crowd. Down a set and a break, he hands his racket to the ballgirl as if to say: Here, you can do as well as I’m doing.

I’m thinking: Yes, let her play, I’ll beat the both of you.

After dispatching Becker, I’m in the final. My opponent? Pete. As always, Pete.

The match is slated for national TV. Brad and I are both keyed up as we walk into the locker room, only to find Pete lying on the ground. A doctor and a trainer are leaning over him.

The tournament director hovers in the background. Pete brings his knees up to his chest and groans.

Food poisoning, the doctor says.

Brad whispers to me, Guess you just won Key Biscayne.

The director takes Brad and me aside and asks if we’d be willing to give Pete time to recover. I feel Brad stiffen. I know what he wants me to say. But I tell the director, Give Pete all the time he needs.

The director sighs and puts his hand on my arm. Thank you, he says. We’ve got fourteen thousand people out there. Plus the network.

Brad and I lounge around the locker room, flipping channels on the TV, making phone calls. I dial Brooke, who’s auditioning for Grease on Broadway. Otherwise, she’d be here.

Brad shoots me an evil glare.

Relax, I tell him, Pete probably won’t get better.

The doctor gives Pete an IV, then props him on his feet. Pete wobbles, a newborn colt.

He’ll never make it.

The tournament director comes to us.

Pete’s ready, he says.

Fucking A, Brad says. So are we.

Should be a short night, I tell Brad.

But Pete does it again. He sends his evil twin onto the court. This is not the Pete who was curled in a ball on the locker-room floor. This is not the Pete who was getting an IV and wobbling in circles. This Pete is in the prime of life, serving at warp speed, barely breaking a sweat. He’s playing his best tennis, unbeatable, and he jumps out to a 5–1 lead.

Now I’m angry. I feel as if I found a wounded bird, brought it home, and nursed it back to health, only to have it try to peck my eyes out. I fight back and win the set. Surely I’ve with-stood the only attack Pete can mount. He can’t possibly have anything left.

But in the second set he’s even better. And in the third he’s a freak. He wins the best-of-three match.

I burst into the locker room. Brad is waiting for me, seething. He says again that if he’d been in my place, he’d have forced Pete to forfeit. He’d have demanded that the director fork over the winner’s check.

That’s not me, I tell Brad. I don’t want to win like that. Besides, if I can’t beat a guy who’s poisoned, lying on the ground, I don’t deserve it.

Brad abruptly stops talking. His eyes get big. He nods. He can’t argue with that. He respects my principles, he says, even though he doesn’t agree.

We walk out of the stadium together like Bogart and Claude Rains at the end of Casab-lanca. The beginning of a beautiful friendship. A vital new member of the team.

THEN THE TEAM goes on an epic losing streak.

Adopting Brad’s concepts is like learning to write with my left hand. He calls his philosophy Bradtennis. I call it Braditude. Whatever the hell it’s called, it’s hard. I feel as if I’m back in school, not comprehending, longing to be somewhere else. Again and again Brad says I need to be consistent, steady, like gravity. He says this over and over: Be like gravity. Constant pressure, weighing down your opponent. He tries to sell me on the joy of winning ugly, the virtue of winning ugly, but I only know how to lose ugly. And think ugly. I trust Brad, I know his advice is spot on, I do everything he says—so why am I not winning? I’ve given up perfectionism—so why am I not perfect?

I go to Osaka, lose again to Pete. Instead of gravity, I’m like flubber.

I go to Monte Carlo and lose to Yevgeny Kafelnikov—in the first round.

To add insult to injury, Kafelnikov is asked at the post-match news conference how it felt to beat me, since so many fans were cheering for me.

Difficult, Kafelnikov says, because Agassi is like Jesus.

I don’t know what he means, but I don’t think it’s a compliment.

I go to Duluth, Georgia, lose to MaliVai Washington. Afterward, in the locker room, I feel crushed. Brad appears, smiling. Good things, he says, are about to happen.

I stare, incredulous.

He says, You have to suffer. You have to lose a shitload of close matches. And then one day you’re going to win a close one and the skies are going to part and you’re going to break through. You just need that one breakthrough, that one opening, and after that nothing will stop you from being the best in the world.

You’re crazy.

You’re learning.

You’re nuts.

You’ll see.

I GO TO THE 1994 FRENCH OPEN and play five vicious sets with Thomas Muster. Down 1–5 in the fifth set, something happens. I always hear Brad’s philosophy in my head, but now it’s coming from inside, not outside. I’ve internalized it, the way I once did my father’s voice. I claw back and tie the set at 5. Muster breaks me. He’s serving for the match. Still, I get the game to 30–40, I have hope. I’m on my toes, ready, but he hits a backhand I can’t handle. I reach, hit it wide.

Match, Muster.

At the net he rubs my head, musses my hair. Apart from being condescending, his gesture nearly dislodges my hairpiece.

Good try, he says.

I stare at him with pure hatred. Big mistake, Muster. Don’t touch the hair. Don’t ever touch the hair. Just for that, I tell him at the net, I’ll make you a promise. I’ll never lose to you again.

In the locker room Brad congratulates me.

Good things, he says, are about to happen.

What?

He nods. Trust me—good things.

Clearly he doesn’t understand the pain that losing causes me. And when someone doesn’t understand, there’s no point trying to explain.

At the 1994 Wimbledon I reach the fourth round but lose a nail-biter to Todd Martin. I’m wounded, frightened, disappointed. In the locker room Brad smiles and says: Good things.

We go to the Canadian Open. Brad shocks me at the start of the tournament. Good things, he says, are not about to happen. On the contrary, he sees a few very bad things on the horizon.

He’s looking over my draw. NG, he says.

What the hell does NG mean?

Not Good. You got a terrible draw.

Let me see that.

I snatch the paper from his hands. He’s right. My first match is a gimme, against Jakob Hlasek, from Switzerland, but in the second round I’ll get David Wheaton, who always gives me a host of problems. Still, I love few things more than low expectations. Just tell me I can’t do something. I inform Brad that I’m going to win the whole thing.

And when I do, I add, you have to get an earring.

I don’t like jewelry, he says.

He thinks about it.

OK, he says. Done, and done.

THE COURT AT THE CANADIAN OPEN feels impossibly small, which makes the opponent look bigger.

Wheaton is a big guy, but here in Canada he looks ten feet tall. It’s an optical illusion, but still, I feel as if he’s standing two inches from my face. Distracted, I find myself down two match points in the third-set tiebreak.

Then, wholly out of character, I pull myself together. I shake off all distractions and optical illusions and fight back and win. I do what Brad said I would do. I win a close one. Later I tell Brad, That’s the match you said I’d win. That’s the match you said would change things.

He smiles as if I just sat down in a restaurant all by myself and ordered the chicken parm with the chicken breast separate from the sauce and cheese. Very good, Grasshopper. Wax on, wax off.

My game speeding up, my mind slowing down, I storm through the rest of the draw and win the Canadian Open.

Brad chooses a diamond stud.

GOING INTO THE 1994 U.S. OPEN, I’m number twenty, therefore unseeded. No unseeded player has won the U.S. Open since the 1960s.

Brad likes it. He says he wants me unseeded. He wants me to be the joker in the deck.

You’ll play someone tough in the early rounds, he says, and if you beat them, you’ll win this tournament.

He’s sure of it. So sure, he vows to shave his entire body when I do. I’m always telling Brad he’s too hairy. He makes Sasquatch look like Kojak. He needs to trim that chest, those arms—and those eyebrows. Either trim them or name them.

Trust me, I tell him, you shave that chest and you’ll feel things you’ve never felt before.

Win the U.S. Open, he says, and so will you.

Because of my low ranking, I’m under the radar at this U.S. Open. (I’d be more under the radar if Brooke weren’t on hand, setting off a photo shoot each time she turns her head.) I’m all business, and I dress the part. I wear a black hat, black shorts, black socks, black-and-white shoes. But at the start of my first-rounder, against Robert Eriksson, I feel the old brittle nerves. I feel sick to my stomach. I fight through it, thinking of Brad, refusing to entertain any thought of perfection. I concentrate on being solid, letting Eriksson lose, and he does. He sends me sailing into the second round.

Then—after nearly choking—I beat Guy Forget, from France. Then I take out Wayne Ferreira, from South Africa, in straight sets.

Up next is Chang. I wake the morning of the match with ferocious diarrhea. By match time I’m weak, depleted, and babbling like Peaches. Gil makes me drink an extra dose of Gil Water. This batch has a thickness, a density, like oil. I force it down, nearly puking several times.

As I do, Gil whispers, Thank you for trusting me.

Then I walk into a classic Chang buzz saw. He’s that rare phenomenon—an opponent who wants to win exactly as much as I do, no more, no less. We both know from the opening serve that it’s going down to the wire. Photo finish. No other way to settle it. But in the fifth set, thinking we’re destined for a tiebreak, I catch a rhythm and break him early. I’m making crazy shots, and I feel him losing traction. It’s almost not fair, after such a back-and-forth fight, the way I’m sneaking away with this match. I should be having more trouble with him in the final minutes, but it’s sinfully easy.

At his news conference, Chang tells reporters about a different match than the one I just played. He says he could have played another two sets. Andre got lucky, he says. Furthermore, Chang expresses a great deal of pride that he exposed holes in my game, and he predicts other players in the tournament will thank him. He says I’m vulnerable now. I’m toast.

Next I face Muster. I make good my vow that I will never lose to him again. It takes every ounce of self-control not to rub his head at the net.

I’m in the semis. I’m due to play Martin on Saturday. Friday afternoon, Gil and I are eating lunch at P. J. Clarke’s. We order the same thing we always order at P. J.

Clarke’s—cheeseburgers on toasted English muffins. We’re sitting in the section of our favorite waitress, the one we always agree has a story to tell, if only someone were brave enough to ask her. While we’re waiting for the food we riffle through a stack of New York newspapers.

I see Lupica’s column is about me. I shouldn’t read it, but I do. He writes that the U.S. Open is mine to lose, but you can count on the fact that I will find a way to lose it.

Agassi, Lupica writes, simply isn’t a champion.

I close the paper and feel as if the walls are closing in, as if my vision is narrowing to a pinprick. Lupica sounds so sure, as if he’s seen the future. What if he’s right? What if this is it, my moment of truth, and I’m revealed to be a fraud? If it doesn’t happen now, when will I have another chance to win the U.S. Open? So many things have to fall your way. Finals don’t grow on trees. What if I never win this tournament? What if I always look back on this moment with regret? What if hiring Brad was a mistake? What if Brooke is the wrong girl for me? What if my team, so carefully assembled, is the wrong team?

Gil looks up and sees me turning white.

What’s wrong?

I read him the column. He doesn’t move.

I’d like to meet that Lupica one day, he says.

What if he’s right?

Control what you can control.

Yeah.

Control what you can control.

Right.

Here comes our food.

Martin, who just beat me at Wimbledon, is a deadly opponent. He has a nice hold game and a solid break game. He’s huge, six foot six, and returns the serve off both wings with precision and conviction. He’ll cane a serve that isn’t first-rate, which puts enormous pressure on an average server like me. With his own serve he’s uncannily accurate. If he misses, it’s only by a bee’s dick. He hits the line, and he hasn’t the vaguest interest in hitting the inside half of the line—he wants to hit that outside half. For some reason, I’m better against big servers who miss by a lot. I like to cheat forward, guess which way the serve is coming, and with players like Martin I tend to guess wrong more often, thus leaving myself less lateral coverage.

He’s a nasty matchup for a player with my tendencies, and as our semi begins I like his chances, and Lupica’s, better than mine.

Still, as the first few games unfold, I realize that several things are in my favor. Martin is better on grass than hard court. This is my surface. Also, like me, he’s an underachiever. He’s a fellow slave to nerves. I understand the man I’m playing, therefore, understand him intimately. Simply knowing your enemy is a powerful advantage.

Above all, Martin has a tic. A tell. Some players, when serving, look at their opponent.

Some look at nothing. Martin looks at a particular spot in the service box. If he stares a long time at that spot, he’s serving in the opposite direction. If he merely glances, he’s serving right at that spot. You might not notice it at 0–0, or 15–love, but on break point, he stares at that spot with psycho eyes, like the killer in a horror movie, or glances and looks away like a beginner at the poker tables.

The match unfolds so easily, however, that I don’t need Martin’s tell. He seems unsteady, dwarfed by the occasion, whereas I’m playing with uncommon determination. I see him doubt himself—I can almost hear his doubt—and I sympathize. As I walk off the court, the winner in four sets, I think, He’s got some maturing to do. Then I catch myself. Did I really just say that—about someone else?

In the final I face Michael Stich, from Germany. He’s been to the final at three slams, so he’s not like Martin, he’s a threat on every surface. He’s also a superb athlete with an unreal wingspan. He has a mighty first serve, heavy and fast, and when it’s on, which it usually is, he can serve you into next week. He’s so accurate, you’re shocked when he misses, and you have to overcome your shock to stay in the point. Even when he does miss, however, you’re not out of the woods, because then he falls back on his safe serve, a knuckleball that leaves you with your jock on the ground. And just to keep you a bit more off balance, Stich is without any patterns or tendencies. You never know if he’s going to serve and volley or stay back at the baseline.

Hoping to seize control, dictate the terms, I come fast out of the blocks, hitting the ball clean, crisp, pretending to feel no fear. I like the sound the ball makes off my racket. I like the sound of the crowd, their oohs and aahs. Stich, meanwhile, comes out skittish. When you lose the first set as quickly as he does, 6–1, your instinct is to panic. I can see in his body language that he’s succumbing to that instinct.

He pulls himself together in the second set, however, and gives me a two-fisted battle. I win 7–6, but feel lucky. I know it could have gone either way.

In the third set we both raise the stakes. I feel the finish line pulling, but now he’s mentally committed to this fight. There have been times in the past when he’s given up against me, when he’s taken unnecessary risks because he hasn’t believed in himself. Not this time. He’s playing smart, proving to me that I’m going to have to rip the trophy from him if I really want it.

And I do want it. So I will rip it. We have long rallies off my serve, until he realizes I’m committed, I’m willing to hit with him all day. I catch sight of him grabbing his side, winded. I start picturing how the trophy will look in the bachelor pad back in Vegas.

There are no breaks of serve through the third set. Until 5–all. Finally I break him, and now I’m serving for the match. I hear Brad’s voice, as clearly as if he were standing behind me. Go for his forehand. When in doubt, forehand, forehand. So I hit to Stich’s forehand. Again and again he misses. The outcome feels, to both of us, I think, inevitable.

I fall to my knees. My eyes fill with tears. I look to my box, to Perry and Philly and Gil and especially Brad. You know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph. I’ve believed in Brad’s talent from the beginning, but now, seeing his pure and unrestrained happiness for me, I believe unrestrainedly in him.

Reporters tell me I’m the first unseeded player since 1966 to win the U.S. Open. More importantly, the first man who ever did it was Frank Shields, grandfather of the fifth person in my box. Brooke, who’s been here for every match, looks every bit as happy as Brad.

My new girlfriend, my new coach, my new manager, my surrogate father.

At last, the team is firmly, irrevocably, in place.

16

I THINK you should get rid of that hairpiece, Brooke says. And that ponytail. Shave your hair short, short, and be done with it.

Impossible. I’d feel naked.

You’d feel liberated.

I’d feel exposed.

It’s as though she’s suggesting I have all my teeth pulled. I tell her to forget it. Then I go away and think about it for a few days. I think about the pain my hair has caused me, the in-convenience of the hairpieces, the hypocrisy and the pretending and the lying. Maybe it isn’t crazy after all. Maybe it’s the first step toward sanity.

I stand before Brooke one morning and say, Let’s do it.

Do what?

Cut it off. Let’s cut it all off.

We schedule the ceremonial shearing for late at night, at an hour normally reserved for séances and raves. It’s to be in the kitchen of Brooke’s brownstone, after she returns from the theater. (She got the part in Grease.) We’ll make a party of it, she says, invite some friends.

Perry is there. And, despite our breakup, Wendi. Brooke is openly irritated by the presence of Wendi, and vice versa. Perry is baffled by it. I explain to Brooke and Perry that despite our romantic history, Wendi is still a close friend, a lifelong friend. Being shorn is a dramatic step, and I need friends in the room for moral support, just as I needed Gil there when I had my wrist surgery. In fact, it crosses my mind that for this surgery I should also be sed-ated. We send out for wine.

Brooke’s hairdresser, Matthew, puts my head over the sink, washes my hair, then pulls it all tight.

Andre—are you sure?

No.

Are you ready?

No.

Do you want to do this in front of a mirror?

No. I don’t want to watch.

He puts me in a wooden chair and then—snip. There goes the pony-tail.

Everyone applauds.

He begins cutting the hair on the sides of my head, tight, close to the skull. I think of the mohawk at the Bradenton Mall. I close my eyes, feel my heart pound, as if I’m about to play a final. This was a mistake. Maybe the defining mistake of my life. J.P. warned me not to do this. J.P. said that whenever he attends one of my matches, he hears people talking about my hair. Women love me for it, men hate me for it. Now that J.P. has quit pastoring, devoted himself to music, he’s been doing some work in advertising, writing jingles for radio and TV commercials, so he spoke with some authority when he proclaimed: As far as the corporate world is concerned, Andre Agassi is his hair. And when Andre Agassi’s hair is gone, corporate sponsors will be gone.

He also suggested pointedly that I reread the Bible story about Samson and Delilah.

As Matthew cuts and cuts, and cuts, I realize I should have listened to J.P. When has J.P.

ever steered me wrong? With clumps of my hair falling to the floor, I feel clumps of me falling away.

It takes eleven minutes. Then Matthew whisks away the smock and says, Ta-dah!

I walk to the mirror. I see a person I don’t recognize. Before me stands a total stranger. My reflection isn’t different, it’s simply not me. But, really, what the hell have I lost? Maybe I’ll have an easier time being this guy. All this time with Brad, trying to fix what’s in my head, it never occurred to me to fix what’s on my head. I smile at my reflection, run a hand over my scalp. Hello. Nice to meet you.

As night turns to morning, as we work our way through several bottles of wine, I feel exhil-arated, and heavily indebted to Brooke. You were right, I tell her. My hairpiece was a shackle, and my natural hair, grown to absurd lengths, dyed three different colors, was a weight as well, holding me down. It seems so trivial—hair. But hair has been the crux of my public image, and my self-image, and it’s been a sham.

Now the sham is lying on Brooke’s floor in tiny haystacks. I feel well rid of it. I feel true. I feel free.

And I play like it. At the 1995 Australian Open I come out like the Incredible Hulk. I don’t drop one set in a take-no-prisoners blitz to the final. This is the first time I’ve played in Australia, and I can’t imagine why I’ve waited so long. I like the surface, the venue—the heat.

Having grown up in Vegas, I don’t feel the heat the way other players do, and the defining characteristic of the Australian Open is the unholy temperature. Just as cigar and pipe smoke lingers in the memory after playing Roland Garros, the hazy memory of playing in a giant kiln stays with you for weeks after you leave Melbourne.

I also enjoy the Australian people, and they apparently enjoy me, even though I’m not me, I’m this new bald guy in a bandana and a goatee and a hoop earring. Newspapers go to town with my new look. Everyone has an opinion. Fans who rooted for me are disoriented. Fans who rooted against me have a new reason to dislike me. I read and hear a remarkable succession of pirate jokes. I never knew there could be so many pirate jokes. But I don’t care. I tell myself that everyone is going to have to deal with this pirate, accept this pirate, when I hoist that trophy.

In the final I run smack into Pete. I lose the first set in nothing flat. I lose it gutlessly, on a double fault. Here we go again.

I take time before the second set to collect myself. I glance toward my box. Brad looks frustrated. He’s never believed that Pete is the better player. His face says, You’re the better player, Andre. Don’t respect him so much.

Pete is serving live grenades, one after another, a typical Pete fusillade. But in the middle of the second set, I feel him tiring. His grenades still have the pins in them. He’s wearing down physically, and emotionally, because he’s been through hell these last few days. His longtime coach, Tim Gullickson, suffered two strokes, and then they discovered a tumor in his brain. Pete is traumatized. As the match turns my way, I feel guilty. I’d be willing to stop, let Pete go into the locker room, get an IV, and come back as that other Pete who likes to kick my ass at slams.

I break him twice. He slumps his shoulders, concedes the set.

The third set comes down to a jittery tiebreak. I grab a 3–0 lead and then Pete wins the next four points. Suddenly he’s up 6–4, serving for the set. I let out a caveman scream, as if I’m in the weight room with Gil, and put everything I’ve got into a return that nicks the net and stays inside the line. Pete stares at the ball, then me.

On the next point he hits a forehand that sails long. We’re deadlocked at 6. A furious rally ends when I shock him by coming to the net and hitting a soft backhand drop volley. It works so well, I do it again. Set, Agassi. Momentum, ditto.

The fourth set is a foregone conclusion. I keep my foot on the gas and win, 6–4. Pete looks resolved. Too much hill to climb. In fact, he’s maddeningly unruffled as he comes to the net.

It’s my second slam in a row, my third overall. Everyone says it’s my best slam yet, because it’s my first victory over Pete in a slam final. But I think twenty years from now I’ll remember it as my first bald slam.

THE TALK TURNS IMMEDIATELY to my reaching number one. Pete’s been number one for seventy weeks, and everyone on my team says I’m destined to kick him off the top of that vaunted mountain. I tell them that tennis has nothing to do with destiny. Destiny has better things to do than count ATP points.

Still, I make it my goal to be number one, because my team wants it.

I cloister myself in Gil’s gym and train with fury. I tell him about the goal, and he draws up a battle plan. First, he designs a course of study. He sets about collecting a master list of phone numbers and addresses for the world’s most acclaimed sports doctors and nutrition-ists, and reaches out to all of them, turns them into his private consultants. He huddles with experts at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He flies coast to coast, interviewing the best and brightest, famed researchers on health and wellness, recording every word they tell him in his da Vinci notebooks. He reads everything, from muscle magazines to obscure medical studies and dry reports. He subscribes to the New England Journal of Medicine. In no time he makes himself a portable university, with one professor and one subject.

The student body: me.

Then he determines my physical limit, and pushes me right up to it. He soon has me bench-pressing almost twice my weight, five to seven sets of more than three hundred pounds. He has me lifting fifty-pound dumbbells in excruciating sets of three-ways: back-to-back-to-back flexes that burn three different muscles in my shoulders. Then we work on biceps and triceps. We burn my muscles to ashes. I like when Gil talks about burning muscles, setting them afire. I like being able to put my pyromania to constructive use.

Next we concentrate on my midsection, beginning with a special machine Gil designed and built. As with all his machines, he chopped it, cut it, re-welded it. (The blueprints in his da Vinci notebooks are stunning.) It’s the only machine of its kind in the world, he says, because it allows me to work my abs without engaging my fragile back. We’re going to stack heavy on your abs, he says, work them until they’re on fire, and then we’re going to do Russian Twists: you’ll hold a forty-five-pound iron plate, a big wheel, and rotate left, right, left, right. That will burn down your sides and obliques.

Last, we move to Gil’s homemade lat machine. Unlike every lat machine in every gym the world over, Gil’s doesn’t compromise my back or neck. The bar I pull to work my lats is slightly in front of me. I’m never awkwardly positioned.

While I’m lifting, Gil also feeds me constantly, every twenty minutes. He wants me taking in four parts carbs to one part protein, and he times my intake to the nanosecond. When you eat, he says, and how you eat, that’s the thing. Every time I turn around he’s shoving a bowl of high-protein oatmeal at me, or a bacon sandwich, or a bagel with peanut butter and honey.

Finally, my upper body and gut pleading for mercy, we go outside and run up and down the hill behind Gil’s house. Gil Hill. Quick bursts of power and speed, up and down, up and down, I run until my mind begs me to stop, and then I run some more, ignoring my mind.

Easing into my car at dusk, I often don’t know that I’ll be able to drive home. Sometimes I don’t try. If I don’t have the strength to turn the key in the ignition, I go back inside and curl up on one of Gil’s benches and fall asleep.

After my mini boot camp with Gil, I look as if I’ve traded in my old body, upgraded to the newest model. Still, there’s room for improvement. I could be better about what I eat outside the gym. Gil, however, doesn’t crack the whip about my lapses. He certainly doesn’t like the way I eat when I’m not with him—Taco Bell, Burger King—but he says I need comfort food now and then. My psyche, he says, is more fragile than my back, and he doesn’t want to overstress it. Besides, a man needs one or two vices.

Gil is a paradox, and we both know it. He can lecture me about nutrition while watching me sip a milkshake. He doesn’t slap the milkshake from my hand. On the contrary, he might even take a sip. I like people with contradictions, of course. I also like that Gil’s not a taskmaster. I’ve had enough taskmasters to last me a lifetime. Gil understands me, coddles me, and occasionally—just occasionally—indulges my taste for junk, maybe because he shares it.

At Indian Wells, I face Pete again. If I can beat him I’ll be within an inch of the top spot. I’m in peak condition, but we play a sloppy match, filled with unforced errors. Each of us is distracted. Pete is still distressed about his coach. I’m worried about my father, who’s having open-heart surgery in a few days. This time, Pete manages to rise above his turmoil, while I let mine consume me. I lose in three sets.

I race to the UCLA Medical Center and find my father strapped to machines with long tubes. They remind me of the ball machine of my youth. You can’t beat the dragon. My mother hugs me. He watched you play yesterday, she says. He watched you lose to Pete.

I’m sorry, Pops.

He’s on his back, drugged, helpless. His eyelids flutter open. He sees me and gestures with his hand. Come closer.

I lean in. He can’t speak. He has a tube in his mouth and down his throat. He mumbles something.

I don’t understand, Pops.

More gestures. I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me. Now he’s getting angry. If he had the strength he’d get out of this bed and knock me out.

He motions for a pad and pen.

Tell me later, Pops.

No, no. He shakes his head. He must tell me now.

The nurses hand him a pad and pen. He scrawls a few words, then makes a brushing gesture. Like an artist, gently brushing. At last I understand.

Backhand, he’s trying to say. Hit to Pete’s backhand. You should have hit more to Pete’s backhand.

Vork your wolleys. Hit harder.

I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can’t help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself.

My father is what he is, and always will be, and though he can’t help himself, though he can’t tell the difference between loving me and loving tennis, it’s love all the same. Few of us are granted the grace to know ourselves, and until we do, maybe the best we can do is be consistent. My father is nothing if not consistent.

I put my father’s hand at his side, force him to stop gesturing, tell him that I understand.

Yes, yes, to the backhand. I’ll hit to Pete’s backhand next week in Key Biscayne. And I’ll beat his ass. Don’t worry, Pops. I’ll beat him. Now rest.

He nods. His hand still flapping against his side, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

The next week I beat Pete in the final of Key Biscayne.

After the match we fly together to New York, where we’re due to catch a flight to Europe for the Davis Cup. But first, upon landing, I drag Pete to the Eugene O’Neill Theater to see Brooke as Rizzo in Grease. It’s the first time Pete has seen a Broadway show, I think, but it’s my fiftieth time seeing Grease. I can recite every word of We Go Together, a trick I’ve performed, deadpan, to much laughter on the Late Show with David Letterman.

I like Broadway. I find the ethos of the theater familiar. The work of a Broadway actor is physical, strenuous, demanding, and the nightly pressure is intense. The best Broadway actors remind me of athletes. If they don’t give their best, they know it, and if they don’t know it, the crowd lets them know it. All this is lost on Pete, however. From the opening number he’s yawning, fidgeting, checking his watch. He doesn’t like the theater, and he doesn’t get actors, since he’s never pretended anything in his life. In the quasi-darkness of the footlights, I smile at his discomfort. Somehow, forcing him to sit through Grease feels more satisfying than beating him in Key Biscayne. We go together, like rama lama lama …

IN THE MORNING we catch the Concorde to Paris, then a private plane to Palermo. I’m barely settled into my hotel room when the phone rings.

Perry.

In my hand, he says, I hold the latest rankings.

Hit me with it.

You—are number one.

I’ve knocked Pete off the mountaintop. After eighty-two weeks at number one, Pete’s looking up at me. I’m the twelfth tennis player to be number one in the two decades since they started keeping computer rankings. The next person who phones is a reporter. I tell him that I’m happy about the ranking, that it feels good to be the best that I can be.

It’s a lie. This isn’t at all what I feel. It’s what I want to feel. It’s what I expected to feel, what I tell myself to feel. But in fact I feel nothing.

17

I SPEND MANY HOURS ROAMING the streets of Palermo, drinking strong black coffee, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I did it—I’m the number one tennis player on earth, and yet I feel empty. If being number one feels empty, unsatisfying, what’s the point? Why not just retire?

I picture myself announcing that I’m done. I choose the words I’ll speak at the news conference. Several images then come to mind. Brad, Perry, my father, each disappointed, aghast. Also, I tell myself that retiring won’t solve my essential problem, it won’t help me figure out what I want to do with my life. I’ll be a twenty-five-year-old retiree, which sounds a lot like a ninth-grade dropout.

No, what I need is a new goal. The problem, all this time, is that I’ve had the wrong goals.

I never really wanted to be number one, that was just something others wanted for me. So I’m number one. So a computer loves me. So what? What I think I’ve always wanted, since I was a boy, and what I want now, is far more difficult, far more substantial. I want to win the French Open. Then I’ll have all four slams to my credit. The complete set. I’ll be only the fifth man to accomplish such a feat in the open era—and the first American.

I’ve never cared about computer rankings, and I’ve never cared about the number of slams I won. Roy Emerson has the most slams (twelve), and nobody thinks he’s better than Rod Laver. Nobody. My fellow players, along with any tennis expert or historian I respect, agree that Laver was the best, the king, because he won all four. More, he did it in the same year—twice. Granted, there were only two surfaces back then, grass and clay, but still, that’s godlike. That’s inimitable.

I think about the greats from past eras, how they all chased Laver, how they dreamed of winning all four slams. They all skipped certain slams, because they didn’t give a damn about quantity. They cared about versatility. They all feared that they wouldn’t be considered truly great if their resumes were incomplete, if one or two of the game’s four prizes could elude them.

The more I think about winning all four slams, the more excited I become. It’s a sudden and shocking insight into myself. I realize this is what I’ve long wanted. I’ve simply repressed the desire because it didn’t seem possible, especially after reaching the final of the French Open two years in a row and losing. Also, I’ve allowed myself to get sidetracked by sportswriters and fans who don’t understand, who count the number of slams a player won and use that bogus number to gauge his legacy. Winning all four is the true Holy Grail. So, in 1995, in Palermo, I decide that I will chase this Grail, full speed ahead.

Brooke, meanwhile, never wavers in pursuit of her own personal Grail. Her run on Broadway is deemed a great success, and she doesn’t feel empty. She feels hungry. She wants more. She looks to the next big thing. Offers are slow to come in, however. I try to help. I tell her that the public doesn’t know her. They think they do, but they don’t. A problem with which I have some experience. Some people think she’s a model, some think she’s an actress. She needs to hone her image. I ask Perry to step in, have a look at Brooke’s career.

It doesn’t take him long to form an opinion and a plan. He says what Brooke needs now is a TV show. Her future, he says, lies in TV. So she immediately begins searching for scripts and pilots in which she can shine.

Just before the start of the 1995 French Open, Brooke and I go to Fisher Island for a few days. We both need rest and sleep. I can’t get either, though. I can’t stop thinking about Paris.

I lie in bed at night, taut as a wire, playing matches on the ceiling.

I continue to obsess on the plane to Paris, even though Brooke is with me. She’s not working just now, so she’s able to get away.

Our first time in Paris together, she says, kissing me.

Yes, I say, stroking her hand.

How to tell her that this is not, even partially, a vacation? That this trip isn’t remotely about us?

We stay at the Hôtel Raphael, just around the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. Brooke likes the creaky old elevator with the iron door that manually closes. I like the small candlelit bar off the lobby. The rooms are small too, and they have no TVs, which appalls Brad. He can’t take it, in fact. He checks out a few minutes after checking in, switching to a more modern hotel.

Brooke speaks French, so she’s able to show me Paris through a new, wider lens. I feel comfortable exploring the city, because there’s no fear of getting lost, and she can translate. I tell her about the first time I was here, with Philly. I tell her about the Louvre, the painting that freaked us both out. She’s fascinated and wants me to take her to see it.

Another time, I say.

We eat at fancy restaurants, visit out-of-the-way neighborhoods I’d never venture into on my own. Some of it charms me, but most leaves me cold, because I’m loath to break my concentration. The owner of one café invites us down to his ancient wine cellar, a musty, medieval tomb filled with dust-covered bottles. He hands one to Brooke. She peers at the date on the label: 1787. She cradles the bottle like a baby, then holds it up to me, incredulous.

I don’t get it, I whisper. It’s a bottle. It has dust on it.

She glares, as if she’d like to break the bottle over my head.

Late one night we go for a walk along the Seine. It’s her thirtieth birthday. We stop near a flight of stone steps leading down to the river, and I present her with a diamond tennis bracelet. She laughs as I put it around her wrist and fiddle with the clasp. We both admire the way it catches the moonlight. Then, just beyond Brooke’s shoulder, standing on the stone steps, a drunken Frenchman staggers into view and sends a high, looping arc of urine into the Seine. I don’t believe in omens, as a rule, but this seems ominous. I just can’t tell if it portends something for the French Open or my relationship with Brooke.

At last the tournament begins. I win my first four matches without dropping a set. It’s evident to reporters and commentators that I’m a different player. Stronger and more focused. On a mission. No one sees this more clearly than my fellow players. I’ve always noticed the way players silently anoint the alpha dog in their midst, the way they single out the one player who’s feeling it, who’s likeliest to win. At this tournament, for the first time, I’m that player. I feel them all watching me in the locker room. I feel them noting my every move, the little things I do, even studying how I organize my bag. They’re quicker to step aside when I walk by, eager to give up the training table. A new degree of respect is directed toward me, and while I try not to take it seriously, I can’t help but enjoy it. Better me getting this treatment than someone else.

Brooke, however, doesn’t seem to notice any difference in me, doesn’t treat me any differently. At night I sit in the hotel room, staring out the window at Paris, an eagle on a cliff, but she talks to me of this and that, Grease and Paris and what so-and-so said about such-and-such. She doesn’t understand the work I did in Gil’s gym, the trials and sacrifices and concentration that have led to this new confidence—or the huge task that lies ahead. And she doesn’t try to understand. She’s more interested in where we’re going to eat next, which wine cellar we’re going to explore. She takes it for granted that I’m going to win, and she wishes I’d hurry up and do it, so we can have fun. It’s not selfishness on her part, just a mistaken impression that winning is normal, losing is abnormal.

In the quarters I face Kafelnikov, the Russian who likened me to Jesus. I sneer at him across the net as the match begins: Jesus is about to whip you with a car antenna. I know I can beat Kafelnikov. He knows it too. It’s written all over his face. But early in the first set, I lunge for a ball and feel something snap. My hip flexor. I ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, pretend I don’t have a hip, but the hip sends lines of pain up and down my leg.

I can’t bend. I can’t move. I ask for the trainer, who gives me two aspirin and tells me there’s nothing he can do. His eyes are the size of poker chips when he tells me.

I lose the first set. Then the second. In the third I rally. I’m up 4–1, the crowd urging me onward. Allez, Agassi! But I grow less mobile with every minute. Kafelnikov, moving well, ties the set, and I feel my limbs go slack. It’s another Russian crucifixion. Au revoir, Grail. I walk off the court without collecting my rackets.

The real test wasn’t supposed to be Kafelnikov. It was supposed to be Muster, the hair-musser who’s been dominating on clay. So even if I’d gotten by Kafelnikov I don’t know how hobbled I would have been against Muster. But I promised Muster I’d never lose to him again, and I meant it, and I liked my chances. I think no matter who was on the other side of that net, I could have done something great. As I leave Paris I don’t feel defeated; I feel cheated. This was it, I just know. My last chance. Never again will I be in Paris feeling so strong, so young.

Never again will I inspire such fear in the locker room.

My golden opportunity to win all four slams is gone.

Brooke has already flown home ahead of me, so it’s just Gil and me on the flight, Gil talking softly about how we’re going to treat the flexor, how we’re going to adjust after what we’ve just put ourselves through, and get ready for what’s coming—grass. We spend a week in Vegas, doing nothing but watching movies and waiting for my hip to mend. An MRI tells us the damage isn’t permanent. Cold comfort.

We fly to England. I’m the number one seed at the 1995 Wimbledon, because I’m still ranked number one in the world. Fans greet me with an enthusiasm and glee that clash sharply with my mood. Nike has been here ahead of time, priming the pump, handing out Agassi Kits—adhesive sideburns, Fu Manchu mustaches, and bandanas. This is my new look. I’ve morphed from pirate to bandit. It’s surreal, as always, to see guys trying to look like me, and as always it’s even a bit more surreal to see girls trying. Girls with Fu Manchus and sideburns—it almost makes me crack a smile. Almost.

It rains every day, but still the fans mob Wimbledon. They brave the rain, the cold, they line up all the way down Church Road, for the love of tennis. I want to go out there and stand with them, question them, find out what makes them love it so much. I wonder what it would be like to feel such passion for the game. I wonder if the fake Fu Manchus stay on in the rain, or if they disintegrate like my old hairpieces.

I win my first two matches easily, and then beat Wheaton in four sets. The big news of that day, however, is Tarango, who lost, then fought with an umpire before leaving the court. Then Tarango’s wife slapped the umpire. One of the great scandals in Wimbledon history. Instead of facing Tarango, therefore, I’ll face Alexander Mronz, from Germany. Reporters ask me which opponent I would have preferred, and I badly want to tell the story of Tarango cheating when I was eight. I don’t, however. I don’t want to get in a public spat with Tarango, and I fear making an enemy of his wife. I say the diplomatic thing, that it doesn’t matter whom I play, even though Tarango was the more dangerous threat.

I beat Mronz in three easy sets.

In the semis I face Becker. I’ve beaten him the last eight times we’ve played. Pete has already moved on to the final and he’s awaiting the winner of Agassi-Becker, which is to say he’s awaiting me, because every slam final is beginning to feel like a standing date between me and Pete.

I take the first set from Becker, no problem. In the second set I jump out to a 4–1 lead.

Here I come, Pete. Get ready, Pete. Then, just like that, Becker begins to play a rougher, brawnier game. He wins several scrappy points. After chipping at my confidence with a tiny nail he now pulls out a sledgehammer. He plays from the baseline, an unusual tactic for him, and flat outmuscles me. He breaks me, and though I’m still up 4–2, I feel something snap. Not my hip—my mind. I’m suddenly unable to control my thoughts. I’m thinking of Pete, waiting.

I’m thinking of my sister Rita, whose husband, Pancho, just lost a long bout with stomach cancer. I’m thinking of Becker, still working with Nick, who, tanner than ever, the color of prime rib, sits above us in Becker’s box. I wonder if Nick has told Becker my secrets—for instance, the way I’ve figured out Becker’s serve. (Just before he tosses the ball, Becker sticks out his tongue and it points like a tiny red arrow to where he’s aiming.) I’m thinking of Brooke, who’s been shopping at Harrods this week with Pete’s girlfriend, a law student named DeLaina Mul-cahy. All these thoughts go crashing through my mind, making me feel scattered, fractured, and this allows Becker to capture the momentum. He never gives it back. He wins in four sets.

The loss is one of the most devastating of my life. Afterward, I don’t say a word to anyone.

Gil, Brad, Brooke—I don’t speak to them because I can’t. I am broken, gut-shot.

BROOKE AND I ARE DUE TO FLY AWAY on a vacation. We’ve been planning it for weeks. We wanted someplace remote, with no phones, no other people, so we booked Indigo Island, 150 miles from Nassau. After the Wimbledon debacle, I want to cancel, but Brooke reminds me we’ve secured the entire island, our deposit is nonrefundable.

Besides, it’s supposed to be paradise, she says. It will be good for us.

I frown.

Just as I feared, from the moment we arrive, paradise feels like Super-max. On the entire island there is one house, and it’s not big enough for the three of us—Brooke, me, and my black mood.

Brooke lies in the sun and waits for me to speak. She’s not frightened by my silence, but she doesn’t understand it, either. In her world, everyone pretends, whereas in mine some things can’t be pretended away.

After two days of silence I thank her for being so patient, and tell her I’m back.

I’m going to go for a jog on the beach, I say.

I start at a leisurely pace, then find myself running hundred-meter sprints. I’m already thinking about getting in shape, reloading for the hard courts of summer.

I GO TO WASHINGTON, D.C. The Legg Mason Tennis Classic. The weather is obscenely hot. Brad and I try to get acclimated to the heat by practicing in the middle of the afternoon.

When we’re done, fans gather and shout questions. Few of the other players hang around talking to fans, but I do. I like it. For me, fans are always preferable to reporters.

After we’ve signed the last autograph and answered the last question, Brad says he needs a beer. He looks sly. Something’s up. I take him to the Tombs, the place Perry and I frequented when I visited him during his Georgetown days. The bar has a miniature street door, then a narrow staircase down into damp darkness and a smell of unclean bathrooms. It also has one of those open kitchens, so you can watch the cooks, and while that’s a good thing at some places, it’s not a plus at the Tombs. We find a booth and order drinks. Brad is put out because they don’t have Bud Ice. He settles for Bud. I feel tremendous after the workout, relaxed, fit. I haven’t thought of Becker in almost twenty minutes. Brad puts a stop to that. From the inside pocket of his black cashmere pullover he removes a wad of papers, and in an agit-ated way he drops them on the table.

Becker, he says.

What?

This is what he said after beating you at Wimbledon.

What do I care?

He’s talking shit.

What kind of shit?

He reads.

Becker used his post-match news conference to complain that Wimbledon promotes me over other players. He complained that Wimbledon officials unfairly bend over backward to schedule my matches on Centre Court. He complained that all major tournaments kiss my ass. Then he got personal. He called me an elitist. He said that I don’t associate with other players. He said that I’m not well liked on the tour. He said I’m not open, and if I were open, maybe other players wouldn’t fear me so much.

In short, he issued a declaration of war.

Brad has never cared for Becker. Brad has always called him B. B. Socrates, because he thinks Becker tries to come off as an intellectual, when he’s just an overgrown farmboy. But Brad is now so incensed that he can’t sit still in our booth at the Tombs.

Andre, he says, it is so fucking on. Mark my words. We’re going to run into this motherfucker again. We’re going to run into him at the U.S. Open. And until then, we’re going to prepare, train, plot revenge.

I read Becker’s quotes again. I can’t believe it. I knew the guy didn’t like me, but this. I look down and find that I’m clenching and unclenching my fist.

Brad says, Do you hear? I want you to take—this—fucker—OUT.

Consider it done.

We clink our beer bottles, swear an oath.

What’s more, I tell myself, after Becker I’m going to keep on winning. I’m simply not going to lose anymore. At least not until the frost is on the pumpkin. I’m sick of losing, sick of being disappointed, sick and tired of guys disrespecting my game as much as I do.

AND SO THE SUMMER OF 1995 becomes the Summer of Revenge. Running on pure animosity I steamroll through the D.C. tournament. In the final I face Edberg. I’m the better player, but it’s well over one hundred degrees, and such extreme heat is a great equalizer. In this heat, all men are the same. At the start of our match I can’t think, can’t find a groove.

Luckily, Edberg can’t either. I win the first set, he wins the second, and in the third set I go up 5–2. The fans cheer—those fans who aren’t suffering heatstroke. The match is stopped several times so that someone in the stands can receive medical attention.

I’m serving for the match. At least that’s what they tell me. I’m also hallucinating. I don’t know what game I’m playing. Is this Nerf ping-pong? I’m supposed to hit this fuzzy yellow ball back and forth? To whom? My teeth are chattering. I see three balls come across the net, and I hit the middle one.

My only hope is that Edberg is hallucinating too. Maybe he’ll black out before I do and I’ll win in a forfeit. I wait, watch him closely, but then I take a turn for the worse. My stomach clinches. He breaks me.

Now he’s serving. I call time, step away, and toss my breakfast onto a decorative planter at the back of the court. When I resume my position, Edberg has no trouble holding serve.

I’m serving again for the match. We rally, weakly, each of us hitting timid shots in the center of the court, like ten-year-old girls playing badminton. He breaks me—again.

Five–all. I drop my racket and stumble off the court.

There’s an unwritten rule, or maybe it’s actually written, that if you leave the court with your racket, you forfeit. So I drop the racket, to let people know I’m coming back. In my delirious state, I still care about the rules of tennis, but I also care about the rules of physics. What goes down, in this heat, must come up, and soon. I vomit several times on my way to the locker room. I run to the toilet and bring up a meal I had days ago. Maybe years ago. I feel as if I’m going into shock. At last the locker room’s air-conditioning, plus the total purge of my stomach, starts to revive me.

The referee knocks at the door.

Andre! You’re going to lose points if you don’t return to the court right now.

Stomach empty, head spinning, I return. I break Edberg. I have no idea how. Then I hold on for the match.

I stumble to the net, where Edberg is leaning, close to fainting. We both have a hard time staying on court for the ceremony. When they hand me the trophy I think about vomiting into it. They hand me a microphone, to say a few words, and I think about vomiting on it too. I apologize for my behavior, especially to the people sitting by the ill-used flowerpot. I want to publicly suggest that officials consider relocating this tournament to Iceland, but I need to vomit again. I drop the microphone and run.

Brooke asks why I didn’t just quit.

Because it’s the Summer of Revenge.

After the match Tarango publicly objects to my behavior. He demands an explanation for why I left the court. He says that he was waiting to get on to play his doubles match, and I delayed him. He’s annoyed. I’m delighted. I want to go back to the court, find the flowerpot, have it gift-wrapped and sent to Tarango, with a note that says, Call this out, cheater.

I never forget. Something Becker is about to learn the hard way.

From D.C. I go to Montreal, where it’s blessedly cooler. I beat Pete in the final. Three hard-fought sets. Beating Pete always feels good, but this time it barely registers. I want Becker. I beat Chang in the final at Cincinnati, praise God, and then go to New Haven, back into the blast furnace of the Northeast summer. I reach the final and face Krajicek. He’s big, six foot five at least, and burly, and yet surprisingly light on his feet. Two strides and he’s there at the net, snarling, ready to snack on your heart. Also, his serve is monstrous. I don’t want to spend three hours coping with that serve. After winning three tournaments in quick succession, I have very little left. Brad, however, won’t tolerate such talk.

You’re in training, remember? The grudge match to end all grudge matches? Let it fly, he says.

So I let it fly. The problem is, Krajicek does too. He beats me in the first set, 6–3. In the second set he has match point twice. But I don’t yield. I tie the set, win the tiebreak, and win the third set going away. It’s my twentieth straight match victory, my fourth straight tournament victory. I’ve won sixty-three of seventy matches this year, forty-four of forty-six on hard court. Reporters ask if I feel invincible, and I say no. They think I’m being modest, but I’m telling the truth. It’s how I feel. It’s the only way I can allow myself to feel in the Summer of Revenge. Pride is bad, stress is good. I don’t want to feel confident. I want to feel rage. Endless, all-consuming rage.

ALL THE TALK ON THE TOUR is about my rivalry with Pete, largely because of a new Nike ad campaign, including a popular TV commercial in which we hop out of a cab in the middle of San Francisco, set up a net, and go at it. The New York Times Sunday Magazine publishes a long profile about the rivalry and the chasm between our personalities. It describes Pete’s absorption in tennis, his love of the game. I wonder what the writer would have made of the chasm if he’d known my true feelings about tennis. If only I’d told him.

I set the story aside. I pick it up again. I don’t want to read it. I must. It feels odd, unnerv-ing, because Pete isn’t uppermost in my thoughts right now. Day and night, I think of Becker, only Becker. And yet, skimming the article, I wince when Pete is asked what he likes about me.

He can’t think of anything.

Finally he says: I like the way he travels.

AT LAST, AUGUST COMES. Gil and Brad and I drive to New York for the 1995 U.S.

Open. On our first morning at Louis Armstrong Stadium I see Brad in the locker room, holding the draw in his hands.

It’s good, he says, smiling. Oh it’s so good. AG. All Good.

I’m on Becker’s side of the draw. If everything goes according to Brad’s plan, I’ll face Becker in the semis. Then, Pete. I think: If only, when we’re born, we could look over our draw in life, project our path to the final.

In the early rounds I’m on autopilot. I know what I want, I see what I want, just ahead, and opponents are mere road cones. Edberg. Alex Corretja. Petr Korda. I need to get past them to reach my target, so I do. After each win Brad isn’t his typical ebullient self. He doesn’t smile.

He doesn’t celebrate. He’s preoccupied by Becker. He’s monitoring Becker’s progress, chart-ing his matches. He wants Becker to win every match, every point.

As I walk off the court with another victory, Brad says drily, Another good day.

Thanks. Yeah, felt good.

No. I mean B. B. Socrates. He won.

Pete handles his business. He reaches the final on his side of the draw and now awaits the winner of Agassi-Becker. It’s Wimbledon all over again, Part II. But this time I’m not thinking of Pete. I’m not looking ahead. I’ve been gunning for Becker, and now the moment is here, and my concentration is so intense, it frightens me.

A friend asks if I don’t feel even the slightest impulse, when it’s personal with an opponent, to drop the racket and go for his throat. When it’s a grudge match, when there’s bad blood, wouldn’t I rather settle it with a few rounds of old-fashioned boxing? I tell my friend that tennis is boxing. Every tennis player, sooner or later, compares himself to a boxer, because tennis is noncontact pugilism. It’s violent, mano a mano, and the choice is as brutally simple as it is in any ring. Kill or be killed. Beat or take your beat-down. Tennis beatings are just deeper below the skin. They remind me of the old Vegas loan shark method of beating someone with a bag of oranges, because it leaves no outer bruises.

And yet, having said that, I’m only human. So before we take the court, as Becker and I stand in the tunnel, I tell the security guard, James: Keep us apart. I don’t want this fucking German in my sight. Trust me, James, you don’t want me to see him.

Becker feels the same way. He knows what he said, and he knows I’ve read it fifty times and memorized it. He knows I’ve been stewing in his remarks all summer, and he knows I want blood. He does too. He’s never liked me, and for him this also has been the Summer of Revenge. We walk onto the court, avoiding eye contact, refusing to acknowledge the crowd, focused on our gear, our tennis bags, and the nasty job at hand.

From the opening bell, it’s what I thought it would be. We’re sneering, snorting, cursing in two different languages. I win the first set, 7–6. Becker looks infuriatingly unfazed. Why shouldn’t he? This is how our match at Wimbledon started. He doesn’t worry about falling behind—he’s proved that he can take my best punch and come back.

I win the second set, 7–6. Now he starts to squirm, to look for an edge. He tries to play with my mind. He’s seen me lose my cool before, so he does what he thinks will make me lose my cool again, the most emasculating thing one tennis player can do to another: He blows kisses at my box. At Brooke.

It works. I’m so angry that I momentarily lose focus. In the third set, with me ahead, 4–2, Becker dives for a ball that he has no business reaching. He gets there, wins the point, then breaks me, then wins the set. The crowd is now wild. They seem to have figured it out, that this is personal, that these two guys don’t like each other, that we’re settling old scores. They appreciate the drama, and they want it to go the distance, and now it really feels like Wimbledon all over again. Becker feeds on their energy. He blows more kisses at Brooke, smiling wolfishly. It worked once, why not do it again? I look at Brad, next to Brooke, and he gives me a steely glare, the vintage Brad look that says: Come on! Let’s go!

The fourth set is nip and tuck. We’re each holding serve, looking for an opening to break. I glance at the clock. Nine thirty. No one here is going home. Lock the doors, send out for sandwiches, we’re not leaving until this fucking thing is settled. The intensity is palpable. I’ve never wanted a match so much. I never wanted anything so much. I hold serve to go up 6–5

and now Becker’s serving to stay in the match.

He sticks his tongue to my right, serves right. I guess right and cold-cock it. Winner. I crush his next two serves. Now he’s serving at love–40, triple match point.

Perry is barking at him. Brooke is raining bloodcurdling screams down on him. Becker is smiling, waving at them both, as if he’s Miss America. He misfires his first serve. I know he’s going to get aggressive with his second. He’s a champion, he’s going to bring it like a champion. Also, his tongue is in the middle of his mouth. Sure enough he brings a faster-paced second serve straight up the gut. Normally you have to worry about the high bounce and kick, so you move in, try to catch it early before it bounces above your shoulder, but I gamble, hold my ground, and the gamble pays off. Here is the ball, in my wheelhouse. I slide my hips out of the way, put myself in place to hit the coldie of a lifetime. The serve is a click faster than I anticipated but I adjust. I’m on my toes, feeling like Wyatt Earp and Spider-Man and Spartacus. I swing. Every hair on my body is standing up. As the ball leaves my racket a sound leaves my mouth that’s pure animal. I know that I won’t ever make this sound again, and I won’t ever hit a tennis ball any harder, or any more perfect. Hitting a ball dead perfect—the only peace. As it lands on Becker’s side of the court the sound is still coming from me.

AAAAGHHHHHHHHH.

The ball blazes past Becker. Match, Agassi.

Becker walks to the net. Let him stand there. The fans are on their feet, swaying, ecstatic.

I’m gazing at Brooke and Gil and Perry and Brad, especially Brad. Come on! I keep gazing.

Becker is still at the net. I don’t care. I leave him standing there like a Jehovah’s Witness on my doorstep. Finally, finally, I strip off my wristbands and go to the net and stick my hand in his general vicinity, without looking. He gives my hand a shake, and I snatch it away.

A TV reporter rushes onto the court and asks me a few questions. I answer without thinking. Then I look into the camera with a smile and say, Pete! I’m coming!

I run into the tunnel, into the training room. Gil is there, worried. He knows what that victory must have cost me physically.

I’m in bad shape, Gil.

Lie down, man.

My head is ringing. I’m sopping wet. It’s ten at night, and I’ve got to play in the final in less than eighteen hours. Between now and tomorrow I’ve got to come down from this near-psychotic state, get home, eat a good hot meal, drink a gallon of Gil Water until I piss a kid-ney, and then get some sleep.

Gil drives me back to Brooke’s brownstone. We eat dinner, and then I sit in the shower for an hour. It’s one of those showers that makes you think you should write a check to several environmental groups and maybe plant a tree. At two in the morning I lie down beside Brooke and black out.

I OPEN MY EYES FIVE HOURS LATER, no idea where I am. I sit up and let out a scream, a compacted version of my final scream against Becker. I can’t move.

At first I think it’s a stomach cramp. Then I realize it’s much more serious. I roll off the bed, onto my hands and knees. I know what this is. I’ve had this before. Torn cartilage between the ribs. I have a pretty good idea which shot tore it. But this tear must be particularly severe, because I can’t expand my rib cage. I can barely breathe.

I remember vaguely that it takes three weeks for this injury to heal. But I’ve got nine hours before I face Pete. It’s seven in the morning, the match is at four. I call for Brooke. She must be out. I’m lying on my side, saying aloud, This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening.

I close my eyes and pray that I’ll be able to walk onto the court. Even asking for this much seems ridiculous, because I can’t stand. Hard as I try, I can’t get to my feet.

God, please. I can’t not show up for the final of the U.S. Open.

I crawl to the phone and dial Gil.

Gilly, I can’t stand up. I literally can’t stand up.

I’ll be right over.

By the time he arrives, I’m standing, but still having trouble breathing. I tell him what I think it must be, and he concurs. He watches me drink a cup of coffee, then says: It’s time. We need to go.

We look at the clock and both do the only thing we can do in such a moment—we laugh.

Gil drives me to the stadium. On the practice court I hit one ball and the ribs grab me. I hit another. I yell in pain. I hit a third. It still hurts, but I can put some mustard on it. I can breathe.

How do you feel?

Better. I’m about thirty-eight percent.

We stare at each other. Maybe that will be enough.

But Pete is pushing 100 percent. He comes out prepared, braced for a dose of what he saw me give Becker. I lose the first set, 6–4. I lose the second set, 6–3.

I win the third set, however. I’m learning what I can get away with. I’m finding shortcuts, compromises, back doors. I see a few chances to turn this thing into a miracle. I just can’t exploit them. I lose the fourth set, 7–5.

Reporters ask how it feels to win twenty-six matches in a row, to win all summer long, only to run into the giant net that is Pete. I think: How do you think it feels? I say: Next summer I’m going to lose a little bit. I’m 26–1, and I’d give up all those wins for this one.

On the drive back to the brownstone, I’m holding my ribs, staring out the window, reliving every shot of the Summer of Revenge. All that work and anger and winning and training and hoping and sweating, and it leads to the same empty disappointed feeling. No matter how much you win, if you’re not the last one to win, you’re a loser. And in the end I always lose, because there is always Pete. As always, Pete.

Brooke steers clear. She gives me kind looks and sympathetic frowns, but it doesn’t feel real, because she doesn’t understand. She’s waiting for me to feel better, for this to pass, for things to get back to normal. Losing is abnormal.

Brooke has told me that she has a ritual when I lose, a way of killing time until normalcy is restored. While I’m mutely grieving, she goes through her closets and pulls out everything she hasn’t worn in months. She folds sweaters and T-shirts, reorganizes socks and stockings and shoes into drawers and boxes. The night I lose to Pete, I peer into Brooke’s closet.

Neat as a pin.

In our brief relationship, she’s had lots of time to kill.

18

WHILE FACING WILANDER IN DAVIS CUP, I alter my movements to protect my torn rib cartilage, but when you protect one thing you often damage another. I hit an odd forehand and feel a chest muscle pull. It stays warm during the match, but when I wake the next morning I can’t move.

The doctors shut me down for weeks. Brad is suicidal.

A layoff will cost you the number one rank, he says.

I couldn’t care less. Pete is number one, no matter what some computer says. Pete won two slams this year, and he won our showdown in New York. Besides, I still don’t give a rat’s ass about being number one. Would have been nice; wasn’t my goal. Then again, beating Pete wasn’t my goal either, but losing to him has caused me to plummet into a bottomless gloom.

I’ve always had trouble shaking off hard losses, but this loss to Pete is different. This is the ultimate loss, the über-loss, the alpha-omega loss that eclipses all others. Previous losses to Pete, the loss to Courier, the loss to Gómez—they were flesh wounds compared to this, which feels like a spear through the heart. Every day this loss feels new. Every day I tell myself to stop thinking about it, and every day I can’t. The only respite is fantasizing about retirement.

Brooke, meanwhile, is working nonstop. Her acting career is taking off. As per Perry’s advice, she’s bought a house in Los Angeles and she’s been pursuing roles on TV. Now she’s landed a plum, a small guest spot in an episode of the sitcom Friends.

It’s the number one show in the world, she says. Number one!

I wince. That phrase again. She doesn’t notice.

The producers of Friends have asked Brooke to play a stalker. I cringe, thinking of the nightmare she’s endured with stalkers and overly enthusiastic fans. But Brooke thinks her experience with so many stalkers will be good preparation for this part. She says she understands the stalker mind-set.

Plus, Andre, it’s Friends. The number one show on TV. It might lead to a recurring role on the show. And besides the fact that Friends is number one, my episode is going to air right after the Super Bowl—fifty million people will see it. This is like my U.S. Open.

A tennis analogy. The surest way to make me disconnect from her desire. But I pretend to be pleased, and say the right things. If you’re happy, I say, I’m happy. She believes me. Or acts as if she does. Which often feels like the same thing.

We agree that Perry and I will go with her to Hollywood and watch her shoot the episode.

We’ll be in her box, as she’s always been in mine.

Won’t that be fun? she says.

No, I think.

Yes, I say. Fun.

I don’t want to go. But I also don’t want to lie around the house anymore, talking to myself.

Sore chest, wounded ego—even I don’t want to be alone with me.

In the days leading up to the taping of Friends we barricade ourselves in Brooke’s house in Los Angeles. She has a fellow actor come over every day to help run lines. I watch them.

Brooke is keyed up, feeling pressure, training hard, a process that’s familiar to me. I’m proud of her. I tell her she’s going to be a star. Good things are about to happen.

WE ARRIVE AT THE STUDIO late in the afternoon. A half-dozen actors greet us warmly.

They’re the cast, I assume, the eponymous Friends, but for all I know they could be six unem-ployed actors from West Covina. I’ve never seen the show. Brooke hugs them, flushes, stammers, even though she’s already spent days rehearsing with them. I’ve never seen her this starstruck. I introduced her to Barbra Streisand and she didn’t react this way.

I stay a few steps behind Brooke, in the shadows. I don’t want to take any of her limelight, and besides, I’m not feeling sociable. But the actors are tennis fans and they keep drawing me into the conversation. They ask about my injury, congratulate me on a successful year.

The year feels anything but successful, but I thank them as politely as I can and step back again.

They persist. They ask about the U.S. Open. The rivalry with Pete. What’s that like? You guys are great for tennis.

Yes, well.

Are you guys friends?

Friends? Did they really just ask me that? Are they asking because they’re the Friends?

I’d never thought of it before, but yes, I guess Pete and I are friends.

I turn to Perry for support. But he’s like Brooke, weirdly starstruck. In fact he’s going a little native. He’s talking showbiz with the actors, dropping names, playing the insider.

Mercifully, Brooke is summoned to her trailer. Perry and I follow and sit with her while a team of people blows out and combs her hair, and another team tends to her makeup and wardrobe. I watch Brooke as she watches herself in the mirror. She’s so happy, so hyper, like a girl primping for her sweet sixteen party, and I’m so out of place. I feel myself shutting down.

I say the appropriate things, I smile and mouth encouragements, but on the inside I feel something like a valve shut. I wonder if what I feel is the same thing Brooke feels when I’m tense before a tournament, or grieving a loss afterward. My feigned interest, my canned answers, my fundamental lack of interest—is this what I reduce her to half the time?

We walk to the set, a purple apartment with secondhand furniture. We stand around, killing time, while large men fuss with lights and the director confers with writers. Someone is telling jokes, trying to warm up the crowd. I find a seat in the front row, close to a fake door Brooke is supposed to enter. The crowd is buzzing, as is the crew. There is a sense of building anticipation. I can’t stop yawning. I feel like Pete, forced to watch Grease. I wonder why I have so much respect for Broadway, and such disdain for this.

Someone yells: Quiet! Someone else yells: Action! Brooke steps forward and knocks at the fake door. It swings open, and Brooke delivers her first line. The audience laughs and cheers. The director yells, Cut! A woman several rows behind me yells: You’re doing great, Brooke!

The director praises Brooke. She listens to the praise, nodding. Thank you, she says, but I can do it better. She wants to do it again, she wants another chance. OK, the director says.

While they set up for the next take, Perry gives Brooke pointers. He doesn’t know the first thing about acting, but Brooke is feeling so insecure that she’d take notes from anyone right now. She listens and nods. They’re standing just below me, and he’s lecturing her as if he’s the head of the Actors Studio.

Places, please!

Brooke thanks Perry and runs to the door.

Quiet, everybody!

Brooke closes her eyes.

Action!

She knocks at the fake door, does the scene exactly the same way.

Cut!

Fantastic, the director tells Brooke.

She hurries over to me and asks what I thought. Terrific, I say, and I’m not lying. She was.

Even if TV annoys me, even if the atmosphere and the fakery turn me off, I respect hard work.

I admire her dedication. She’s giving her all. I kiss her and tell her I’m proud.

Are you finished?

No, I have another scene.

Oh.

We move to a different set, a restaurant. Brooke’s stalker character is on a date with the object of her affection, Joey. She’s seated at a table across from the actor playing Joey Another interminable wait. More notes from Perry. At last the director yells, Action!

The actor playing Joey seems like a nice enough guy. When the scene starts, however, I realize I’m going to have to kick his ass. Apparently the script calls for Brooke to grab Joey’s hand and lick it. But she takes it one step further, devouring his hand like an ice cream cone.

Cut! That was great, the director says. But let’s try it once more. Brooke is laughing. Joey is laughing—wiping his hand on a napkin. I’m staring, wide-eyed. Brooke didn’t mention anything about hand licking. She knew what my reaction would be.

This is not my life, this cannot be my life. I’m not really here, I’m not really sitting with two hundred people and watching my girlfriend lick another man’s hand.

I look up at the ceiling, directly into the lights.

They’re going to do it again.

Quiet, please!

Action!

Brooke takes Joey’s hand and puts it in her mouth, up to the knuckles. This time she rolls her eyes back and runs her tongue along—

I jump out of my seat, run downstairs, push through a side door. It’s dark. How did it get dark so fast? Right outside the door is my rented Lincoln. Behind me come Perry and Brooke.

Perry’s mystified. Brooke’s frantic. She grabs my arm and asks, Where are you going? You can’t be going!

Perry says, What’s wrong? What’s the matter?

You know. You both know.

Brooke is begging me to stay. So is Perry. I tell them there’s no chance, I don’t want to watch her lick that man’s hand.

Don’t do this, Brooke says.

Me? Me? I’m not doing anything. Go back and enjoy yourselves. Break a leg. Have some more hand. I’m out of here.

I’M DRIVING FAST ON THE FREEWAY, weaving in and out of traffic. I’m not sure where I’m going, except that I’m not going back to Brooke’s. Fuck that. Suddenly I realize that I’m going all the way to Vegas, and I’m not stopping until I get there, and I feel great about this decision. I open up the engine and roar past the city limits, on into the desert, nothing between me and my bed but a stretch of wasteland and a swirl of stars.

When the radio turns to static, I try to tune in my emotions. I felt jealous, yes, but also dis-located, out of touch with myself. Like Brooke, I was playing a part, the role of the Dopey Boyfriend, and I thought I was pulling it off. But when the hand licking started I couldn’t stay in character any longer. Of course, I’ve watched Brooke kiss men onstage before. I’ve also had the experience of meeting a perv who couldn’t wait to tell me about making out with my girlfriend on a movie set when she was fifteen. This is different. This is over the line. I don’t pretend to know where the line is, but hand licking is definitely over it.

I pull up to the bachelor pad at two a.m. The driving has tired me, taken the edge off my anger. I’m still angry, but also contrite. I dial Brooke.

I’m sorry. I just—I needed to get out of there.

She says everyone asked where I was. She says I humiliated her, jeopardized her big break. She says everyone told her how good she was, but she couldn’t enjoy a minute of her success, because the only person she wanted to share it with was gone.

You were a major distraction, she says, raising her voice. I had to block you out of my mind so that I could concentrate on my lines, which made everything harder. If I ever did anything like that to you, at a match, you’d be incensed.

I couldn’t watch you lick that guy’s hand.

I was acting, Andre. Acting. Did you forget that I’m an actor, that acting is what I do for a living, that it’s all pretend? Make-believe?

If only I could forget.

I start to defend myself, but Brooke says she doesn’t want to hear it. She hangs up.

I stand in the middle of my living room and feel the floor shaking. I briefly consider the possibility that Vegas is being struck by an earthquake. I don’t know what to do, where to stand. I walk to the shelf that holds my tennis trophies and pick one up. I hurl it through the living room, through the kitchen. It breaks in several pieces. I pick up another and hurl it against the wall. One by one I do this with all my trophies. Davis Cup? Smash. U.S. Open? Smash.

Wimbledon? Smash, smash. I pull the rackets out of my tennis bag and try to smash the glass coffee table, but only the rackets shatter. I pick up the broken trophies and smash them against the walls and then against other things in the house. When the trophies can’t be smashed anymore, I fling myself on the couch, which is covered with plaster from the gouged walls.

Hours later I open my eyes. I survey the damage as if someone else is responsible—and it’s true. It was someone else. The someone who does half the shit I do.

My phone rings. Brooke. I apologize again, tell her about breaking my trophies. Her tone softens. She’s concerned. She hates that I was so upset, that I got jealous, that I’m in pain. I tell her I love her.

ONE MONTH LATER I’m in Stuttgart for the start of the indoor season. If I were to list all the places in the world where I don’t want to be, all the continents and countries, the cities and towns, the villages and hamlets and burgs, Stuttgart would be at the top of my list. If I live to be a thousand years old, I think, nothing good is ever going to happen to me in Stuttgart.

Nothing against Stuttgart. I just don’t want to be here, now, playing tennis.

Nevertheless, here I am, and it’s an important match. If I win, I will consolidate my number one ranking, which Brad badly wants. I’m playing MaliVai Washington, whom I know well. I played him all through juniors. Good athlete, covers the court like a tarp, always makes me beat him. His legs are pure bronze, so I can’t attack them. I can’t tire him out like a typical opponent. I have to outthink him. And so I do. I’m up a set, rolling along, when suddenly I feel as if I’ve stepped in a mousetrap. I look down. The bottom of my shoe has fallen off. Peeled away.

I didn’t bring an extra pair of tennis shoes.

I halt the match, tell officials that I need new shoes. An announcement is made over the loudspeaker, in urgent staccato German. Can someone lend a shoe to Mr. Agassi? Size ten and a half?

It has to be a Nike, I add—because of my contract.

A man in the upper bleachers rises and waves his shoe. He would be happy, he says, to loan me his Schuh. Brad goes up to the stands and retrieves it. Though the man is a size nine, I force his shoe on my foot, like some half-wit Cinderella, and resume play.

Is this my life?

This can’t be my life.

I’m playing a match for the number one ranking in the world, wearing a shoe borrowed from a stranger in Stuttgart. I think of my father using tennis balls to mend our shoes when we were kids. This feels more awkward, more ridiculous. I’m emotionally exhausted, and I wonder why I don’t just stop. Walk off. Leave. What keeps me going? How am I managing to select shots and hold serve and break serve? Mentally I leave the arena. I go to the mountains, rent a ski cabin, make myself an omelet, put my feet up, breathe in the snowy smell of the forest.

I tell myself: If I win this match, I’ll retire. And if I lose this match, I’ll retire.

I lose.

I don’t retire. Instead, I do the opposite of retiring: I get on a plane to Australia to play in a slam. The 1996 Australian Open is only days away, and I’m the defending champ. I’m in no frame of mind. I look deranged. My eyes are bloodshot, my face is gaunt. The flight attendant should kick me off. I almost kick myself off. Minutes after Brad and I board, I nearly jump out of my seat and run for it. Brad, seeing my expression, takes my arm.

Come on, he says. Relax. You never know. Maybe something good will happen.

I swallow a sleeping pill and down a vodka, and when I open my eyes the plane is taxiing to the gate in Melbourne. Brad drives us to the hotel, the Como. My head is in a fog as thick as mashed potatoes. A bellboy shows me to my room, which has a piano and a spiral staircase with shiny wood steps in the center. I tap a few keys on the piano, stagger up the steps to bed. I fall backward. My knee hits the sharp edge of a metal balustrade and tears open. I tumble down the stairs. Blood is everywhere.

I call Gil. He’s there in two minutes. He says it’s the patella, the kneecap. Bad cut, he says. Bad bruise. He bandages me, puts me on the couch. In the morning he shuts me down.

He doesn’t let me practice. We have to be careful with that patella, he says. It’ll be a miracle if the thing holds up for seven matches.

Limping noticeably, I play the first round with a bandage on my knee and a film over my eyes. It’s plain to fans, sportswriters, commentators, that I’m not the player I was a year ago. I drop the first set and quickly fall behind two breaks in the second. I’m going to be the first defending champion since Roscoe Tanner to lose a first-round match in a slam.

I’m playing Gastón Etlis, from Argentina, whoever that is. He doesn’t even look like a tennis player. He looks like a substitute schoolteacher. He has sweaty ringlets and a sinister five-o’clock shadow. He’s a doubles guy, only playing singles because by some miracle he qualified. He looks astonished to be here. A guy like this, I normally beat him in the locker room with one hard stare, but he’s up a set on me and leading in the second set. Jesus. And he’s the one suffering. If I look pained, he looks panicked. He looks as if he has a ninety-pound bullfrog lodged in his throat. I hope he has the balls to close me out, to finish me off, because I’m better off right now with a loss and an early exit.

But Etlis gags, freezes, makes shockingly bad decisions.

I start to feel weak. I shaved my head this morning, full-on, bare-scalp bald, because I wanted to punish myself. Why? Because it still rankles that I ruined Brooke’s cameo on Friends, because I broke all my trophies, because I came to a slam without putting in the work—and because I lost to Pete at the U.S. Fucking Open. You can’t fool the man in the mirror, Gil always says, so I’m going to make that man pay. My nickname on the tour is The Punisher, because of the way I run guys back and forth. Now I’m hell-bent on punishing my most intractable opponent, myself, by burning his head.

Mission accomplished. The Australian sun is flame-broiling my skin. I scold myself, then forgive myself, then press reset and find a way to tie the second set. Then I win the tiebreak.

My mind is chattering. What else can I do with my life? Should I break up with Brooke?

Should I marry her? I lose the third set. Again Etlis can’t stand prosperity. I win the fourth set in another tiebreak. In the fifth set Etlis wears out, gives up. I’m neither proud nor relieved. I’m embarrassed. My head looks like a blood blister. Put a blister on his brain.

Later, reporters ask if I worry about sunburn. I laugh. Honestly, I tell them, sunburn is the least of my worries. I want to add: I’m already mentally fried. But I don’t.

In the quarters I play Courier. He’s beaten me six straight times. We’ve had terrific battles, on the court and in the newspapers. After he beat me at the 1989 French Open, he complained about all the attention I get. He said he felt as if he forever plays second fiddle to me.

Sounds like an insecurity problem, I told reporters.

To which Courier shot back: I’m insecure?

He’s also been chippy about my ever-changing appearance and psyche. Asked what he thought of the new Agassi, he once said: You mean the new Agassi, or the new new Agassi?

We’ve patched things up since then. I’ve told Courier that I root for his success, that I consider him a friend, and he’s said the same. But there’s still a curtain of tension between us, and there may always be, at least until one of us retires, since our rivalry dates back to pu-berty, back to Nick.

The match starts late, delayed by the women’s quarters. We get on the court close to midnight and play nine games on serve. So this is how it’s going to be. Then the rain falls. Officials could close the roof, but it would take forty minutes. They ask if we’d rather come back tomorrow. We both say yes.

Sleep helps. I wake refreshed, wanting to beat Courier. But it’s not Courier on the other side of the net—it’s a pale facsimile. Despite being up two sets to love, he looks tentative, burned out. I recognize that look. I’ve seen it in the mirror many times. I swoop in for the kill. I win the match, beating Courier for the first time in years.

When reporters ask about Courier’s game I say: He’s not where he wants to be.

I want to say: There’s a lot of that going around.

The win helps me regain the number one rank. Once again I’ve dethroned Pete, but it’s just another reminder of when I didn’t, couldn’t, beat him.

In the semis I face Chang. I know I can win, but I also know that I will lose. In fact I want to lose, I must lose, because Becker is waiting in the final. The last thing I need right now is another holy war with Becker. I couldn’t handle that. I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, which means I’d lose. Given a choice between Becker and Chang, I’d rather lose to Chang. Besides, it’s always easier psychologically to lose in the semis than in the final.

So I’ll lose today. Congratulations, Chang. I hope you and your Messiah will be very happy.

But losing on purpose isn’t easy. It’s almost harder than winning. You have to lose in such a way that the crowd can’t tell, and in a way that you can’t tell—because of course you’re not wholly conscious of losing on purpose. You’re not even half conscious. Your mind is tanking, but your body is fighting on. Muscle memory. It’s not even all of your mind that purposely loses, but a breakaway faction, a splinter group. The deliberately bad decisions are made in a dark place, far below the surface. You don’t do those tiny things you need to do. You don’t run the extra few feet, you don’t lunge. You’re slow to come out of stops. You hesitate to bend or dig. You get handsy, not using your legs and hips. You make a careless error, compensate for the error with a spectacular shot, then make two more errors, and slowly but surely you slide backward. You never actually think, I’m going to net this ball. It’s more complicated, more insidious.

At the post-match news conference Brad tells reporters: Today, Andre hit the wall.

True, I think. So very true. But I don’t tell Brad that I hit the wall every day. It would crush him to know that today the wall felt good, that I kissed the wall, that I’m glad I lost, that I’d rather be on that plane back to Los Angeles than lacing them up for a rematch with our old friend B. B. Socrates. I’d rather be anywhere but here—even Hollywood, my next stop. Since I lost, I’ll get home just in time to watch the Super Bowl, followed by the special hour-long episode of Friends, featuring Brooke Shields.

19

PERRY GRINDS ME EVERY DAY, asking what’s wrong, what’s the matter. I can’t tell him. I don’t know. More accurately, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to admit to Perry or myself that a loss to Pete can have this kind of lingering effect. For once I don’t want to sit with Perry and try to unravel the skeins of my subconscious. I’ve given up on understanding myself. I have no interest in self-analysis. In the long, losing struggle with myself, I’m tanking.

I go to San Jose and get annihilated by Pete. Definitely not what the doctor ordered. I lose my temper several times during the match, cursing at my racket, screaming at myself. Pete looks bemused. The umpire penalizes me for swearing.

Oh, you like that? Here, take this.

I serve a ball into the upper deck.

I go to Indian Wells, lose to Chang in the quarters. I can’t face the post-match press conference. I skip out, pay a hefty fine. I go to Monte Carlo. I lose to Alberto Costa of Spain in fifty-four minutes. As I walk off the court I hear whistles, catcalls. They may as well be coming from inside my heart. I want to yell at the crowd: I agree!

Gil asks me, What is it?

I tell him. I come right out with it. Since losing to Pete at the U.S. Open, I’ve lost the will.

Then let’s not do this, Gil says. We’ve got to be clear on what we’re doing.

I want to quit, I say, but I don’t know how—or when.

At the 1996 French Open I’m coming unglued. I’m screaming at myself all through my first-round match. I receive an official warning. I scream louder. I’m penalized a point. I’m one motherfucking cocksucker away from getting DQ’d for the tournament. Rain starts to fall, and during the delay I sit in the locker room and stare straight ahead as if hypnotized. When play resumes I outlast my opponent, Jacobo Díaz, whom I can’t see. He’s as blurry and watery as the reflections in the rain puddles along the alleys of the court.

Beating Díaz merely delays the inevitable. In the next round I lose to Chris Woodruff, from Tennessee. He always reminds me of a country-western singer, and plays as if he’d rather be performing at a rodeo. He’s even more awkward on clay, and to compensate he gets aggressive, especially on his backhand. I can’t counter his aggression. I make sixty-three unforced errors. He reacts with unbridled joy, and I gaze at him, coveting not his victory but his enthusiasm.

Sportswriters accuse me of tanking, not going for every ball. They never get it right. When I tank, they say I’m not good enough; when I’m not good enough, they say I tank. I nearly tell them I wasn’t tanking, that I was torturing myself for not being good enough. Whenever I know that I don’t deserve to win, that I’m unworthy of winning, I torture myself. You could look it up.

But I don’t say anything. Once again I leave the stadium without sitting for the obligatory news conference. Once again I happily pay the fine. Money well spent.

BROOKE TAKES ME TO A JOINT in Manhattan where the front room is smaller than a phone booth but the main dining room is big and warm and mustard yellow. Campagnola—I like the way she says it, I like the way it smells, I like the way we both feel as we walk in off the street. I like the autographed photo of Sinatra next to the coat room.

This is my favorite place in New York, Brooke says, so I christen it my favorite too. We sit in a corner, eating a light meal in that hazy twilight hour between the lunch crowd and the dinner rush. They don’t normally serve food at this hour, but the manager says in our case they’ll make an exception.

Campagnola quickly becomes an extension of our kitchen, and then of our entire relationship. Brooke and I go there to remind ourselves of the reasons we’re good together. We go there on special occasions, and we go there to make humdrum weekdays feel like special occasions. We go there so often and so automatically after every match at the U.S. Open that the chefs and waiters begin to set their watches by us. In a fifth set I sometimes find myself thinking of the gang at Campagnola, knowing that they’re keeping one eye on the TV while prepping the mozzarella, tomatoes, and prosciutto. I know, as I’m bouncing the ball, just about to serve, that I’ll soon be seated at the corner table, eating buttery fried shrimp with white wine sauce and lemon, plus a side of raviolis so soft and sweet they should count as dessert. I know that when Brooke and I walk in the door, win or lose, the place will erupt with applause.

Campagnola’s manager, Frankie, is always dressed razor sharp, Gil sharp. Italian suit, flowered tie, silk handkerchief. He always greets us with a gap-toothed smile and a fresh batch of funny stories. He’s a second father to me, Brooke says when she introduces us, and those are magic words. Surrogate father is a role for which I have the greatest respect, so I like Frankie right away. Then he buys us a bottle of red, tells us about the celebs and grifters and bankers and mobsters who hang out in his joint, makes Brooke laugh until her cheeks are pink, and now I like him for my own reasons.

Frank says, John Gotti? You want to know about Gotti? He always sits right over there, corner table, facing out. If anybody’s going to take him down, he wants to see it coming.

I feel the same way, I say.

Frankie laughs darkly, then nods. I know, right?

Frankie is honest, hardworking, sincere, my kind of people. I find myself looking for his face the moment we walk through the door. I feel better, my aches and anxieties fade, when Frankie throws out his arms and smiles and whisks us to our table. Sometimes he kicks out other customers, and Brooke and I pretend not to notice their frowning and complaining.

Frankie’s chief virtue, in my book, is the way he talks about his kids. He loves them, brags about them, pulls out photos of them at the drop of a hat. But clearly he worries about their future. Running a hand over his tired face one night, he tells me his kids are only in grade school, but he’s already stressed about college. He groans about the cost of higher education. He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it.

Days later I talk to Perry and ask him to put aside a nest egg of Nike stock in Frankie’s name. When Brooke and I next drop into Campagnola, I tell Frankie about it. The shares can’t be touched for ten years, I say, but by then they should be worth enough to significantly light-en that tuition burden.

Frankie’s bottom lip trembles. Andre, he says, I can’t believe you’d do that for me.

The look on his face is a complete shock. I didn’t understand the meaning and value of education, the hardship and stress it causes most parents and children. I’ve never thought of education like that. School was always a place I managed to escape, not a thing to be treas-ured. Setting aside the stock was merely something I did because Frankie specifically mentioned college and I wanted to help. When I saw what it meant to him, however, I was the one who got educated.

Helping Frankie provides more satisfaction and makes me feel more connected and alive and myself than anything else that happens in 1996. I tell myself: Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting value or meaning. This is why we’re here. To make each other feel safe.

And as 1996 wears on, safety seems like an especially precious commodity. Brooke is regularly receiving letters from stalkers, threatening her—and sometimes me—with death and unspeakable horrors. The letters are detailed, grisly, sick. We forward them to the FBI. We also ask Gil to work with the agents, monitor their progress. Several times, when a letter is traceable, Gil goes rogue. He boards a plane and pays the stalker a visit. He usually appears early in the morning, just after dawn, at the stalker’s house or workplace. He holds up the letter and says very softly, I know who you are and where you live. Now take a good look at me, because if you ever bother Brooke and Andre again, you will see me again, and you don’t want that, because then it will be on.

The scariest letters can’t be traced. When they rise above a certain gruesome threshold, when they threaten that something is going to happen on a specific date, Gil will stand outside Brooke’s brownstone while we sleep. By stand I mean stand. On the stoop. Arms folded. He stations himself there, looking left, then right, and he stays that way all night.

Night after night.

The strain, the sordidness, exact a heavy toll on Gil. He worries constantly that he’s not doing enough, that he may have missed something, that he’ll blink or look away one time and some creep will slither past. He becomes obsessed. He falls into a nearly debilitating depression, and I fall with him, because I’m the cause. I brought this on Gil. I feel deep guilt, and I’m beset by premonitions of doom.

I try to talk myself out of it. I tell myself that you can’t be unhappy when you have money in the bank and own your own plane. But I can’t help it, I feel listless, hopeless, trapped in a life I didn’t choose, hounded by people I can’t see. And I can’t discuss any of it with Brooke, because I can’t admit to such weakness. Feeling depressed after a loss is one thing, but feeling depressed about nothing, about life in general, is another thing altogether. I can’t feel this way. I refuse to admit that I feel this way.

Even if I wanted to discuss it with Brooke, we’re not communicating well these days.

We’re not on the same frequency. We don’t have the same bandwidth. For instance, when I try to talk with her about Frankie, about the satisfaction of helping him, she doesn’t seem to hear. After the initial fun of introducing me to Frankie, she’s cool about him, indifferent, as if he’s played his part and now it’s time for him to move offstage. This follows a precedent, a pattern that repeats itself with many people and places Brooke brings into my life. Museums, galleries, celebrities, writers, shows, friends—I often get more from them than she does. Just as I start to enjoy something, to learn from it, she casts it aside.

It makes me wonder if we’re a good fit. I don’t think so. And yet I can’t step back, can’t suggest we take a break, because I’m already distancing myself from tennis. With no Brooke and no tennis, I’ll have nothing. I fear the void, the darkness. So I cling to Brooke, and she clings back, and though the clinging seems loving, it’s more like the clinging in that painting in the Louvre. Holding on for dear life.

As Brooke and I approach our two-year anniversary, I decide that we should formalize our clinging. Two years is a meaningful benchmark in my love life. In every previous relationship two years has been the make-or-break moment—and I’ve always chosen break. Every two years I grow tired of the girl I’m dating, or she grows tired of me, as if a timer goes off in my heart. I was with Wendi two years, and then she declared our relationship open, which pre-figured the end. Before Wendi I was with a girl in Memphis for exactly two years, and then I bolted. Why my love life runs in two-year cycles, I don’t know. I wasn’t even aware of the pattern until Perry pointed it out.

Whatever the reason, I’m determined to change. At twenty-six I believe this pattern needs to be broken, now, or I’ll be thirty-six, looking back on a series of two-year relationships that went nowhere. If I’m going to have a family, if I’m going to be happy, I’ve got to break this cycle, which means pushing myself past the two-year mark, forcing myself to commit.

Of course, technically, it hasn’t been two years with Brooke. With our hectic schedules, with my playing and her filming, we’ve actually spent only a few months together. We’re still getting to know each other, still learning. Part of me knows I shouldn’t force a decision. Part of me simply doesn’t want to be married right now. But who cares what I want? When is what I want ever a good index of what I should do? How often do I enter a tournament, wanting to play, only to lose in the early rounds? How often do I enter reluctantly, feeling like hell, only to win? Maybe marriage—the ultimate match play, the ultimate single elimination tournament—is the same way.

Besides, everyone around me is getting married. Perry, Philly, J.P. In fact, Philly and J.P.

met their wives together, on the same night. After the Summer of Revenge, it’s the Winter of Marriage.

I ask Perry for advice. We talk for hours in Vegas and on the phone. He leans toward marriage. Brooke is the one, he says. How are you going to do better than a Princeton-educated supermodel? After all, didn’t we fantasize about her years ago? Didn’t he predict that she’d come along? And now here she is—destiny. What’s the problem? He reminds me of Shadowlands. C. S. Lewis doesn’t become fully alive, doesn’t grow up, until he opens himself to love.

Love is how we grow up, the movie says. And as Lewis reminds his students: God wants us to grow up.

Perry says he knows of an excellent jeweler in Los Angeles. The same jeweler Perry used when he got engaged. Set aside the question of whether or not to propose, he says, and just focus for a moment on the ring.

I know the kind of ring Brooke wants—round, Tiffany cut—because she’s told me. Straight out. She’s never shy about sharing her opinions on jewels, clothes, cars, shoes. In fact, the most animated talks we have are about things. We used to talk about our dreams, our childhoods, our feelings. Now we avidly discuss the best sofas, the best stereos, the best cheeseburgers, and while I find such talk interesting, an important aspect of the art of living, I fear Brooke and I put undue emphasis on it.

I gird myself, phone the jeweler and tell her I’m in the market for an engagement ring. The words come out croaky. I feel my heart pound. I ask myself, Shouldn’t this be a joyous moment—one of the great moments of life? Before I can answer, the jeweler is peppering me with her own questions. Size? Carat? Color? Clarity? She keeps talking about clarity, asking me about clarity.

I think: Lady, you’re asking the wrong guy about clarity.

I say: All I know is round, Tiffany cut.

When do you need it?

Soon?

Can do. I think I’ve got just the ring.

Days later, the ring arrives by courier. It’s in a big box. I walk around with it in my pocket for two weeks. The box feels leaden, and dangerous, as do I.

Brooke is away, filming a movie. We talk every night on the phone, and sometimes I cradle the phone with one hand and fondle the ring with the other. She’s in the Carolinas, where it’s bitter cold, but the script calls for the weather to be balmy, so the director forces her and the other actors to suck ice cubes. It keeps their breath from fogging.

Better than licking hands.

She says a few of her lines for me, and we laugh because they sound fake. They sound like lines.

After we hang up I go for a drive, the heater turned up high, the lights of the Strip winking like diamonds. I replay our conversation, and I can’t tell the difference between the lines in her script and the lines we’ve just spoken to each other. I pull the ring box from my coat pocket and open it. The ring catches and reflects the light. I set it on the dashboard.

Clarity.

AS BROOKE WRAPS HER FILM, I conclude a miserable stretch of tennis that has sportswriters openly, sometimes gleefully, saying I’m done. Three slams, they say. That’s far more than we thought he’d win. Brooke says we need to get away. Far away. This time we choose Hawaii. I pack the ring.

My stomach rolls as our plane swoops toward the volcanoes. I gaze at the palm trees, the foaming coastline, the misty rain forests, and think: another island paradise. Why do we always feel compelled to run off to island paradises? It’s as though we have Blue Lagoon Syn-drome. I fantasize about the engine sputtering, the plane spiraling down into the mouth of a volcano. To my chagrin we land safely.

I’ve rented a bungalow at the Mauna Lani resort. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a pool, a full-time chef. Plus, a long stretch of white beach all to ourselves.

We spend the first few days hanging around the bungalow, relaxing by the pool. Brooke’s engrossed in a book about how to be single and happy in your thirties. She holds the book over her face, licking her finger and loudly turning the pages. It doesn’t cross my mind that this might be a pointed hint. Nothing crosses my mind except the proposal I’m about to deliver.

Andre, you seem distracted.

No. I’m here.

Everything all right?

Please leave me alone, I think, I’m trying to decide when and where to propose to you.

I’m like a murderer, plotting, thinking constantly of the time and the place. Except that a murderer has a motive.

On the third night, though we’re planning to eat dinner in the bungalow, I suggest we dress up as if it’s a special occasion. Great idea, Brooke says. She emerges from the bedroom an hour later in a flowing white dress that falls to her ankles. I wear a linen shirt and beige pants, the perfectly wrong outfit, because the pockets of the pants are shallow and the ring box doesn’t fit. I keep my hand over the pocket to hide the bulge.

I stretch as though I’m about to play a match. I shake out my legs, then suggest a stroll.

Yes, Brooke says, that sounds like a lovely idea. She takes a sip of wine, smiles casually, no idea what’s coming. We walk for ten minutes until we reach a part of the beach where we can’t see any sign of civilization. I crane my neck to make sure no one is coming. No tourists.

No paparazzi. The coast is clear. I think of that line from Top Gun. I had the shot, there was no danger, so I took it.

I fall a few steps behind Brooke and drop to one knee on the sand. She turns, looks down, and all the color drains from her face as the colors of the sunset grow more vivid.

Brooke Christa Shields?

She’s mentioned in conversation many times that any man who proposes to her had better use her full legal name, Brooke Christa Shields. I never knew why, and never thought to ask, but now it comes back to me.

I repeat, Brooke Christa Shields?

She puts a hand on her forehead. Wait, she says. What? Are you—? Wait. I’m not ready.

That makes two of us.

She’s wiping away tears as I pull the ring box from my pocket and crack it open and remove the ring and slide it onto her finger.

Brooke Christa Shields? Will you—

She’s pulling me to my feet. I’m kissing her and thinking, I really wish I’d thought this through. Is this the person that Andre Kirk Agassi is supposed to spend the next ninety years with?

Yes, she says. Yes, yes, yes.

Wait, I think. Wait, wait, wait.

SHE SAYS SHE WANTS a do-over.

One day later she tells me she was in such shock on the beach, she couldn’t hear me.

She wants me to repeat the proposal, word for word.

I need you to say it again, she insists, because I can’t believe it really happened.

Me neither.

She’s planning the wedding before we’re off the island. And when we get back to Los Angeles, I resume the unplanned, unceremonious end of my tennis career. I moonwalk through one tournament after another. I’m losing in early rounds, and therefore I’m home a lot, which tickles Brooke. I’m placid, numb, and I have plenty of time to talk about wedding cakes and invitations.

We fly to England for the 1996 Wimbledon. Just before the start of the tournament Brooke insists we go for high tea at the Dorchester hotel. I beg off, but she insists. We’re surrounded by older couples, all wearing tweed and bowties and ribbons. Half of them look asleep. We eat finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off, heaping plates of egg salad and scones with jam and butter—all things expressly engineered to clog the human artery, without the benefit of tasting good. The food is making me cranky, and the setting feels ridiculous, like a children’s tea party in a nursing home. But just as I’m about to suggest that we ask for the check I notice that Brooke’s ecstatic. She’s having a grand time. She wants more jam.

In the first round I face Doug Flach, ranked number 281, a qualifier who’s in over his head, though you’d never know it to watch him against me. He plays as if he’s channeling Rod Laver, and I play like Ralph Nader. We’re on Graveyard Court. By now you’d think I’d have my own plaque here. I lose as fast as I can, and Brooke and I hurry back to Los Angeles, to engage in more deep conversations about Battenburg lace and chiffon-lined tents.

As summer approaches, there is only one elaborate pageant that interests and inspires me. And it’s not my wedding. It’s the Atlanta Olympics. I don’t know why. Maybe it feels like something new. Maybe it feels like something that has nothing to do with me. I’ll be playing for my country, playing for a team with 300 million members. I’ll be closing a circle. My father was an Olympian, now me.

I plan a regimen with Gil, an Olympian’s regimen, and give all-out effort in our training sessions. I spend two hours with Gil each morning, then hit with Brad for two hours, then run up and down Gil Hill in the hottest part of the day. I want the heat. I want the pain.

As the Games begin, sportswriters kill me for skipping the opening ceremonies. Perry kills me for it too. But I’m not in Atlanta for opening ceremonies, I’m here for gold, and I need to hoard what little concentration and energy I can muster these days. The tennis is being played in Stone Mountain, an hour’s drive from the opening ceremonies downtown. Stand around in the Georgia heat and humidity, wearing a coat and tie, waiting for hours to walk around the track, then drive to Stone Mountain and give my best? No. I can’t. I’d love to experience the pageantry, to savor the spectacle of the Olympics, but not before my first match.

This, I tell myself, is focus. This is what it means to put substance above image.

With a good night’s sleep under my belt I win my first-rounder against Jonas Björkman, from Sweden. In the second round I cruise past Karol Kucera, from Slovakia. In the third round I face a stiffer test from Andrea Gaudenzi, from Italy. He has a muscle-bound game. He likes to trade body blows, and if you respect him too much he gets more macho. I don’t show him any respect. But the ball doesn’t respect me. I’m making all sorts of unforced errors. Before I know what’s happening, I’m down a set and a break. I look to Brad. What should I do?

He yells: Stop missing!

Oh. Right. Sage advice. I stop missing, stop trying to hit winners, put the pressure back on Gaudenzi. It’s really that simple, and I scrape out an ugly, satisfying win.

In the quarters I’m on the verge of elimination against Ferreira. He’s up 5–4 in the third, serving for the match. But he’s never beaten me before, and I know exactly what’s going on inside his body. Something my father used to say comes back to me: If you stick a piece of charcoal up his ass, you’ll pull out a diamond. (Round, Tiffany cut.) I know Ferreira’s sphincter is squeezing shut, and this makes me confident. I rally, break him, win the match.

In the semis I meet Leander Paes, from India. He’s a flying jumping bean, a bundle of hy-perkinetic energy, with the tour’s quickest hands. Still, he’s never learned to hit a tennis ball.

He hits off-speed, hacks, chips, lobs—he’s the Brad of Bombay. Then, behind all his junk, he flies to the net and covers so well that it all seems to work. After an hour you feel as if he hasn’t hit one ball cleanly—and yet he’s beating you soundly. Because I’m prepared, I stay patient, stay calm, and beat Paes 7–6, 6–3.

In the final I play Sergi Bruguera, from Spain. The match is delayed by thunderstorms, and the forecasters say it will be five hours before we can get on the court. So I wolf down a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. Comfort food. On the day of a match, I don’t worry about calories and nutrition. I worry about having energy and feeling full. Also, because of my nerves, it’s rare that I’m hungry on match day, so any time I have an appetite I try to capitalize. I give my stomach whatever it asks for. Swallowing the last bite of spicy chicken, however, the clouds part, the storm blows away, and the heat comes. Now I have a spicy chicken sandwich sitting on my gut, it’s ninety degrees, and the air is as thick as gravy. I can’t move—and I have to play for a gold medal? So much for comfort food; I’m in extreme gastric discomfort.

But I don’t care. Gil asks how I feel, and I tell him: A-OK. I’m going to hustle for every ball, I’m going to make this guy run, and if he thinks he’s taking this medal back to Spain, he’s got another think coming.

Gil grins from ear to ear. That’s my boy.

It’s one of the rare times, Gil says, that he sees no fear in my eyes as I walk onto the court.

From the opening serve, I’m pounding Bruguera, moving him from corner to corner, making him cover a parcel of real estate the size of Barcelona. Every point is a blow to his midsection. In the middle of the second set we have a titanic rally. He wins the point to get back to deuce. He takes so much time getting ready for the next point that I could argue with the umpire. By rights I should argue, and Bruguera should get a warning. Instead I use the moment to wander over to the ballboy, grab a towel, whisper to Gil, How’s our friend looking over there?

Gil smiles. He nearly laughs, except that Gil never laughs during a fight.

Even though Bruguera has won the point, Gil sees, and I see, that winning the point will cost him the next six games.

Gil shouts: That’s my boy!

AS I MOUNT THE REVIEW STAND, I think: What will this feel like? I’ve watched this on TV so many times, can it possibly live up to my expectations? Or, like so many things, will it fall short?

I look left and right. Paes, the bronze winner, is on one side. Bruguera, the silver winner, is on the other. My platform is a foot higher—one of the few times I’m taller than my opponents.

But I’d feel ten feet tall on any surface. A man drapes the gold medal around my neck. The national anthem starts. I feel my heart swell, and it has nothing to do with tennis, or me, and thus it exceeds all my expectations.

I scan the crowd and spot Gil, Brooke, Brad. I look for my father, but he’s hiding. He told me the night before that I’ve managed to reclaim something taken from him years ago, and yet he doesn’t want to be visible, doesn’t want to detract from the specialness of my moment.

He doesn’t understand that this moment is special precisely because it’s not mine.

· · ·

DAYS LATER, for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, the Olympic afterglow is gone. I’m on the court in Cincinnati, losing my mind. Playing for myself again, I’m smashing my racket in a fit of rage. I go on to win the tournament, however, which seems laughable, and only ag-gravates my sense that it’s all a joke.

Then, in August, at the RCA Championships in Indianapolis, playing a first-round match against Daniel Nestor, a Serb from Canada, I’m well ahead. But I feel unduly piqued that he’s just broken my serve. I can’t let go of my sudden anger. I look up at the sky and fantasize about flying away. Since I can’t fly away, at least this tennis ball can fly away. Be free, little ball. I whack it high above the stands and out of the stadium.

Automatic warning.

The umpire, Dana Laconto, says into the microphone, Code violation. Warning. Abuse of ball.

Fuck you, Dana.

He calls over the ref. He tells the ref that Agassi said, Fuck you, Dana.

The referee approaches and asks, Did you say that?

Yes.

This match is over.

Fine. Fuck you too. And fuck the umpire you rode in on.

The fans start a riot. They don’t understand what’s happening, because they can’t hear me. They only know that they paid to see a match and now it’s being canceled. They’re booing, firing seat cushions and water bottles onto the court. The mascot of the RCA Championships is a Spuds MacKenzie dog, which now trots onto the court, dodging seat cushions and water bottles. He reaches the middle of the net, lifts his hind leg, and pees.

I couldn’t agree more.

He makes a jaunty exit. I’m right behind him, ducking my head, dragging my tennis bag.

The crowd is going berserk, like the crowd in a gladiator movie. They’re showering the court with garbage.

In the locker room Brad says, What the—?

They defaulted me.

Why?

I tell him.

He shakes his head.

His seven-year-old son, Zach, is crying because the people are being mean to Uncle Andre. And because Spuds MacKenzie peed on the net. I send them both away, then sit in the locker room for an hour, head bowed. So here we are. A new low. Fine. I can handle this. I can actually get comfortable here. I can settle in. Rock bottom can be very cozy, because at least you’re at rest. You know you’re not going anywhere for a while.

But rock bottom is still a ways down. I go to the 1996 U.S. Open, and right away there’s controversy. Something about seeding. A few of my fellow players complain that I’ve gotten special treatment, that I was bumped up in the draw because tournament officials and CBS

want to see me and Pete in the final. Muster says I’m a prima donna. I take particular glee, therefore, in knocking his hair-mussing ass out of the quarters, continuing to keep my promise that I would never lose to him again.

I reach the semis against Chang. I can’t wait to put a beating on him after losing to him months ago at Indian Wells. It should be no problem. He’s on the back nine of his career, Brad says. So am I, people say. But I have a gold medal. I almost wish I could wear it during the match. Chang, however, doesn’t give a damn about my gold medal. He fires sixteen aces, wriggles out of three break points, forces me into forty-five unforced errors. Seven years after winning his last slam, Chang is almighty, omnipotent. He is risen, and I am fallen.

The next morning, sportswriters trash me. I quit. I tanked. I didn’t care. It almost seems as if they’re angry with me. And I know why. As a result of my loss, they now have to deal with Chang for one more day.

I don’t watch the final on TV when Pete beats Chang in straight sets. But I do read about it. Every article says matter-of-factly that Pete is the best player of his generation.

AS THE YEAR WINDS DOWN I go to Munich, where the boos are deafening. I lose to Mark Woodforde, whom I beat 6–0, 6–0, two short years ago. Brad is apoplectic. He begs me to tell him what’s wrong.

I don’t know.

Tell me, man. Tell me.

I would if I could.

We agree that I should rest, pull out of the Australian Open.

Go home, he says. Get some rest. Spend some time with your fiancée. That’ll cure whatever ails you.

20

BROOKE AND I BUY A HOUSE in Pacific Palisades. It’s not the house I wanted. I had my heart set on a big rambling farmhouse with a family room off the kitchen. But she loved this one, so here we are, living in a multilevel, French Country knockoff set against the side of a cliff. It has no flow, and it feels sterile, the ideal house for a childless couple who plan to spend lots of time in different rooms.

The real estate agent gushed about the breathtaking views of the skyline. In the fore-ground is Sunset Boulevard. At night I can see the Holiday Inn where I stayed after our first date. Many nights I stare at the hotel and wonder what would have happened if I’d kept driving, if I’d never phoned Brooke again. I decide that the view from our new house is better when fog or smog prevents me from seeing that Holiday Inn.

At the close of 1996 we throw a combination housewarming–New Year’s Eve party, invite the gang from Vegas and Brooke’s Hollywood friends. We confer with Gil about security. After a new batch of scary letters, we have to guard against intruders, so Gil spends most of the night standing at the foot of the driveway, screening people as they arrive. McEnroe shows up, and I kid him about getting past Gil. He sits on the deck, talking tennis, my least favorite topic these days, so I drift in and out. I spend the night mixing margaritas, watching J.P. slap his drums with a steel Buddy Rich–type brush, and sitting before the fireplace. I stoke it, feed it, stare deep into the flames. I tell myself that 1997 is going to be better than 1996. I vow that 1997 is going to be my year.

BROOKE AND I ARE AT THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS when I get a call from Gil. His twelve-year-old daughter, Kacey, has been in an accident. She was snow sledding on a church trip at Mt. Charleston, an hour north of Vegas, and went straight into a frozen snow-bank. She broke her neck. I leave Brooke and fly to Vegas, arriving at the hospital in my tuxedo. I find Gil and Gaye in the hallway, looking as if they’re barely hanging on. We hug, and they tell me it’s bad, very bad. Kacey’s going to need surgery. Doctors say there’s a chance she’ll be paralyzed.

We spend days at the hospital, talking to doctors, trying to keep Kacey comfortable. Gil needs to go home, get some sleep. He’s out on his feet, but he won’t leave, he’s going to stand guard over his daughter. I get an idea. I have a big pimped-out minivan, which I bought from Perry’s father. It has a satellite dish and a foldout bed. I park it right outside the hospital, outside the front door, and I tell Gil: Now, when visiting hours are over, you don’t have to go home, you can just go downstairs and catch a few hours’ shut-eye in the back of your new van. And, since it’s all metered parking in front of the hospital, I’ve filled the van’s cup holders with quarters.

Gil gives me a strange look, and I realize it’s the first time that he and I have ever switched roles. For a few days, it’s me making him stronger.

WHEN THE HOSPITAL releases Kacey a week later the doctors say she’s out of the woods. Her surgery was a success and she’ll be up and around in no time. Still, I want to follow her home, stick around Vegas, see how she recovers.

Gil won’t hear of it. He knows I’m due in San Jose.

I tell Gil I’m going to pull out of the tournament.

Absolutely not, he says. There’s nothing to do now but wait and pray. I’ll phone you with updates. Go. Play.

I’ve never had an argument with Gil, and I won’t let this be the first. Reluctantly I go to San Jose and play my first match in three months. I face Mark Knowles, one of my old roommates at the Bollettieri Academy. After a solid doubles career he’s trying to break into the singles bracket. He’s a great athlete, but I shouldn’t have any trouble with him. I know his game better than he knows it himself. And yet he takes me to a third set. Even though I win, it’s not an easy win, so it sticks in my craw. I hack my way through the tournament, seemingly on a collision course with Pete, but I falter in the semis against Greg Rusedski, from Canada. My mind hurries back to Vegas, hours ahead of my body.

I’M AT THE BACHELOR PAD, watching TV with Slim, my assistant. I’m in a bad way.

Kacey isn’t doing well, and the doctors don’t know why. Gil is on the brink. Meanwhile, my wedding looms. I think all the time about postponing it, or calling it off altogether, but I don’t know how.

Slim is stressed too. He was with his girlfriend recently, he says, and the condom broke.

Now, she’s late. During a commercial he stands up and announces that there’s only one thing to do. Get high.

He says, You want to get high with me?

High?

Yeah.

On what?

Gack.

What the hell’s gack?

Crystal meth.

Why do they call it gack?

Because that’s the sound you make when you’re high. Your mind is going so fast, all you can say is gack, gack, gack.

That’s how I feel all the time. What’s the point?

Make you feel like Superman, dude. I’m telling you.

As if they’re coming out of someone else’s mouth, someone standing directly behind me, I hear these words: You know what? Fuck it. Yeah. Let’s get high.

Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed.

There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head, every negative thought I’ve ever had.

It’s a cortisone shot to the subcortex. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful—and above all, I’ve never felt such energy. I’m seized by an urge, a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.

I sweep the floors. When there’s nothing left to clean, I do laundry. All the laundry. I fold every sweater and T-shirt and still I haven’t made a dent in my energy. I don’t want to sit down. If I had table silver I’d polish it. If I had leather shoes I’d shine them. If I had a giant jug of coins I’d roll them into paper wrappers. I look high and low for Slim—he’s out in the garage, taking apart the engine of his car and putting it together again. I tell him I could do anything right now, anything, man, anything, anything, any-fuckingthing. I could get in the car and drive to Palm Springs and play eighteen holes, then drive home and make lunch and go for a swim.

I don’t sleep for two days. When I finally do, it’s the sleep of the dead and the innocent.

· · ·

PLAYING WEEKS LATER, I struggle against Scott Draper. Left-handed, talented, he’s a good player, but I’ve beaten him soundly in the past. I shouldn’t have any trouble with him, and yet he’s cleaning my clock. I’m so far from being able to beat Draper, in fact, I honestly wonder if it was me who beat him the last time. How could I have been that much better such a short time ago? He’s outplaying me in every phase of the game.

Afterward, reporters ask if I’m OK. They don’t sound accusatory or mean. They sound like Perry and Brad. They’re actually concerned, trying to figure out what’s wrong.

Brooke is remarkably unconcerned. I lose all the time now, and the only time I don’t lose is when I pull out of a tournament, and her only comment is that she enjoys having me around more. Also, since I’m generally playing less often, she says I’m not as moody.

Her oblivion is partly due to the wedding planning, but also her rigorous premarital training regimen. She’s working with Gil to get in shape for that white dress. She’s running, lifting, stretching, counting every calorie. For added motivation, she tapes a photo on the refrigerator door, and around the photo she puts a magnetic heart frame. It’s a photo of the perfect woman, she says. The perfect woman with the perfect legs—the legs Brooke wants.

Astonished, I stare at the photo. I reach out and touch the frame.

Is that—?

Yep, Brooke says. Steffi Graf.

I PLAY DAVIS CUP IN APRIL, looking for a spark. I practice hard, train hard. We’re up against the Netherlands. My first match, in Newport Beach, is against Sjeng Schalken. He’s six foot five but serves like a man five foot six. Still, he strikes the ball cleanly, and like me he’s a punisher, a baseliner who stays back and tries to run an opponent into the ground. I know what I’m in for. The day is sunny, windy, and weird—Dutch fans wear wooden shoes and wave tulips. I beat Schalken in three wearying sets.

Two days later I play Jan Siemerink, aka the Garbage Man. He’s a lefty, an excellent volleyer, who gets to the net quick and covers it well. But that’s the only part of his game that isn’t comically, fundamentally unsound. Every Siemerink forehand looks mishit, every backhand seems shanked. Even his serve has a wacky, slingy quality. Garbage. I start the match confident, then recall that his lack of form is a powerful weapon. His abysmal shotmaking keeps you always off balance. Your timing never feels right. After two hours, I’m wrong-footed, breathing hard, and have a splitting headache. I’m also down two sets to love. Still, somehow I win, making me 24–4 in Davis Cup play, one of the best records ever compiled by an American. Sportswriters praise this small part of my game, and ask why I can’t translate it to the rest of my game. Even if their praise is tempered, I bask in it. It feels good. I give a small thanks for Davis Cup.

On the other hand, Davis Cup plays havoc with my manicure schedule. Brooke has made many requests of me for the wedding, but her non-negotiable demand is that my nails be perfect. I pick at my cuticles, a lifelong nervous habit, and when she puts a wedding band on my finger, she says, she wants my hands looking their best. Just before my match with the Garbage Man, and again after the match, I submit. I sit myself in the manicurist’s chair, watch the woman work at my cuticles, and tell myself this feels as off balance and wrong-footed as my match against the Garbage Man.

I think: Now this is what I call garbage.

WITH FOUR HELICOPTERS full of paparazzi circling overhead, on April 19, 1997, Brooke and I get married. The ceremony takes place in Monterey, in a tiny church that’s stiflingly, criminally hot. I’d give anything for a puff of fresh air, but the windows must remain shut to block out the noise of the helicopters.

The heat is one reason I break out in a sweat during the ceremony. The main reason, however, is that my body and nerves are shot. As the priest drones on, sweat drips from my brow, from my chin, from my ears. Everyone is looking. They’re sweating too, but not like me.

The jacket of my new Dunhill tuxedo is soaked. Even my shoes squish when I walk. They’re also fitted with lifts, another non-negotiable demand from Brooke. She’s nearly six feet tall and she doesn’t want to tower over me in our photos, so she’s wearing old-fashioned pumps with minimal heels, and I’m wearing what feel like stilts.

Before we leave the church, a decoy bride, a stand-in for Brooke, leaves first. To throw the paparazzi off the scent. The first time I heard about this plan, I tuned it out, refused to pay attention. Now, as I see the Brooke look-alike leaving, I have a thought no man should have on his wedding day: I wish I were leaving too. I wish I had a decoy groom to take my place.

A horse-drawn carriage is standing by to whisk Brooke and me to the reception, at a ranch called Stonepine. But first we have a short car ride to the carriage. I sit in the car beside Brooke, staring into my lap. I feel mortified about my attack of hysterical sweats. Brooke tells me it’s OK. She’s very sweet, but it’s not OK. Nothing is OK.

Into the reception we go, into a solid wall of noise. I see a whirling carousel of faces—Philly, Gil, J.P., Brad, Slim, my parents. There are famous people I don’t know, have never met, but vaguely recognize. Friends of Brooke? Friends of friends? Some of the Friends from Friends? I catch sight of Perry, my best man and the self-anointed wedding producer. He wears a Madonna headset so he can be in constant communication with the photographers and florists and caterers. He’s so jacked up, so high-strung, he’s making me more nervous, which I didn’t think was possible.

At the end of the night, Brooke and I stagger up to our bridal suite, which I’ve arranged to have filled with hundreds of candles. Too many candles—the room is an oven. It’s hotter than the church. Again I start to sweat. We start to blow out the candles, and the smoke detectors go off. We disable the smoke detectors and open the windows. While the room cools we go downstairs, back to the reception, to spend our wedding night eating chocolate mousse with the wedding party.

The following afternoon, at a barbecue for friends and family, Brooke and I make a grand entrance. As per Brooke’s plan, we wear cowboy hats and denim shirts and arrive on horses.

Mine is named Sugar. Her sad glassy eyes remind me of Peaches. People surround me, talk at me, congratulate me, slap me on the back, and I need to run away. I spend a good portion of the barbecue with my nephew, Skyler, son of Rita and Pancho. We get hold of a bow and arrow and take target practice with a distant oak.

While drawing back the bow, I feel a sudden twinge in my wrist.

I PULL OUT OF THE 1997 FRENCH OPEN. Of all the surfaces, clay is the worst on a tender wrist. There is no way I can last five sets against the dirt rats, who’ve been practicing and drilling on clay while I’ve been getting manicures and riding Sugar.

But I will go to Wimbledon. I want to go. Brooke has landed an acting job in England, which means she can accompany me. This will be good, I think. A change of venue. A trip, our first as husband and wife, to somewhere other than an island.

Though, come to think of it, England is an island.

In London we spend several happy nights. Dinner with friends. An experimental play. A walk along the Thames. The stars are lined up for a good Wimbledon. And then I decide that I’d rather jump in the Thames. Out of nowhere I can’t bring myself to practice.

I tell Brad and Gil I’m pulling out of the tournament. I’m in vapor lock.

Brad says, What the hell does vapor lock mean?

I’ve played this game for a lot of reasons, I say, and it just seems like none of them has ever been my own.

The words come tumbling out, with no forethought, just as they did that night with Slim.

But they sound remarkably true. So much, in fact, that I write them down. I repeat them to reporters. And to mirrors.

After pulling out of the tournament I stay on in London, waiting for Brooke to finish filming.

We go out one night with a group of actors to a world-famous restaurant Brooke is eager to try. The Ivy. Brooke and the actors talk over each other while I silently hunker down at one end of the table, eating. Grazing, actually. I order five courses, and for dessert I shovel three sticky toffee puddings into my mouth.

Slowly, an actress notices how much food is disappearing at my end of the table. She looks at me, alarmed.

Do you always, she asks, eat like this?

I’M PLAYING IN D.C. and my opponent is Flach. Brad tells me to go out and avenge last year’s Wimbledon loss, but I can’t imagine anything mattering less. Revenge? Again? Haven’t we been down that road before? It makes me sad, and weary, that Brad can be so blinded by his Bradness, that he can be so oblivious to what I’m feeling. Who does he think he is—Brooke?

I lose to Flach, of course, then tell Brad I’m shutting down for the summer.

Brad says, The whole summer?

See you in the fall.

Brooke is in Los Angeles, but I spend most of my time in Vegas. Slim is there, and we get high a lot. It’s a welcome change to have energy, to feel happy, to clear away the vapor lock. I like feeling inspired again, even if the inspiration is chemically induced. I stay awake all night, several nights in a row, relishing the silence. No one phoning, no one faxing, no one bothering me. Nothing to do but dance around the house and fold laundry and think.

I want to get clear of the void, I tell Slim.

Yeah, he says. Yeah. The void.

Apart from the buzz of getting high, I get an undeniable satisfaction from harming myself and shortening my career. After decades of merely dabbling in masochism, I’m making it my mission.

But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this. Slim gets high all the time, and he seems fine.

Then all at once Slim is not fine. He becomes unrecognizable, and drugs aren’t fully to blame. He was already frantic about the prospect of becoming a father; now he phones me one night from the hospital and says, It happened.

What.

She had the baby. Months ahead of time. A boy. Andre, it only weighs one pound, six ounces. The doctors don’t know if he’s going to make it.

I speed down to Sunrise Hospital, the hospital where Slim and I were born twenty-four hours apart. I stare through the glass at what they tell me is a baby, though it’s only the size of my open palm. The doctors tell Slim and me that the baby is very sick. They have to give him an IV of antibiotics.

The next morning the doctors tell us that the IV popped out. It dripped on the baby’s leg, and now the leg is burned. Also, the baby’s not breathing on his own. They need to put him on a ventilator. It’s risky. The doctors worry that the baby’s lungs aren’t developed enough for the ventilator, but without the ventilator he’ll die.

Slim says nothing. Do whatever you think best, I tell the doctors.

As feared, hours later one of the baby’s lungs collapses. Then the other. Now the doctors say the lungs really can’t handle the ventilator, but without the ventilator the baby will die.

They simply don’t know what to do.

There’s one final hope. A machine that might do the work of a ventilator without harming the lungs. A machine that takes the blood from the baby, oxygenates it, then flows it back into the baby. But the nearest such machine is in Phoenix.

I arrange a medical airplane. A team of doctors and nurses unhooks the baby from the ventilator and carries him like an egg to the tarmac. Then Slim, his girlfriend, and I board a separate plane. A nurse gives us a number to call when we land, to find out if the baby has survived the flight.

As the wheels touch down in Phoenix, I take a breath and dial.

Is he—?

He made it. But now we need to get him onto the machine.

At the hospital we sit and sit. The clock doesn’t move. Slim chainsmokes. His girlfriend weeps quietly over a magazine. I step away for a moment to phone Gil. Kacey isn’t doing well, he says. She’s in constant pain. He doesn’t sound like Gil. He sounds like Slim.

I return to the waiting room. A doctor appears, pulling down his mask. I don’t know if I can handle more bad news.

We managed to get him hooked to the machine, the doctor says. So far, so good. The next six months will tell.

I rent a house near the hospital for Slim and his girlfriend. Then I fly back to Los Angeles. I should sleep on the flight, but instead I stare at the back of the seat in front of me and think how fragile it all is. The next six months will tell. To which of us does that dire statement not apply?

At home, sitting in our kitchen, I tell Brooke the entire sad, awful, miraculous story. She’s fascinated—but mystified.

She asks, How could you get so involved?

How could I not?

WEEKS LATER, Brad talks me into coming back, briefly, to play at the ATP Championships in Cincinnati. I face Gustavo Kuerten, a Brazilian. It takes him forty-six minutes to beat me. My third first-round loss in a row. Gullickson announces that he’s dropping me from the Davis Cup team. I’m one of the best American players ever, but I don’t blame him. Who could blame him?

At the 1997 U.S. Open I’m unseeded for the first time in three years. I’m wearing a peach shirt, and they can’t keep them in stock at the concession stand. Astonishing. People still want to dress like me. People want to look like me. Have they taken a good look at me lately?

I reach the round of sixteen and play Rafter, who’s having his breakout year. He reached the semis of the French Open, and he’s my personal favorite to win this tournament. He’s a great serve-and-volleyer, reminiscent of Pete, but I always thought Rafter and I made a better rivalry, aesthetically, because Rafter is more consistent. Pete can play a lousy thirty-eight minutes, then one lights-out minute and win the set, whereas Rafter plays well all the time.

He’s six foot two, with a low center of gravity, and he can change direction like a sports car.

He’s one of the hardest guys on the tour to pass, and even harder to dislike. He’s all class, win or lose, and today he wins. He gives me a gentlemanly handshake and a smile in which there is an unmistakable trace of pity.

I’M PLAYING STUTTGART IN TEN DAYS. I should lie low, rest, practice, but instead I need to go to North Carolina, a little town called Mount Pleasant, because of Brooke. She’s tight with David Strickland, an actor on her new TV show, Suddenly Susan, and David’s traveling to North Carolina to spend his birthday with family. Brooke wants us to tag along. She thinks it would do us good, hanging out in the country, breathing fresh air, and I can’t think of a good reason to say no.

Mount Pleasant is a quaint Southern town, but I don’t see any mount and it’s not all that pleasant. The Strickland house is comfortable, with old wood floors and soft beds and a warm, enveloping smell of cinnamon and pie crust. But somewhat incongruously it sits on a golf course, its back porch only twenty yards from one of the greens, so there’s always someone in my peripheral vision, lining up a putt. The lady of the house, Granny Strickland, is ample-bosomed, apple-cheeked, straight out of Mayberry, and she’s forever standing at her stove, baking something or whipping up another batch of paella. Not exactly training food, but to be polite I clean my plate and ask for seconds.

Brooke seems to be in heaven, and part of me understands. The house is surrounded by rolling hills and ancient trees, the leaves have turned nine different kinds of orange, and she loves David. They have a special bond, a secret language of inside jokes and comic banter.

Now and then they slip into their characters from the show, doing a scene, then laughing themselves hoarse. Then they quickly explain what they’ve just done and said, trying to bring me up to speed, so I don’t feel left out. But it’s always too little, too late. I’m the third wheel, and I know it.

At night the temperature drops. The cool air has a piney, earthy scent that makes me sad.

I stand on the back porch, looking at the stars, wondering what’s wrong with me, why this setting has no power to charm me. I think about that moment, so many years ago, when Philly and I decided I was going to quit. When that call came for me to play here, in North Carolina.

The rest is history. Over and over, I ask myself—what if?

I decide that I need to work. Work, as always, is the answer. After all, Stuttgart is only days off. It would be nice to win. I phone Brad, and he locates a tennis court an hour or so away. He also scrounges up a sparring partner, a young amateur who’d love nothing more than to hit with me each morning. I drive through the morning mist, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, and meet the amateur. I thank him for taking the time, but he says the pleasure is all his. It will be my honor, Mr. Agassi. I feel virtuous—I’m getting my work done, even here in this remote outpost—and then we start hitting. At the higher altitude, the ball flies every which way, defying gravity. It’s like playing in outer space. Hardly worth the effort.

Then the young pro blows out his shoulder.

I spend the next two days of our Southern sojourn scarfing paella and brooding. When I grow so bored that I think I might bang my head against a pine tree, I walk out to the golf course and try to birdie the hole off the porch.

At last it’s time for me to leave. I kiss Brooke goodbye, kiss Granny Strickland goodbye, and notice that both kisses have the same amount of passion. I fly to Miami to connect with a direct flight to Stuttgart. Walking up to the gate, who should I see but Pete. As always, Pete.

He looks as if he’s done nothing for the last month but practice, and when he wasn’t practicing, he was lying on a cot in a bare cell, thinking about beating me. He’s rested, focused, wholly undistracted. I’ve always thought the differences between Pete and me were over-blown by sportswriters. It seemed too convenient, too important for fans, and Nike, and the game, that Pete and I be polar opposites, the Yankees and Red Sox of tennis. The game’s best server versus its best returner. The diffident Californian versus the brash Las Vegan. It all seemed like horseshit. Or, to use Pete’s favorite word, nonsense. But at this moment, making small talk at the gate, the gap between us appears genuinely, frighteningly wide, like the gap between good and bad. I’ve often told Brad that tennis plays too big a part in Pete’s life, and not a big enough part in mine, but Pete seems to have the proportions about right. Tennis is his job, and he does it with brio and dedication, while all my talk of maintaining a life outside tennis seems like just that—talk. Just a pretty way of rationalizing all my distractions. For the first time since I’ve known him—including the times he’s beaten my brains out—I envy Pete’s dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.

I LOSE TO MARTIN in the first round of Stuttgart. Driving away from the stadium, Brad is in a mood I’ve never seen. He looks at me with astonishment, and sadness, and a Rafter-like pity. As we pull up to the hotel, he asks me up to his room.

He rummages in the minibar and extracts two bottles of beer. He doesn’t glance at the labels. He doesn’t care that they’re German. When Brad drinks German beer without noticing or complaining, something is up.

He’s wearing jeans and a black turtleneck. He looks somber, severe—and older. I’ve aged him.

Andre, we’ve got a big decision to make, and we’re going to make it before we leave this room tonight.

What’s up, Brad?

We ain’t continuing like this. You’re better than this. At least, you used to be better. You either need to quit—or start over. But you can’t go on embarrassing yourself like this.

What—?

Let me finish. You have game left. At least I think you do. You can still win. Good things can still happen. But you need a full overhaul. You need to go back to the beginning. You need to pull out of everything and regroup. I’m talking square one.

When Brad talks about pulling out of tournaments, I know it’s serious.

Here’s what you’d need to do, he says. You’d need to train like you haven’t trained in years. Hard core. You’d need to get your body right, get your mind right, then start at the bottom. I’m talking challengers, against guys who never dreamed they’d get a chance to meet you, let alone play you.

He stops. He takes a long sip of beer. I say nothing. We’ve come to the crossroads, this is it, and it feels as if we’ve been headed here for months. Years. I stare out the window at the Stuttgart traffic. I hate tennis more than ever—but I hate myself more. I tell myself, So what if you hate tennis? Who cares? All those people out there, all those millions who hate what they do for a living, they do it anyway. Maybe doing what you hate, doing it well and cheerfully, is the point. So you hate tennis. Hate it all you want. You still need to respect it—and yourself.

I say, OK, Brad, I’m not ready for it to be over. I’m all in. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.

21

CHANGE.

Time to change, Andre. You can’t go on like this. Change, change, change—I say this word to myself several times a day, every day, while buttering my morning toast, while brushing my teeth, less as a warning than as a soothing chant. Far from depressing me, or sham-ing me, the idea that I must change completely, from top to bottom, brings me back to center.

For once I don’t hear that nagging self-doubt that follows every personal resolution. I won’t fail this time, I can’t, because it’s change now or change never. The idea of stagnating, of remaining this Andre for the rest of my life, that’s what I find truly depressing and shameful.

And yet. Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces—forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions, especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop, as every athlete knows. Even when we vow to change, even when we sorrow and atone for our mistakes, the momentum of our past keeps carrying us down the wrong road. Momentum rules the world. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I’m still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Weeks after Stuttgart, walking through LaGuardia Airport, I get a phone call. It’s a man with a gruff voice, a voice of judgment and condemnation. A voice of Authority. He says he’s a doctor working with the ATP. (I think what those letters stand for: Association of Tennis Professionals.) There is doom in his voice, as if he’s going to tell me I’m dying. And then that’s exactly what he tells me.

It was his job to test my urine sample from a recent tournament. It’s my duty, he says, to inform you that you’ve failed the standard ATP drug test. The urine sample you submitted has been found to contain trace amounts of crystal methylene.

I fall onto a chair in the baggage claim area. I’m carrying a backpack, which I slip off my shoulder and drop to the ground.

Mr. Agassi?

Yes. I’m here. So. What now?

Well, there is a process. You’ll need to write a letter to the ATP, admitting your guilt or declaring your innocence.

Uh huh.

Did you know there was a likelihood that this drug was in your system?

Yes. Yes, I knew.

In that case, you’ll need to explain in your letter how the drug got there.

And then?

Your letter will be reviewed by a panel.

And then?

If you knowingly ingested the drug—if you, as it were, plead guilty—you’ll be disciplined, of course.

How?

He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation. Performance-enhancing drugs, of course, would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry suspension for two years. However, he adds, crystal methylene is a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.

I think: Recreation. Re-creation.

I say: Meaning?

Three months’ suspension.

What do I do once I’ve written this letter?

I have an address for you. Have you got something to write on?

I fish in my backpack for my notebook. He gives me the street, city, zip code, and I scribble it all down, in a daze, with no intention of actually writing the letter.

The doctor says a few more things, which I don’t hear, and then I thank him and hang up. I stumble out of the airport and hail a cab. Driving into Manhattan, staring out the smudged window, I tell the back of the cabdriver’s head: So much for change.

I go straight to Brooke’s brownstone. Luckily, she’s in Los Angeles. I’d never be able to hide my emotions from her. I’d have to tell her everything, and I couldn’t handle that right now.

I fall onto the bed and immediately pass out. When I wake an hour later, I realize it was just a nightmare. What a relief.

It takes several minutes to accept that, no, the phone call was real. The doctor was real.

The meth, all too real.

My name, my career, everything is now on the line, at a craps table where no one wins.

Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Part of my discomfort with tennis has always been a nagging sense that it’s meaningless. Now I’m about to learn the true meaning of meaninglessness.

Serves me right.

I lie awake until dawn, wondering what to do, whom to tell. I try to imagine how it will feel to be publicly shamed, not for my clothes or game, not for some marketing slogan someone hung on me, but for my utter stupidity, mine alone. I’ll be an outcast. I’ll be a cautionary tale.

Still, though I’m in pain, during the next few days I don’t panic. Not yet, not quite. I can’t, because other more harrowing problems crowd in from all sides. People around me, people I love, are hurting.

Doctors need to operate a second time on little Kacey’s neck. The first operation was clearly botched. I arrange for her to fly to Los Angeles, to have the best care, but during her post-surgery recuperation period she’s immobilized again, lying on her back in a hospital bed, and she’s suffering terribly. Unable to move her head, she says her scalp and skin burn. Also, her room is unspeakably hot, and she’s like her father: she can’t take heat. I kiss her cheek and tell her, Don’t worry. We’ll fix it.

I look at Gil. He’s shrinking before my eyes.

I run to the nearest appliance store and buy the biggest, baddest air-conditioning unit they have. Gil and I install it in Kacey’s window. When I turn the knob up to Max Cool and press Power, Gil and I clap hands and Kacey smiles as the cold air pushes the bangs from her pretty round face.

Next I run to a toy store, the swimming section, and buy one of those tiny inner tubes for toddlers. I slide the inner tube under Kacey, positioning her head in the center, then blow it up until it gently and gradually lifts her head without altering the angle of her neck. A look of pure relief, and gratitude, and joy, washes over her face, and in this look, in this courageous little girl, I find the thing I’ve been seeking, the philosopher’s stone that unites all the experiences, good and bad, of the last few years. Her suffering, her resilient smile in the face of that suffering, my part in easing her suffering—this, this is the reason for everything. How many times must I be shown? This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see.

I turn to Gil and he sees it all, and his cheeks are glistening with tears.

Later, while Kacey sleeps, while Gil pretends not to sleep in a corner, I sit in a hard-backed chair at her bedside, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s a letter filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.

I acknowledge that the drugs were in my system—but I assert that I never knowingly took them. I say Slim, whom I’ve since fired, is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth—which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that I recently drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I say that I felt poisoned, but thought the drugs would leave my system quickly. Apparently they did not.

I ask for understanding, and leniency, and hastily sign it: Sincerely.

I sit with the letter on my lap, watching Kacey’s face. I feel ashamed, of course. I’ve always been a truthful person. When I lie, it’s almost always unknowingly, or to myself. But imagining the look on Kacey’s face as she learns that Uncle Andre is a drug user, banned three months from tennis, and then multiplying that look by a few million faces, I don’t know what else to do but lie.

I promise myself that at least this lie is the end of it. I’ll send the letter, but I won’t do anything more. I’ll let my lawyers handle the rest. I won’t go before any panel and lie to anyone’s face. I’ll never lie about this publicly. From here on, I’ll leave it in the hands of fate and men in suits. If they can settle it privately, quietly, fine. If not, I’ll live with what comes.

Gil wakes. I fold the letter and step with him into the hallway.

Under the fluorescent lights, he looks drawn, pale. He looks—I can’t believe it—weak. I’d forgotten: it’s in hospital hallways that we know what life is about. I put my arms around him and tell him I love him and that we’ll get through this.

He nods, thanks me, mumbles something incoherent. We stand in silence for the longest time. In his eyes I can see his thoughts circling the abyss. Then he tries to distract himself. He needs to talk about something, anything, other than the fear and worry. He asks how it’s going with me.

I tell him that I’ve decided to recommit myself to tennis, start at the minor leagues and work my way back. I tell him that Kacey has inspired me, shown me the way.

Gil says he wants to help.

No, you’ve got your hands full.

Hey. Stand on my shoulders, remember? Reach?

I can’t believe he still has faith; I’ve given him so many reasons to doubt. I’m twenty-seven, the age when tennis players start to fade, and I’m talking about a second chance, and yet Gil doesn’t frown, doesn’t arch an eyebrow.

Let’s throw down, he says. It’s on.

WE START FROM THE BEGINNING, as if I’m a teenager, as if I’ve never worked out, because that’s how I look. I’m slow, fat, frail as a kitten. I haven’t picked up a dumbbell in a year.

The heaviest thing I’ve lifted is Kacey’s air conditioner. I need to rediscover my body, add gingerly and gradually to its strength.

But first: We’re in Gil’s gym. I’m sitting on the free bench, he’s leaning against the leg extension. I tell him what I’ve done to my body. The drugs. I tell him about the pending suspension. I can’t ask him to lead me out of the depths unless he knows how deep I’ve fallen. He looks as crushed as he looked in his daughter’s hospital room. To me, Gil has always re-sembled that statue of Atlas, but now he looks as if he literally shoulders the weight of the world, as if he’s bench-pressing the problems of six billion. His voice chokes.

I’ve never been so disgusted with myself.

I tell him I’m done with drugs, I’ll never touch them again, but it goes without saying. He knows this as well as I do. He clears his throat, thanks me for being honest, then pushes it all aside. Where you’ve been, he says, doesn’t matter. From now on, we’re all about where you’re going.

Where we’re going, I say.

Right.

He draws up a plan. He outlines a proper diet. And no more Mr. Nice Guy, he says. No more lapses, no more fast food, no more shortcuts.

You’ll even have to cut back on the booze, he says.

Above all, he’s going to keep me on a strict schedule. Eat, exercise, lift, hit, at precise times of day.

As part of my new ascetic lifestyle, I’ll be seeing less of my wife. I wonder if she’ll notice.

I PUT IN A FIERCE, rugged month with Gil, every bit as rugged as our mini boot camp in early 1995, and then I go to a challenger, the bottom of the pro tennis ladder. The winner’s check is $3,500. The crowd is smaller than the crowd at a typical high school football game.

The venue is UNLV. Familiar territory for such an unfamiliar moment. As Gil and I pull into the parking lot, I think of how far I’ve come, and how far I haven’t. These are the same courts I played on when I was seven. This is where I came the day Gil quit his job to work with me. I stood right over there, outside his office, hopping on one foot because I was so excited about the road that lay before us. Now, just a three wood from that spot, I’m playing hackers and has-beens.

In other words, my peers.

A challenger is the definition of small-time, and nowhere is this more evident than in the players’ lounge. The pre-match meal is airplane food: rubber chicken, limp veggies, flat soda.

Once upon a time, at slams, I would walk up and down the endless buffet line, chatting with white-hatted chefs while they made me feathery omelets and homemade pasta. All gone.

The indignities don’t stop there. At a challenger, there are fewer ball boys. It makes sense, since there are practically no balls. You get only three per match. On either side of your court are rows of courts with other matches taking place simultaneously. As you toss a ball to serve, you see the players to your left and right. You hear them arguing. They don’t care if they’re interrupting your concentration. Fuck you and your concentration. Now and then a ball comes dribbling past your feet from another court, and you hear, A little help! You need to stop whatever you’re doing and throw the ball back. Now you’re the ball boy. Again.

You also operate your own scoreboard. Manually. During the changeover, I flip the little plastic numbers, which feel like part of a children’s game. Fans laugh and yell things. How the mighty have fallen! Image Is Everything, eh, buddy? A high-ranking official says publicly that Andre Agassi playing a challenger is like Bruce Springsteen playing a corner bar.

So what’s wrong with Springsteen playing a corner bar? I think it would be cool if Springsteen played a corner bar now and then.

I’m ranked number 141 in the world, the lowest I’ve been ranked in my adult life, the lowest I’ve dreamed of being ranked. Sportswriters say I’m humbled. They love saying this. They couldn’t be more wrong. I was humbled in the hotel room with Brad. I was humbled smoking meth with Slim. Now I’m just glad to be out here.

Brad feels the same way. He doesn’t find anything demeaning about the challenger. He’s reenergized, rededicated, and I love him for it. He’s excited for this challenger, coaching me as if we’re at Wimbledon. He doesn’t doubt that this is step one on the road all the way back to number one. Inevitably, I put his faith to the test right away. I’m a shadow of my former self.

My legs and arms might be on the mend, but my mind is still grossly out of shape. I reach the final, and then my mind gives out. Shaking from the pressure, the strangeness, the ridicule from the stands, I lose.