Open: An Autobiography

Brad is undiscouraged. Some technique will need relearning, he says. Shot selection, for instance. You need to retrain that muscle with which a tennis player decides in the heat of battle that this shot is the right one and that shot is the wrong one. You need to remember that it doesn’t matter if you hit the best shot in the world—remember? If it’s the wrong moment, it’s the wrong shot.

Every shot is an educated guess, and I’m no longer educated. I’m as green as I was in juniors. It took me twenty-two years to discover my talent, to win my first slam—and only two years to lose it.

ONE WEEK AFTER VEGAS I play a challenger in Burbank. The venue is a public park.

Center court has a large tree on one side that casts a twenty-foot shadow. I’ve played on thousands of courts in my career, and this is the sorriest one of all. In the distance I hear kids playing kickball and dodgeball, cars backfiring, boom boxes blaring.

The tournament runs through Thanksgiving weekend, and I reach the third round, which falls on Thanksgiving Day. Rather than eating turkey at home, I’m scuffling in a Burbank public park, ranked 120 spots lower than I was two Thanksgivings ago. Meanwhile, in Göteborg, Davis Cup is under way. Chang and Sampras versus Sweden. It’s sad, but appropriate, that I’m not there. I don’t belong there. I belong here, under the ridiculous courtside tree. Unless I can accept that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’ll never belong there again.

Warming up before my match, I realize that I’m only four minutes from the studio where Brooke shoots Suddenly Susan, on which Perry is now a producer. The show has become a smash hit, and Brooke’s busy, working twelve hours a day. Still, it seems odd that she doesn’t pop over, watch a few points. Even when I get home she doesn’t ask about the match.

Then again, I don’t ask about Suddenly Susan either.

We talk about things. We talk about nothing.

· · ·

THE ONLY TIME I BREAK TRAINING is to meet with Perry and lay the groundwork for my charitable foundation. This is what we talked about fifteen years ago, two idealistic teenagers with their mouths full of Chipwiches. We wanted to reach a plateau from which we could give back, and we’ve finally arrived. I’ve negotiated a long-term deal with Nike, which will pay me tens of millions over the next decade. I’ve bought my parents a house. I’ve taken care of everyone on my team. Now I’m financially able to think larger, to widen my lens, and in 1997, though I’ve hit rock bottom, or because I’ve hit rock bottom, I’m ready.

My primary concern is children at risk. Adults can always ask for help, but children are voiceless, powerless. So the first project my foundation undertakes is a shelter for abused and neglected children who’ve been placed in the protective custody of the courts. The shelter includes a cottage for medically fragile children, and a makeshift school. Next we launch a program to clothe three thousand inner-city children each year. Then a series of scholarships to UNLV. Then a Boys and Girls Club. My foundation takes a 2,200-square-foot building that’s falling apart and turns it into a 25,000-square-foot showplace, with a computer lab, a cafeteria, a library, and tennis courts. Colin Powell speaks at the dedication.

I spend many carefree hours at the new Boys and Girls Club, meeting children, listening to their stories. I take them onto the tennis court, teach them the proper grip, watch their eyes sparkle because they’ve never held a racket before. I sit with them in the computer room, where the demand for online time is so great that they stand in long lines, patiently waiting their turn. It shocks me, pains me, to see how resolved they are to learn. Other times I simply station myself in the rec center of the Boys and Girls Club, playing ping-pong with the children. I never walk into that rec center without thinking of the rec center at the Bollettieri Academy, where I was so scared that first night, my back against the wall. The memory makes me want to adopt every scared child I see.

One day in the rec center I sit with Stan, the man who runs the Boys and Girls Club. I ask him, What more can we do? How can we make a bigger difference in their lives?

Stan says, You have to figure out a way to occupy more of their day. Otherwise it’s one step forward, two steps back. You really want to make a difference? You want to have a lasting impact? You need more of their day. In fact, you need all of their day.

So in 1997 I huddle again with Perry, and we hit on the idea of adding education to our work. Then we decide to make education our work. But how? We briefly consider opening a private school, but the bureaucratic and financial obstacles are too much. By chance I catch a story on 60 Minutes about charter schools, and it’s the eureka moment. Charter schools are partly state funded, partly privately funded. The challenge is raising money, but the benefit is retaining full control. With a charter school we could do things the way we want. We’d be free to build something unique. Special. And if it works, it can spread like wildfire. It can be a model for charter schools around the nation. It can change education as we know it.

I can’t believe the irony. A 60 Minutes piece caused my father to send me away, to break my heart, and now a 60 Minutes piece lights the way home, gives me the map to find my life’s meaning, my mission. Perry and I resolve to build the best charter school in America. We resolve to hire the best teachers, pay them well, and hold them accountable for grades and test scores. We resolve to show the world what can be done when you set standards outrageously high and open the purse strings. We shake on it.

I’ll give millions of my own money to launch the school, but we’ll need to raise many more millions. We’ll issue a $40 million bond, then pay it off by parlaying and trading on my fame.

At last my fame will have a purpose. All those famous people I’ve met at parties and through Brooke—I’ll ask them to give their time and talent to my school, to visit the children, and to perform at an annual fund-raiser, which we’re calling the Grand Slam for Children.

WHILE PERRY AND I are scouting locations for our school, I get a call from Gary Muller, a South African who used to play and coach on the tour. He’s organizing a tennis event in Cape Town to raise money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He asks if I’d like to take part.

We don’t know if Mandela’s going to be there, he says.

If there’s even a remote chance, I’m in.

Gary calls right back. Good news, he says. You’re going to get to meet The Man.

You’re kidding.

He’s confirmed. He’s coming to the event.

I grip the phone tighter. I’ve admired Mandela for years. I’ve followed his struggles, his im-prisonment, his miraculous release and stunning political career, with awe. The idea of actually meeting him, speaking to him, makes me dizzy.

I tell Brooke. It’s the happiest she’s seen me in a long time, which makes her happy. She wants to come. The event happens to be a short flight from where she stayed while filming her Africa movie, back in 1993, when we first started faxing.

She immediately goes shopping for matching safari outfits.

J.P. shares my reverence for Mandela, so I invite him to join us on the trip, and bring his wife, Joni, whom Brooke and I both love. The four of us fly to South America, then catch another plane to Johannesburg. Then we hop a rickety prop plane into the heart of Africa.

A storm forces us to make an unscheduled landing. We batten down in a straw-roofed hut in the middle of nowhere, and over the sound of the thunder we can hear hundreds of animals run for cover. Looking out of the hut, over the vast savannah, watching storm clouds whirl along the horizon, J.P. and I agree this is one of those moments. We’re both reading Mandela’s memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, but feeling like heroes in a Hemingway novel. I think about something Mandela said once in an interview: No matter where you are in life, there is always more journey ahead. And I think of one of Mandela’s favorite quotes, from the poem Invictus, which sustained him during those moments when he thought his journey had been cut short: I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

After the storm passes we pile back into the prop plane and fly to a game reserve. We spend three days on safari. Every morning, before dawn, we climb into a Jeep. We drive and drive, then abruptly stop. We sit for twenty minutes in pitch dark, the engine running. As the dawn slowly breaks we find that we’re on the banks of a vast fog-covered marsh, surrounded by dozens of different kinds of animals. We see hundreds of impala. We see at least seventy-five zebras. We see scores of giraffes as tall as two-story buildings, dancing around us and gliding among the trees, nibbling from the highest branches, a sound like celery being crunched. We feel the landscape speaking to us: All these animals, beginning their day in a dangerous world, exude tremendous calm and acceptance—why can’t you?

With us are a driver and a shooter. The shooter is named Johnson. We love Johnson.

He’s our African Gil. He stands guard. He knows we love him, and he smiles with the pride of a crack shot. He also knows the landscape better than the impalas do. At one point he waves his hand at the trees and a thousand small monkeys, as if on cue, fall to the ground, like autumn leaves.

In South Africa, on safari with Brooke, late 1997, days before meeting Mandela

We’re driving deep into the bush one morning when the Jeep shudders, swerves, and we go spinning off to the right.

What happened?

We nearly ran over a lion sleeping in the middle of the road.

The lion sits up and stares with an expression that says, You woke me. His head is enormous. His eyes are the color of lemon-lime Gatorade. The smell of him is a musk so primal that it makes us lightheaded.

He has hair like I used to have.

Do not make a sound, the driver whispers.

Whatever you do, Johnson whispers, do not stand up.

Why?

The lion looks at us as one big predator. Right now he’s afraid of us. If you stand, he’ll see that we’re several smaller people.

Fair enough.

After a few minutes, the lion backs away, into the bush. We drive on.

Later, returning to our campsite, I lean into J.P. and whisper: I need to tell you something.

Fire away.

I’m going through—well, a tough time right now. I’m trying to put some bad stuff behind me.

What’s the problem?

I can’t go into it. But I wanted to apologize if I seem—different.

Well, now that you mention it, you do. You have. But what’s going on?

I’ll tell you when I know you better.

He laughs.

Then he sees that I’m not kidding. He asks, Are you OK?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

I want to tell him about the depression, the confusion, the time with Slim, the pending suspension from the ATP. But I can’t. Not now. Not until it’s all farther behind me. At the moment it feels like the lion, still inches away and glowering. I don’t want to give voice to my problems, for fear of rousing them, making them pounce. I just want to alert J.P. to their presence.

I also tell him that I’m doubling down on tennis, and if I can pull through this tough time, if I can come back, everything is going to be different. I’m going to be different. But even if I can’t, even if I’m finished, even if I lose everything, I’m still going to be different.

He says, Finished?

I just wanted you to know.

It’s like a confession, a testimony. J.P. looks at me with sadness. He squeezes my arm and tells me, in so many words, that I am the captain of my fate.

WE TRAVEL TO CAPE TOWN, where I play tennis with obvious impatience, like a child doing chores on Saturday morning. Then, at last, it’s time. We helicopter to a compound, and Mandela himself greets us at the helipad. He’s surrounded by photographers, dignitaries, reporters, aides—and he towers above them all. He looks not only taller than I expected, but stronger, healthier. He looks like a former athlete, which surprises me, given his years of hard labor and torture. But of course he is a former athlete, a boxer in his youth—and in prison, he says in his memoir, he kept fit by running in place in his cell and playing tennis occasionally on a crude, makeshift court. For all his strength, however, his smile is sweet, almost angelic.

I tell J.P. he seems saintly to me. Gandhi-like, void of all bitterness. His eyes, though damaged by years of working in the harsh glare of the prison’s lime quarry, are filled with wisdom.

His eyes say that he’s figured something out, something essential.

I babble as he fixes me with those eyes and shakes my hand and tells me he admires my game.

We follow him into a great hall, where a formal dinner is served. Brooke and I are seated at Mandela’s table. Brooke sits on my right, Mandela on her right. Throughout the meal he tells stories. I have many questions, but I don’t dare interrupt him. He talks about Robben Island, where he was held for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. He talks about winning over a few of the guards. As a special treat, they would sometimes let him walk to the edge of a small lake with a fishing pole, to catch his own dinner. He smiles at the memory, almost nostalgic.

After dinner Mandela stands and gives a stirring talk. His theme: we must all care for one another—this is our task in life. But also we must care for ourselves, which means we must be careful in our decisions, careful in our relationships, careful in our statements. We must manage our lives carefully, in order to avoid becoming victims. I feel as if he’s speaking directly to me, as if he’s aware that I’ve been careless with my talent and my health.

He talks about racism, not just in South Africa but around the world. It’s nothing but ignor-ance, he says, and education is the only remedy. In prison, Mandela spent his few free hours educating himself. He created a kind of university, and he and his fellow prisoners were professors to each other. He survived the loneliness of constant confinement by reading; he especially loved Tolstoy. One of the harshest punishments his guards devised was taking away his right to study for four years. Again his words seem to shimmer with personal relevance. I think of the work Perry and I have undertaken in Vegas, our charter school, and I feel invigor-ated. Also embarrassed. For the first time in many years I’m acutely aware of my lack of education. I feel the weight of this lack, the misfortune of it. I see it as a crime in which I’ve been complicit. I think of how many thousands in my hometown are victims of this crime right now, deprived of an education, unaware how much they’re losing.

Finally, Mandela talks about the road he’s traveled. He talks about the difficulty of all human journeys—and yet, he says, there is clarity and nobility in just being a journeyer. When he stops speaking and takes his chair I know that my journey, compared with his, is nothing, and yet that’s not his point. Mandela is saying that every journey is important, and that no journey is impossible.

Bidding Mandela goodbye, I’m magnetized. I’m pointed in the right direction. A friend later shows me a passage in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family, in which a woman deep in mourning thinks:

Now I am more nearly a grown member of the human race … she thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the strength human beings have, to endure; she loved and revered all those who had ever suffered, even those who had failed to endure.

This is close to what I feel as I leave Mandela. This is what I think when the helicopter lifts away from his compound. I love and revere those who suffer, who have ever suffered. I am now more nearly a grown member of the human race.

God wants us to grow up.

NEW YEAR’S EVE, the last hours of this dreadful year, 1997. Brooke and I throw another New Year’s party, and the next morning I wake early. I pull the covers over my head, then remember that I scheduled a practice with a kid on the tour, Vince Spadea. I decide to cancel.

No. I yell at myself. You cannot cancel. You’re not that person anymore. You’re not going to start 1998 by oversleeping and canceling a practice.

I force myself out of bed and meet Spadea. Even though it’s only practice, we both want it.

He turns it into a battle, which I appreciate, especially when I win. Walking off the court, I feel winded but strong. The old kind of strong.

This is going to be my year, I tell Spadea—1998 is my year.

Brooke comes with me to the 1998 Australian Open and watches me dispatch my first three opponents, and unfortunately watches as I face Alberto Berasategui, from Spain. I go up two sets to love, then unaccountably, impossibly, for no reason, I lose. Berasategui is a nasty opponent, but still, I had him. It’s an unthinkable loss, one of the few times I’ve ever lost a match when ahead two sets to none. Is this a detour in the comeback or a dead end?

I go to San Jose and play well. I meet Pete in the final. He seems glad to have me back, glad to see me again on the other side, as if he’s missed me. I have to admit, I’ve missed him too. I win, 6–2, 6–4, and toward the end, part of him seems to be pulling for me. He knows what I’m attempting, how far I have to go.

I tease him in the locker room about how easy it was to beat him.

How does it feel to lose to someone outside the top hundred?

I’m not too worried about it, he says. It’s not going to happen again.

Then I tease him about recent reports of his personal life. He’s broken up with the law student and he’s said to be dating an actress.

Bad move, I tell him.

The words catch us both off guard.

In the media room, reporters ask me about Pete and Marcelo Ríos, who are dueling for the number one rank: Which of them do you think will ultimately be number one?

Neither.

Nervous laughter.

I think I’m going to be number one.

Raucous laughter.

No. Really. I mean it.

They stare, then dutifully write my insane prediction in their notebooks.

In March I go to Scottsdale and win my second straight tournament. I beat Jason Stolten-berg, from Australia. A classic Aussie, he’s solid, steady, with an enviable all-around game that forces opponents to execute. He’s a good gut check for me, a good test of my nerves, and I pass. Anyone who crosses me right now is going to have to deal with something they don’t want to deal with.

I go to Indian Wells and beat Rafter, but lose to a young phenom named Jan-Michael Gambill. They say he’s the best of the young bucks coming up. I look at him and wonder if he knows what lies ahead, if he’s ready—if anyone can possibly be ready.

I go to Key Biscayne. I want to win, I’m crazy to win. It’s not like me to want a win this badly. What I normally feel is a desire not to lose. But warming up before my first-rounder, I tell myself I want this, and I realize precisely why. It’s not about my comeback. It’s about my team. My new team, my real team. I’m playing to raise money and visibility for my school.

After all these years I’ve got what I’ve always wanted, something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me. Something that bears my name but isn’t about me. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy.

At first I didn’t want my name on the school. But friends persuaded me that my name can bring cachet and credibility. My name might make raising money easier. Perry chooses the word Academy, and it’s not until later that I appreciate the way this forever links my school to my past, to Bradenton Academy and the Bollettieri Academy, my childhood prisons.

I DON’T HAVE MANY FRIENDS IN LOS ANGELES, and Brooke has countless friends, so most nights find her out being sociable and me at home, alone.

Thank God for J.P. He lives in Orange County, so it’s easy enough for him to drive north now and then, sit with me by the fire, smoke a cigar, and talk about life. His pastoring days seem like ancient history, but during our fireside talks it feels as if he’s speaking to me from an invisible pulpit. Not that I mind. I like being his solitary congregation, his flock of one. In early 1998 he covers all the big topics. Motivation, inspiration, legacy, destiny, rebirth. He helps me sustain the sense of mission I felt in Mandela’s presence.

One night I tell J.P. that I feel a remarkable confidence in my game, and a new purpose for being on the court—so how come I still feel all this fear? Doesn’t the fear ever go away?

I hope not, he says. Fear is your fire, Andre. I wouldn’t want to see you if it ever completely went out.

Then J.P. looks around the house, takes a pull on his cigar, and says he can’t help but notice my wife is never around. Whenever he comes over, no matter the day or time, Brooke seems to be out with friends.

He asks if it bothers me.

Hadn’t noticed.

I GO TO MONTE CARLO in April 1998 and lose to Pete. He pumps his fist. No more pulling for me—the rivalry is back on.

I go to Rome. I’m lying on my hotel bed, resting after a match.

Back-to-back phone calls.

First, Philly. He’s sniffling, on the verge of all-out tears. He tells me his wife, Marti, just gave birth to a baby girl. They’re calling her Carter Bailey. My brother sounds different.

Happy, of course, and busting with pride, but also: Philly sounds as though he feels blessed.

Philly sounds as though he feels supremely lucky.

I tell him how overjoyed I am for him and Marti, and I promise to get home as soon as I can. Brooke and I will come straight over and see my brand-new niece, I say, my voice catching in my throat.

The phone rings again. Is it an hour later? Three? In my memory it will always feel like part of the same foggy moment, though the two calls might be days apart. It’s my lawyers, they’re on speaker phone. Andre? Can you hear us? Andre?

Yes, I hear you. Go ahead.

Well, the ATP has read and carefully reviewed your heartfelt assertion of innocence. I’m pleased to say that your explanation has been accepted. Your failed test is thrown out.

Henceforth the matter will be considered closed.

I’m not suspended?

No.

I’m free to go on with my career? My life?

Yes.

I ask several more times. You’re sure? You mean, this is really over?

As far as the ATP is concerned, yes. They believe and accept your explanation. Gladly. I think everyone is eager to move on and put this behind them.

I hang up and stare into space, thinking again and again: New life.

I GO TO the 1998 French Open, and against Marat Safin, from Russia, I hurt my shoulder.

I always forget how weighty the ball can be on this particular clay. It’s like hitting a shotput.

The shoulder is agony, but I’m grateful for the hurt. I will never again take for granted the privilege of hurting on a tennis court.

The doctor says I have an impingement. Pressure on the nerve. I shut myself down for two weeks. No practice, no sparring, nothing. I miss the game. What’s more, I let myself miss it. I enjoy and celebrate missing it.

At Wimbledon I face Tommy Haas, from Germany. In the third set, during a fierce tiebreak, the linesman makes an atrocious blunder. Haas hits a ball clearly long and wide, but the linesman calls it in, giving Haas a commanding 6–3 lead. It’s the worst call of my career. I know the ball was out, know it without question, but all my arguing is for nothing. The other linesman and the umpire uphold the call. I go on to lose the tiebreak. Now I’m down two sets to one, a steep hole.

Officials pause the match, postpone the end because of darkness. Back at my hotel, on the news, I see that the ball was several inches out. I can only laugh.

The next day, taking the court, I’m still laughing. I still don’t care about the call. I’m just happy to be here. Maybe I don’t know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time: Haas wins the fourth set. Afterward, he tells reporters he grew up idolizing me. I used to look up to Agassi, he says—it’s a very special win for me because he won Wimbledon in 1992 and I can say I beat Andre Agassi, a former number one who’s won a couple of Grand Slams.

It sounds like a eulogy. Does the guy think he beat me or buried me?

And did anyone in the press room bother to tell him I’ve actually won three slams?

BROOKE LANDS A ROLE in an indie film called Black and White. She’s elated, because the director is a genius and the theme is race relations and she’ll get to ad-lib her lines and wear her hair in dreadlocks. She’s also living in the woods for a month, bunking with her fellow actors, and when we talk on the phone she says they all stay in character, 24–7. Doesn’t that sound cool?

Cool, I say, rolling my eyes.

On her first morning home, eating breakfast in the kitchen, she’s full of stories about Robert Downey Jr. and Mike Tyson and Marla Maples and other stars of the movie. I try to be interested. She asks about my tennis, and she tries to be interested. We’re tentative, like strangers. We’re not like spouses sharing a kitchen; more like teens sharing a hostel. We’re courteous, polite, even kind, but the vibe feels brittle, as if everything could shatter any minute.

I put another log in the kitchen fireplace.

So I have something to tell you, Brooke says. While I was away, I got a tattoo.

I spin around. You’re kidding.

We go to the bathroom where there’s more light, and she pulls down the waistline of her jeans and shows me. On her hip. A dog.

Did it cross your mind to run that by me?

The exact wrong thing to say. Controlling, she calls it. Since when does she need my per-mission to decorate her body? I go back to the kitchen, pour myself a second cup of coffee, and stare harder into the fire. Stare harder.

BECAUSE OF SCHEDULING CONFLICTS, Brooke and I couldn’t take our honeymoon right after the wedding. But now, with her done filming and me just done, it seems like the perfect time. We decide to go to Necker Island, in the British Virgin Islands, southeast of Indigo Island. It’s owned by billionaire Richard Branson, and he tells us we’ll love it.

He says, It’s an island paradise!

From the moment we land, we’re out of sync. We can’t get comfortable. We can’t agree how to spend our time. I want to relax. Brooke wants to go scuba diving. And she wants me to go with her. Which means taking a class. I tell her that of all the things I want to do on my honeymoon, taking a class is right up there with having a colonoscopy.

While watching Friends.

She insists.

We spend hours at the pool, an instructor teaching us about wet suits and tanks and masks. Water keeps leaking into my mask because I have a five-o’clock shadow and my bristles prevent the mask from lying flush against my skin. I go up to the room and shave.

When I come back down the instructor says the final phase of training is an underwater card game. If you can sit calmly playing cards at the bottom of the pool, and if you can play a full game without needing to surface, then you’re a scuba diver. So here I am, in full scuba gear, in the middle of the Caribbean, sitting at the bottom of a pool and playing Go Fish. I don’t feel like a scuba diver. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. I climb out of the pool and tell Brooke, I can’t do this.

You never want to try anything new.

Enjoy. Go out to the middle of the ocean if you want. Say hi to the Little Mermaid. I’ll be in the room.

I walk into the kitchen and order a large plate of French fries. Then I go up to the room, kick off my shoes, stretch out on the couch, and watch TV for the rest of the day.

We leave the island paradise three days early. Honeymoon over.

I’M IN D.C. FOR THE 1998 LEGG MASON. Another July heat wave, another withering D.C. tournament. Other players are carping about the heat, and ordinarily I’d be carping too, but I feel only a cool gratitude and a steely resolve, which I maintain in part by waking early every morning, writing out my goals. After putting them on paper, saying them aloud, I also say aloud: No shortcuts.

Just before the tournament starts, during a final practice with Brad, I give a halfhearted effort. Perry drives me back to the hotel. I stare out the window, silent.

Pull over, I say.

Why?

Just pull over.

He steers onto the shoulder.

Drive two miles ahead and wait for me.

What are you talking about? Are you crazy?

I’m not done. I didn’t give my best today.

I run two miles through Rock Creek Park, the same park where I gave my rackets away in 1987. With every step I’m close to passing out, but I don’t care. This run, even if it brings on heatstroke, will give me peace of mind tonight in that all-important ten minutes before I fall asleep. I now live for that ten minutes. I’m all about that ten minutes. I’ve been cheered by thousands, booed by thousands, but nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those ten minutes before you fall asleep.

When I get to the car, my face is bright purple. I slide into the passenger seat, turn up the air-conditioning, and smile at Perry.

That’s how we do it, he says, handing me a towel as he pulls away.

I reach the final. I face Draper again. I remember wondering not too long ago how I ever beat him. I remember shaking my head in disbelief that I’d ever gotten past him. One of the low points of my life. Now I take him out in fifty minutes, 6–2, 6–0. I win the tournament for the fourth time.

At the Mercedes-Benz Cup I reach the semis without losing a set and ultimately win the whole thing. At the du Maurier Open in Toronto I face Pete again. He plays great in the first set but wears down in the second. I beat him, which costs him the number one ranking and moves me up to number nine.

I meet Krajicek in the semis. He’s still feeling good about winning the 1996 Wimbledon, the only Dutchman ever to do it. In the process he beat Pete in the quarters, handing Pete his first Wimbledon loss in years. But I’m not Pete, and I’m not me. Krajicek is down a set, serving at 3–4 in the second set, love–40. Triple break point. I rope the best return of my adult life. The ball seems to clear the net by a centimeter and leaves a smoking skid mark. It’s a true old-fashioned rug-burner. Krajicek shuts his eyes, shoves out his racket, hits a wild volley. It could go anywhere, he has no idea where it might go, but it’s a winner. If his racket had been open another half degree, the ball would have hit somebody in the front row and I would have broken serve and taken control of the match. Instead he wins the point, holds serve, beats me in three sets, ends my streak of consecutive matches at fifteen. In the old days I’d have had trouble getting over it. Now I tell Brad: That’s tennis, right, BG?

ENTERING THE 1998 U.S. OPEN, I’m number eight in the world. The crowd is fully behind me, which always lifts my spirits, makes me lighter on my feet. In the round of sixteen I meet Kucera, who seems to be trying to irk me with his serve. He tosses the ball, then stops, catches it, and tosses it again. I’m down two sets to love, sorely annoyed by this guy. Then I remember: the better you play Kucera, the better he plays. Hit shit to him, he hits shit back.

That’s it—I’m playing too well! I’m also serving too well. When it’s my serve, I imitate Kucera.

The crowd laughs. Then I hit big goofy moonballs. I irk Kucera, irritate my way back into the match.

Rain falls. The match is held over until tomorrow.

Brooke and I go out for a late dinner with her friends. Actors. It’s always actors. The sky has cleared, so we eat outside at a downtown restaurant with tables on the roof. Afterward, we’re standing in the street, saying goodnight.

Good luck tomorrow! the actors shout as they jump into cabs, off to do some more drinking.

Brooke watches them, turns to me. Her bottom lip is out. She’s torn. She looks like a child caught between what she should do and what she wants to do.

I take a swig from my liter bottle of Gil Water. Go, I say.

Really? You won’t mind?

No, I lie. Have fun.

I take a cab to Brooke’s apartment. She sold the brownstone and bought this place on the Upper East Side. I miss the brownstone. I miss the front stoop where Gil stood guard. I even miss the eyeless, hairless African masks, if only because they were there when Brooke and I didn’t wear masks with each other. I finish my Gil Water, slide into bed. I drift off but snap awake when Brooke comes home hours later.

Go back to sleep, she whispers.

I try. I can’t. I get up and take a sleeping pill.

The next day I have a titanic battle with Kucera. I manage to tie the match. But he has more verve, more stamina. He outduels me in a tough fifth set.

· · ·

I’M SITTING IN A CORNER of our bathroom in Los Angeles, watching Brooke get ready to go out. I’m staying home—again. We talk about why this is always so.

She accuses me of refusing to participate in her world. She says I’m not open to new experiences, new people. I’m not interested in meeting her friends. I could be rubbing elbows every night with geniuses—writers, artists, actors, musicians, directors. I could be attending art gallery openings, world premieres, new plays, private screenings. But all I want to do is stay home, watch TV, and maybe, just maybe, if I’m feeling social, have J.P. and Joni over for dinner.

I can’t lie. That does sound like a perfect night.

Andre, she says, they’re all bad for you. Perry, J.P., Philly, Brad—they coddle you, humor you, enable you. Not one of them has your best interests at heart.

You think all my friends are bad for me?

All but Gil.

All?

All. Especially Perry.

I know she’s been feuding with Perry, that he gave up his producer role on Suddenly Susan. I know she’s irked that I haven’t automatically taken her side in the feud. But I had no idea she was ready to write off everyone else on my team.

Standing, turning from the mirror, she says: Andre, I consider you a rose among thorns.

A rose among—?

An innocent, surrounded by people who are bleeding you dry.

I’m not so innocent. And those thorns have helped me since I was a boy. Those thorns have saved my life.

They’re holding you back. They’re keeping you from growing. From evolving. You’re une-volved, Andre.

PERRY AND I CHOOSE to set the academy in the worst neighborhood of West Las Vegas, where it can serve as a beacon. After months of scouting locations, trying to find a lot that’s for sale and affordable and capable of accommodating an evolving campus, we find an eight-acre parcel that meets all our requirements. It’s in the center of an urban wasteland, surrounded by pawnshops and homes on the verge of being torn down. It’s on the site of the original Las Vegas, the long-forgotten outpost where settlers first arrived, which was later abandoned. I like that our school will be placed on a site that has a history of abandonment. Where better to initiate the kind of change we envision in the lives of children?

At the groundbreaking ceremony, dozens of politicians and dignitaries and neighborhood leaders are on hand. Reporters, TV cameras, speeches. We push the golden shovel into the litter-strewn dirt. I look around, and I can actually hear the sound of children in the future, laughing and playing and asking questions. I can feel the procession of lives that will cross this spot, and go forward from this spot. I become lightheaded, thinking of the dreams that will be formed here, the lives that will be shaped and saved. I’m so overcome by the thought of what will happen here, in a few years, and many decades after I’m gone, that I don’t hear the speeches. The future drowns out the present.

Then someone jolts me from my reverie, tells me to stand over here for a group picture. A flash goes off, a happy occasion, but daunting. We have so far to go. The fight to get the school opened, accredited, funded, will be rough. If not for my progress these last few months, fighting to reconstitute my tennis career, to recapture my health and balance, I don’t know that I’d have the stomach.

People ask me where Brooke is, why she isn’t here for the groundbreaking. I tell them the truth. I don’t know.

NEW YEAR’S EVE, the close of 1998. Brooke and I throw our traditional New Year’s Eve party. No matter how disconnected we may be, she insists that during holidays we give no sign of trouble to our friends and family. It feels as if we’re actors and our guests are an audience. And yet, even when the audience isn’t here, she playacts, and I follow along. Hours before our guests arrive, we pretend to be happy—a dress rehearsal of sorts. Hours after they’re gone, we continue pretending. A kind of cast party.

Tonight there seem to be more of Brooke’s friends and family than mine in the audience.

Included in this group is Brooke’s new dog, an albino pit bull named Sam. It growls at my friends. It growls as if it’s been briefed on what Brooke thinks of all of them.

J.P. and I sit in a corner of the living room, eyeballing the dog, which is lying at Brooke’s feet, eyeballing us.

That dog would be cool, J.P. says, if it were sitting here. He points to the ground beside my feet.

I laugh.

No. Really. That’s not a cool dog. That’s not your dog. This is not your house. This is not your life.

Hm.

Andre, there are red flowers on this chair.

I look at the chair where he’s sitting and see it as if for the first time.

Andre, he says. Red flowers. Red flowers.

AS I PACK FOR THE 1999 AUSTRALIAN OPEN, Brooke frowns and stomps around the house. She’s irritated by my attempted comeback. It can’t be that she resents my hitting the road, given all the tension between us. So I can only assume she thinks I’m wasting my time.

She’s certainly not alone.

I kiss her goodbye. She wishes me luck.

I reach the round of sixteen. The night before my match I phone her.

This is hard, she says.

What is?

Us. This.

Yes. It is.

There’s so much distance between us, she says.

Australia is far.

No. Even when we’re in the same room—distance.

I think: You said all my friends suck. How could there not be distance?

I say: I know.

When you get home, she says, we should talk. We need to talk.

What about?

She repeats, When you get home. She sounds overwhelmed. Is she crying? She tries to change the subject. Who do you play?

I tell her. She never recognizes the names or understands what they mean.

She asks, Is it on TV?

I don’t know. Probably.

I’ll watch.

OK.

OK.

Goodnight.

Hours later I play Spadea, my practice partner from New Year’s Day one year ago. He isn’t half the player I am. There have been days in my prime when I could have beaten him with a spatula. But I’ve been on the road for thirty-two of the last fifty-two weeks, not to mention the training with Gil, the struggles with the school, and the maneuvering with Brooke. My mind is still on the phone with Brooke. Spadea edges me in four sets.

The newspapers are cruel. They point out that I’ve been ousted early from my last six slams. Fair enough. But they say I’m embarrassing myself. Too long at the fair, they say.

Agassi doesn’t seem to know when to hang it up. He’s won three slams. He’s nearly twenty-nine years old. How much more does he really hope to accomplish?

Every other article contains the threadbare phrase: At an age when most of his peers are thinking about retiring—

I WALK IN THE DOOR and call out Brooke’s name. Nothing. It’s midmorning, she must be at the studio. I spend the day waiting for her to come home. I try to rest, but it’s hard with an albino pit bull eyeing you.

When Brooke gets home, it’s dark and the weather has turned bad. A rainy, wintry night.

She suggests we go out for dinner.

Sushi?

Lovely.

We drive to one of our favorite places, Matsuhisa, sit at the bar. She orders sake. I’m starved. I ask for all my favorites. The blue fin sashimi, the crab toro cucumber avocado hand roll. Brooke sighs.

You always order the same thing.

I’m too hungry and tired to bother about her disapproval.

She sighs again.

What’s wrong?

I can’t even look you in the eye right now.

Her eyes are wet.

Brooke?

No, really, I can’t look at you.

Easy does it. Take a deep breath. Please, please, try not to cry. Let’s get the check and go. Let’s just talk about this at home.

I don’t know why, but after all that’s been written about me in the last few days, it’s important that tomorrow’s newspapers don’t report that I was seen fighting with my wife.

In the car Brooke is still crying. I’m not happy, she says. We’re not happy. We haven’t been happy for so very long. And I don’t know if we can ever be happy again if we stay together.

So. There it is. That’s that.

I walk into the house, a zombie. I pull a suitcase out of the closet, which I notice is so organized, so neat, it’s unsettling. I realize how difficult it must be for Brooke, living with my losses, my silences, my peaks and valleys. But I also notice how little space in this closet is allotted to me. Symbolic. I think of J.P. This is not your house.

I grab the few hangers holding my clothes and carry them downstairs.

Brooke is in the kitchen, sobbing. Not crying as she did at the restaurant and in the car, but sobbing. She’s sitting on a stool at the butcher block island. Always an island. One way or another, we spend all our time together on islands. We are islands. Two islands. And I can’t recall when it was different.

She asks, What are you doing? What’s going on?

What do you mean? I’m leaving.

It’s raining. Wait until morning.

Why wait? No time like the present.

I make a pile of essentials: clothes, blender, Jamaican coffee beans, French press—and a gift Brooke recently gave me. The scary painting Philly and I saw years ago at the Louvre.

She commissioned an artist to make an exact replica. I look at the man hanging from the cliff.

How has he not fallen off that cliff by now? I throw everything in the backseat of my car, a mint-condition convertible Eldorado Cadillac, 1976, the last year they made them. The car is a pure lustrous white, lily white, so I named it Lily. I turn Lily’s key, and the dashboard lights come on like an old TV set. The odometer reads 23,000 miles. It strikes me that Lily is the exact opposite of me. Old, with low mileage.

I peel out of the driveway.

A mile from the house I start crying. Through my tears, and the gathering fog, I can barely see the chrome wreath of the hood ornament. But I keep going, and going, until I reach San Bernardino. The fog is now snow. The pass through the mountains is closed. I phone Perry and ask him if there’s another way to Vegas.

What’s wrong?

I tell him. Trial separation, I say. We don’t know each other anymore.

I think about the day Wendi and I broke up, when I pulled over and phoned Perry. I think of all that’s happened since—and yet here I am, pulled over again, phoning Perry with a broken heart.

He says there’s no other way to get to Vegas, so I need to make a U-turn, head back toward the coast, and stop at the first motel that has a room. I drive slowly, picking my way through the snow, the car spinning and skidding on the slick highway. I stop at every motel.

No vacancy. Finally I get the last available bed at a fleabag in Nowhere, California. I lie on the smelly bedspread, interrogating myself. How the hell did you get here? How did it come to this? Why are you reacting like this? Your marriage is far from perfect, you’re not even sure why you got married in the first place, or if you ever wanted to get married—so why are you such an emotional wreck thinking it might be over?

Because you hate losing. And divorce is one tough loss.

But you’ve suffered tough losses before—why does this one feel different?

Because you don’t see any way that, as a result of this loss, you can improve.

I PHONE BROOKE TWO DAYS LATER. I’m contrite, she’s hardened.

We both need time to think, she says. We shouldn’t talk for a while. We need to go inside ourselves, not interfere with each other.

Inside ourselves? What does that even mean—for how long?

Three weeks.

Three? Where do you come up with that number?

She doesn’t answer.

She suggests I use the time to see a therapist.

SHE’S A SMALL DARK WOMAN in a small dark office in Vegas. I sit on a love seat—how exquisitely ironic. She sits in a chair three feet away. She listens without interrupting. I’d rather she interrupted. I want answers. The more I talk, the more acutely aware I become of talking to myself. As always. This isn’t the way to save a marriage. Marriages don’t get saved or solved by one person talking.

I wake later that night on the floor. My back is stiff. I go out to the living room and sit on the couch with a pad and pen. I write pages and pages to Brooke. Another pleading handwritten letter, but this one is all true. In the morning I fax the pages to Brooke’s house. I watch the pages go through the fax machine and I think of how it all started, five years ago, sliding the pages into Philly’s fax machine, holding my breath, waiting for the witty, flirty reply from a hut somewhere in Africa.

This time there is no reply.

I fax her again. Then again.

She’s much farther away than Africa.

I phone.

I know you said three weeks, but I need to talk to you. I think we should meet, I think we need to be working through these things together.

Oh Andre, she says.

I wait.

Oh Andre, she says again. You don’t understand. You just don’t get it. This isn’t about us—this is about you individually and me individually.

I tell her she’s right, I don’t understand. I tell her I don’t see how we got here. I tell her how unhappy I’ve been for so long. I tell her I’m sorry that we’ve grown distant, that I’ve grown cold. I tell her about the whirl, the constant whirl, the centrifugal force of this fucked-up tennis life. I tell her that I haven’t known who I am for the longest time, maybe ever. I tell her about the search for a self, the endless monologue in my head, the depression. I tell her everything in my heart, and it all comes out halting, clumsy, inarticulate. It’s embarrassing, but necessary, because I don’t want to lose her, I’ve had enough losing, and I know if I’m honest she’ll give me a second chance.

She says that she’s sorry I’m suffering, but she can’t solve it. She can’t fix me. I need to fix myself. By myself.

Listening to the dial tone, I feel resigned, calm. The phone call now seems like the brief, curt handshake at the net between two mismatched opponents.

I eat something, watch TV, go to bed early. In the morning I phone Perry and tell him I want the fastest divorce in the history of divorce.

I give my platinum wedding band to a friend and point him to the nearest pawnshop. Take their first offer, I tell him. When he brings me the cash I make a donation to my new school in the name of Brooke Christa Shields. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, she will forever be one of the original benefactors.

22

THE FIRST TOURNAMENT of my new, Brooke-less life is San Jose. J.P. drives up from Orange County for a few days of emergency counseling. He encourages, advises, cajoles, promises that better days are ahead. He understands that I have good moments and bad.

One moment I say, To hell with her, and the next moment I miss her. He says it’s all par for the course. He tells me that for the last few years my mind has been a swamp—stagnant, fetid, seeping in every direction. Now it’s time for my mind to be a river—raging, channeled, and therefore pure. I like it. I tell him I’ll try to keep this image in mind. He talks and talks, and as long as he’s talking, I’m OK. I’m in control. His advice feels like an oxygen cup on my mouth.

Then he leaves, drives back to Orange County, and I’m a mess again. I’m standing on the court, in the middle of a match, thinking about everything but my opponent. I’m asking myself, If you took a vow, before God and your family, if you said I do, and now you don’t, what does that make you?

A failure.

I walk in circles, cursing myself. The linesman hears me call myself an obscene name and walks past me, across the court, to the umpire’s chair. He reports me to the umpire for using foul language.

The umpire gives me a warning.

Now here comes the linesman, walking back across the court, past me, to resume his position. I glare. The mealy-mouthed fink. The pathetic tattletale. I know I shouldn’t, I know there will be hell to pay, but I can’t hold it in.

You’re a cocksucker.

He stops, turns, marches straight back to the umpire, reports me again.

This time I’m docked a point.

The linesman comes back again, past me, to resume his position.

I say, You’re still a cocksucker.

He stops, turns, walks back to the umpire, who heaves a sigh and pitches forward in his chair. The umpire calls over the supervisor, who also sighs, then beckons me.

Andre. Did you call the linesman a cocksucker?

Do you want me to lie or tell you the truth?

I need to know if you said it.

I said it. And you want to know something? He is a cocksucker.

They kick me out of the tournament.

I HEAD BACK TO VEGAS. Brad phones. Indian Wells is coming up, he says. I tell Brad that I’m going through some stuff right now, but I can’t tell him what. And Indian Wells is out of the question.

I have to get well, get right, which means spending lots of time with Gil. Every night we buy a sack of hamburgers and drive around the city. I’m breaking training, big time, but Gil sees again that I need comfort food. He also sees that he might lose a finger if he tries to take the hamburger away from me.

We drive into the mountains, up and down the Strip, listening to Gil’s special CD. He calls it Belly Cramps. Gil’s philosophy in all things is to seek the pain, woo the pain, recognize that pain is life. If you’re heartbroken, Gil says, don’t hide from it. Wallow in it. We hurt, he says, so let’s hurt. Belly Cramps is his medley of the most painful love songs ever written. We listen to them over and over until we know the lyrics by heart. After a song has played Gil will speak the lyrics. For my money, his speaking is better than anyone’s singing. He puts all recording artists to shame. I’d rather hear Gil talk a song than Sinatra croon it.

With each passing year Gil’s voice grows deeper, richer, and softer, and when he speaks the chorus of a torch song he sounds as if he’s channeling Moses and Elvis. He deserves a Grammy for his rendition of Barry Manilow’s Please Don’t Be Scared: Cause feeling pain’s a hard way

To know you’re still alive.

But his take on Roy Clark’s version of We Can’t Build a Fire in the Rain knocks me out every time. One line in particular resonates with us both: Just going through the motions and pretending

we have something left to gain.

When I’m not with Gil, I’m locked in my new house, the one I bought with Brooke for those infrequent occasions when we came home to Vegas. Now I think of it as Bachelor Pad II. I like the house, it’s more my style than the French Country place where she and I lived in Pacific Palisades, but it doesn’t have a fireplace. I can’t think without a fireplace. I must have fire.

So I hire a guy to build one.

While it’s under construction the house is a disaster area. Huge plastic sheets hang from the walls. Tarps cover the furniture. A thick coat of dust lies everywhere. One morning, staring into the unfinished fireplace, I think about Mandela. I think about the promises I’ve made to myself and others. I reach for the phone and dial Brad.

Come to Vegas. I’m ready to play.

He says he’s on his way.

Unbelievable. He could dump me—no one would blame him—but instead he drops everything the moment I call. I love the guy. Now, while he’s on his way, I worry that he won’t be comfortable, because of all the construction. Then I smile. I have two leather club chairs set in front of a large-screen TV, and a wet bar stocked with Bud Ice. All Brad’s basic needs will be met.

Five hours later he comes through the door, flops into one of the club chairs, opens a beer, and instantly looks as if he’s nestled in his mother’s arms. I join him in a beer. Six o’clock rolls around. We switch to frozen margaritas. At eight o’clock we’re still in the club chairs, Brad flipping channels, looking for sports highlights.

I say, Listen, Brad, I need to tell you something. It’s something I should have told you a while ago.

He’s staring at the TV. I’m staring into the unfinished fireplace, imagining flames.

You see that game the other night? he asks. No one is beating Duke this year.

Brad, this is important. Something you need to know. Brooke and I—we’re done. We’re not going to make it.

He turns. He looks me dead in the eye. Then he puts his elbows on his knees and hangs his head. I had no idea he’d take it this hard. He stays this way for three full seconds. Finally he looks up and gives me a big, toothy smile.

He says, It’s going to be a great year.

What?

We’re going to have a great year.

But—

This is the best thing that’s ever happened to your tennis.

I’m miserable. What are you talking about?

Miserable? Then you’re looking at this all wrong. You don’t have kids. You’re free as a bird. If you had kids, OK, there would be real problems. But this way, you get off scot free.

I guess.

You’ve got the world by the balls. You’re solo, rid of all that drama!

He looks deranged. He looks delirious. He tells me we have Key Biscayne coming up, then clay season, then—good things. About to happen.

This burden is off you now, he says. Instead of lying around Vegas, feeling your pain, let’s go put some pain on your opponents.

You know what? You’re right. That calls for another batch of margaritas!

At nine o’clock I say, We should think about food.

But Brad is peacefully, contentedly licking salt from the rim of his glass, and he’s found tennis on the TV, a night match in Indian Wells. Steffi Graf versus Serena Williams.

He wheels and gives me the toothy smile again.

That’s your play right there!

He points to the TV.

He says, Steffi Graf! That’s who you should be with.

Yeah. Right. She wants no part of me.

I’ve told Brad the stories. The 1991 French Open. The 1992 Wimbledon Ball. I’ve tried and tried. No dice. Steffi Graf is like the French Open. I just can’t get across that particular finish line.

That’s all in the past, Brad says. Besides, your approach back then was so un-Andre. Asking once and backing off? Strictly amateur. Since when do you let other people run your game? Since when do you take no for an answer?

I nod. Maybe.

You just need a look, Brad says. A crack of light. A window. An opening.

The next tournament where Steffi and I are both scheduled to play is Key Biscayne. Brad tells me to relax, he’ll get me close. He knows Steffi’s coach, Heinz Gunthardt. He’ll talk to Heinz about setting up a practice session.

· · ·

THE MOMENT WE ARRIVE IN KEY BISCAYNE, Brad phones Heinz, who’s surprised by the proposition. He says no. He says Steffi would never agree to break her regular preparation schedule for a practice session with a stranger. She’s too regimented. Also, she’s shy.

She’d be highly uncomfortable. But Brad is persistent, and Heinz must have some trace of romantic in him. He suggests Brad and I book the court for right after Steffi’s practice session, then arrive early. Heinz will then casually suggest that Steffi hit a few balls with me.

It’s all set, Brad says. High noon. You. Me. Steffi. Heinz. Let’s get this party started.

FIRST THINGS FIRST. I phone J.P. and tell him to get his ass to Florida, pronto. I need advice. I need a sounding board. I need a wingman. Then I hit the court and practice for my practice session.

On the appointed day, Brad and I get to the court forty minutes early. I’ve never been so breathless. I’ve played seven times in the final of a Grand Slam and I never felt like this. We find Heinz and Steffi deeply absorbed in their practice session. We stand off to the side, watching. After a few minutes Heinz calls Steffi to the net and says something to her. He points to us.

She looks.

I smile.

She doesn’t.

She says a few words to Heinz, and Heinz says a few words, and then she shakes her head. But when she jogs back to the baseline, Heinz waves me onto the court.

I tie my shoes quickly. I pull a racket out of the bag and walk onto the court—then impuls-ively whip off my shirt. It’s shameless, I realize, but I’m desperate. Steffi looks and does a barely detectable double take. Thank you, Gil.

We start to hit. She’s flawless, of course, and I’m struggling to get the ball over the net.

The net is your biggest enemy. Relax, I tell myself. Stop thinking. Come on, Andre, it’s only a practice session.

But I can’t help myself. I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful. Standing still, she’s a god-dess; in motion, she’s poetry. I’m a suitor, but also a fan. I’ve wondered for so long what Steffi Graf’s forehand feels like. I’ve watched her on TV and at tournaments and I’ve wondered how that ball feels when it comes flying off her racket. A ball feels different off every player’s racket—there are minute but concrete subtleties of force and spin. Now, hitting with her, I feel her subtleties. It’s like touching her, though we’re forty feet apart. Every forehand is foreplay.

She hits a series of backhands, carving up the court with her famous slice. I need to impress her with my ability to take that slice and do whatever I want with it. But it’s harder than I thought. I miss one. I yell to her: You’re not going to get away with that again!

She says nothing. She hits another slice. I sit down on my backhand and hit the ball as hard as I can.

She nets the return.

I yell: That shot pays a lot of bills for me!

Again, nothing. She merely hits the next one deeper and slicier.

Generally, during my practice sessions, Brad likes to keep busy. He chases balls, offers pointers, runs his mouth. Not this time. He’s sitting in the umpire chair, his eyes peeled, a life-guard on a shark-infested beach.

Whenever I look in his direction he mutters one word. Beautiful.

Around the edges of the court, people are beginning to gather, to gawk. A few photographers snap photos. I wonder why. Is it the rarity of a male and female player practicing? Or is it that I’m catatonic and missing every third ball? From a distance, it looks as if Steffi is giving a lesson to a shirtless, grinning mute.

After we hit for one hour and ten minutes, she waves and comes to the net.

Thank you very much, she says.

I trot to the net and say, The pleasure was all mine.

I manage to act nonchalant, until she starts to use the net post to stretch out her legs. All the blood rushes to my head. I need to do something physical or I might lose consciousness.

I’ve never stretched before, but now seems like a good time to start. I put a leg on the net post and pretend my back is flexible. We stretch, talk about the tour, complain about the travel, compare notes on different cities we’ve enjoyed.

I ask, What’s your favorite city? When tennis is over, where do you imagine living?

Oh. It’s a tie, I think. Between New York and San Francisco.

I think: Have you ever thought of living in Las Vegas?

I say: My two favorites also.

She smiles. Well, she says. Thanks again.

Any time.

We do the European double-cheek kiss.

Brad and I take the ferry back to Fisher Island, where J.P. is waiting. The three of us spend the rest of the night talking about Steffi as if she’s an opponent, which she is. Brad treats her like Rafter or Pete. She has strengths, she has weaknesses. He breaks down her game, coaches me up. Now and then J.P. phones Joni, puts her on speaker, and we try to get the female point of view.

The conversation continues over the next two days. At dinner, in the steam room, at the hotel bar, the three of us talk about nothing but Steffi. We’re plotting, using military jargon, like recon and intel. I feel as if we’re planning a land and sea invasion of Germany.

I say, She seemed kind of cool to me.

Brad says, She has no idea you split from your missus. It hasn’t been in the papers yet.

Nobody knows. You need to let her know your status, and tell her how you feel about her.

I’ll send her flowers.

Yes, J.P. says. Flowers are good. But you can’t send them under your name. It might get leaked to the press. We’ll have Joni send them, with your name on the card.

Good thinking.

Joni goes to a shop in South Beach and, under my directive, buys every rose in the place.

She essentially orders a rose garden transplanted to Steffi’s room. On the card I thank Steffi for the practice session and invite her to dinner. Then I sit back and wait for the call.

There is no call. All day.

Or the next day.

No matter how much I stare at it, and shout at it, the phone refuses to ring. I pace, pick my cuticles until they bleed. Brad comes to my room and worries that he might need to give me a sedative.

I shout, This is bullshit! OK, she’s not interested, I get it, but how about a thank you? If she doesn’t call by tonight, I swear, I’m calling her.

We move to the patio. Brad looks off and says, Uh-oh.

What?

J.P. says, I think I see your flowers.

They point to the patio of a room across the way. Steffi’s room, obviously, because there on the patio table are my giant bouquets of long-stemmed red roses.

Not sure that’s a good sign, J.P. says.

No, Brad says. NG. Not good.

· · ·

WE DECIDE THAT I’LL wait for Steffi to win her first match—a foregone conclusion—and when she does, I’ll phone. J.P. preps me for the call. He plays the role of Steffi. We rehearse every scenario. He throws me every line she might possibly utter.

Steffi beats her hapless first-round opponent in forty-two minutes. I’ve tipped the ferry captains to phone me the moment they see her step on the ferry. Fifty minutes after the match I get a call: She’s aboard.

I give her fifteen minutes to reach the island, ten minutes to go from the dock to the hotel, and then I phone the operator and ask for her room. I know her room number because I can still see my damn flowers sitting dejectedly on the patio table.

She picks up the phone on the second ring.

Hi. It’s Andre.

Oh.

I just wanted to call and make sure you got my flowers.

I did.

Oh.

Silence.

She says, I don’t want any misunderstandings between us. My boyfriend is here.

I see. Well, OK, I understand.

Silence.

Good luck with the tournament.

Thank you. You too.

Yawning canyon of silence.

Well, goodbye.

Bye.

I fall on the couch and stare at the floor.

I have one question for you, J.P. says. What could she possibly have said that would put that look on your face? What scenario did we not rehearse?

Her boyfriend is here.

Oh.

Then I smile. I take a page from Brad’s positive-thinking playbook: maybe she’s sending me a message. Obviously her boyfriend was sitting right there.

So?

So she couldn’t talk, and rather than say, I have a boyfriend, case closed, leave me alone, she said, My boyfriend is here.

So?

I think she’s saying there’s a chance.

J.P. says he’ll fix me a drink.

THE TOURNAMENT PROVIDES a small measure of distraction. Sadly, the distraction lasts only a few hours. In the first round, against Dominik Hrbaty, from Slovakia, I can think only of Steffi and her boyfriend enjoying or awkwardly ignoring my roses. Hrbaty whoops me in three sets.

I’m out of the tournament. I should leave Fisher Island. But I stick around, sitting on the beach, plotting with J.P. and Brad.

Steffi’s boyfriend probably showed up unexpectedly, Brad says. Plus, she still doesn’t know you’re divorced. She still thinks you’re married to Brooke. Give it time. Let the news come out. Then make your move.

You’re right, you’re right.

Brad mentions Hong Kong. In light of my performance against Hrbaty, clearly I need another tournament before we head into clay season. Let’s go to Hong Kong, he says. Let’s not sit around anymore thinking and talking about Steffi.

Next thing I know I’m settling into a seat on an airplane bound for China. I look at the screen at the head of the cabin. Estimated flight time: 15 hrs, 37 mins.

I look at Brad. Fifteen hours and thirty-seven minutes? To obsess about Steffi? I don’t think so.

I unbuckle my seat belt and stand.

Where are you going?

I’m getting off this plane.

Don’t be ridiculous. Sit down. Relax. We’re here. We’re all packed. Let’s go play.

I ease back into my seat, order two Belvederes, swallow a sleeping pill, and after what feels like a month I’m on the other side of the earth. I’m in a car being whisked along a Hong Kong highway, looking up at the soaring International Finance Centre.

I phone Perry. When is the news of my divorce going to break?

The lawyers are hashing out the details, he says. Meantime, you and Brooke need to work on the statement.

We fax drafts back and forth. Her team, my team. Lawyers and publicists have a go at it.

Brooke adds a word, I delete a word. Faxes and more faxes. What began with faxes ends with faxes.

The statement is about to be released, Perry says. It should be in the papers any day now.

Brad and I run down to the lobby every morning, buy up all the newspapers, then sit over breakfast and scan every page, looking for the headline. For the first time in my memory I can’t wait for newspapers to report about my private life. Each day I say a prayer: Let this be the day that Steffi learns I’m free.

Day after day, it’s not there. It’s like waiting for Steffi’s call. If only I had hair, so I could pull it out. Finally, the cover of People carries a photo of Brooke and me. The headline reads: Suddenly Split. It’s April 26, 1999, three days before my twenty-ninth birthday, almost exactly two years after our wedding.

Reborn, renewed, I win Hong Kong—but on the flight home I can’t lift my arm. I rush from the airport to Gil’s house. He examines the shoulder, grimaces. He doesn’t like the look of it.

We might need to shut everything down and skip the entire clay season.

No, no, no, Brad says. We have to be in Rome for the Italian Open.

Please. I never win that thing. Let’s forget it.

No, Brad says. Let’s go to Rome, see how the shoulder does. You didn’t want to go to Hong Kong, right? But you won, right? I see a trend developing.

I let him drag me onto a plane, and in Rome I lose in the third round to Rafter, whom I just beat at Indian Wells. Now I really want to shut it down. But Brad talks me into going to play the World Team Cup in Germany. I don’t have the strength to argue with him.

The weather in Germany is cold, dreary, meaning the ball plays heavy. I look at Brad with murder in my eye. I can’t believe he’s dragged me to Düsseldorf with a sore shoulder. In the middle of the first set, down 3–4, I can’t take another swing. I quit. That’s it. We’re going home, I tell Brad. I have to get my shoulder right. And I have to figure out this thing with Steffi.

As we board the flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco, I’m not speaking to Brad. I’m mad as hell. We have twelve hours ahead of us, side by side, and I tell him: Here’s how it’s going to be, Brad. I haven’t slept all night, because of this shoulder. I’m going to swallow two sleeping pills right now and I’m not going to listen to you for the next twelve hours and it’s going to be heaven. You hear me? And when we land, the first thing I want you to do is pull me out of the French Open.

He leans into me and badgers me for two hours. You’re not going back to Vegas. You’re not pulling out. You’re coming with me to my house in San Francisco. I’ve got the guest cottage set up with plenty of firewood, the way you like it, and then you and I are flying back to Paris and you’re going to play. It’s the only slam you don’t have, and you’ve always wanted it, and you can’t win it if you don’t play.

French Open? Please. You must be kidding. That ship has sailed.

How do you know? Who’s to say this isn’t your year?

Trust me. In no sense is 1999 my year.

Look, you were just starting to show glimpses of the player you used to be. I saw something in you I hadn’t seen in years. We have to stay after that.

I see right through him. It’s not that he thinks the French Open is remotely winnable. But if I pull out of the French Open, it will be easier to pull out of Wimbledon, and there goes the whole year. Goodbye comeback. Hello retirement.

Landing in San Francisco, I’m once again too tired to argue. I slide into Brad’s car, and he drives me to his place and puts me in the cottage. I sleep for twelve hours. When I wake a chiropractor is there, ready to treat me.

It’s not going to work, I say.

It’s going to work, Brad says.

I get treatments twice a day. The rest of the time I watch the fog and stoke the fire. By Friday I do feel better. Brad smiles. We hit balls on his backyard court, twenty minutes, then I hit a few serves.

Call Gilly, I say. Let’s go to Paris.

IN OUR PARIS HOTEL Brad is looking over the draw.

I ask, How is it?

He says nothing.

Brad?

Couldn’t be worse.

Seriously?

Nightmare. Your first-rounder is Franco Squillari, lefty, from Argentina, probably the roughest guy in the draw who’s not seeded. An absolute beast on clay.

I can’t believe you talked me into this.

We practice Saturday and Sunday. Monday we start. I’m in the locker room, getting my feet taped, and I realize I forgot to pack underwear in my tennis bag. The match is in five minutes. Can I play without underwear? I don’t even know if it’s physically possible.

Brad jokes that I can borrow his.

I will never want to win that badly.

Then I think: This is perfect. I didn’t want to be here anyway, I shouldn’t be here, I’m playing the quintessential dirt rat in the first round on center court. Why shouldn’t I go commando?

There are sixteen thousand people in the stands, screaming like peasants overrunning Versailles. Before I’ve broken a sweat I’m down a set and a break. I look to my box, stare at Gil and Brad. Help me. Brad stares back, stone-faced: Help yourself.

I hitch up my shorts, take the deepest breath possible and let it out slowly. I tell myself that it can’t get any worse. I tell myself: Just win one set. Winning one set off this guy would be an accomplishment. One set—try for that. Scaling down the task makes it seem manageable and makes me looser. I start ripping my backhand, hitting my spots. The crowd stirs. They haven’t seen me play well here in a long time. Something inside me stirs too.

The second set turns into a street fight and a wrestling match and pistols at fifty paces.

Squillari doesn’t give an inch and I have to bludgeon the set from him, 7–5. Then a shocking thing happens. I win the third set. Now I start to feel hope, actual hope, rising from my toes.

My body is tingling. I glance at Squillari—he’s hopeless. His face is expressionless. One of the fittest guys on the tour, he’s unable to take a step. He’s done. In the fourth set I roll him, and all at once I’m walking off the court with one of the most improbable wins of my career.

Back at the hotel, covered with clay, I tell Gil: Did you see him? Did you see that dirt rat cramp? We made him cramp, Gil!

I saw.

The elevator is tiny. There’s room for five normal-sized humans, or else me and Gil. Brad tells us to go ahead, he’ll catch the next one. I hit the button, and on the way up Gil leans against one corner of the elevator, I lean against the other. I feel him staring.

What?

Nothing.

He keeps staring.

What is it, Gil?

Nothing. He smiles and says again: Nothing.

In the second round, I stick with no underwear. (I will never don underwear again.

Something works, you don’t change.) I play Arnaud Clément, from France. I win the first set 6–2. I’m up in the second, playing the best I’ve ever played on clay. I’m rocking him to sleep.

Then Clément wakes up. He wins the second set—and the third. How did that just happen?

I’m serving at 4–5, love–30, in the fourth set. I’m two points from being bounced out of this tournament.

I think: Two points. Two points.

He hits a forehand inside-out winner. I walk over and check the mark. It’s out. I circle the mark with the racket. The linesman runs out to confirm. He examines it, like Hercule Poirot.

He puts up his hand. Out!

If that thing had caught the line I’d be down triple match point. Instead I’m at 15–30. What a difference. What if—?

But I plead with myself to stop thinking about what if. Don’t think, Andre. Turn off your mind. I play two minutes of the best tennis I’m capable of playing. I hold. We’re at 5–all.

Clément is serving. If I were a different player, he would have the edge. But I’m my father’s son. I’m a returner. I let nothing past me. Then I run him from side to side. Back and forth.

His tongue starts to hang from his mouth. Just when he and the crowd think I can’t run him any more, I run him a little more. He’s a metronome. Then he’s a goner. He pitches forward as if shot in the head. His cramps have cramps. He calls for medical treatment.

I break him. Then I hold easily to win the fourth set.

I win the fifth set 6–0.

In the locker room, Brad is talking to himself, to me, to anyone who will listen.

His back tire blew out! Did you see? Holy shit! His back tire—boom.

Reporters ask if I feel lucky that Clément cramped.

Lucky? I worked hard for those cramps.

At the hotel, riding the tiny elevator with Gil, my face is covered with clay. My eyes and ears and mouth are filled with clay. My clothes are spotted with clay. I look down. I never noticed before how Roland Garros clay, when it dries, looks like blood. I’m trying to brush it off when I feel Gil staring again.

What is it?

Nothing, he says, smiling.

IN THE THIRD ROUND I’m playing Chris Woodruff. I’ve played him once before, here, in 1996 and lost. A disastrous loss. I secretly liked my chances that year. This time I know from the start that I’m going to win. I have no doubt that I’ll have my revenge, served ice cold. I beat him 6–3, 6–4, 6–4, on the same court where he beat me. Brad requested it, because he wanted me to remember, to make it personal.

I’m in the round of sixteen at the French Open for the first time since 1995. My reward is Carlos Moyá, the defending champion.

Not to worry, Brad says. Even though Moyá’s the champ, and real good on the dirt, you can take away his time. You can bull-rush him, stand inside the baseline, hit the ball early and apply pressure. Go after his backhand, but if you have to bring it to his forehand, do it with purpose, with heat. Don’t just go there—drive it hard up Main Street. Make him feel you.

In the first set, it’s me feeling Moyá. I lose the set fast. In the second set I fall down two breaks. I’m not playing my game. I’m not doing anything Brad said to do. I look up at my box and Brad screams: Come on! Let’s go!

Back to basics. I make Moyá run. And run. I establish a sadistic rhythm, chanting to myself: Run, Moyá, run. I make him run laps. I make him run the Boston Marathon. I win the second set, and the crowd is cheering. In the third set I run Moyá more than I’ve run the last three opponents combined, and suddenly, all at once, he’s cooked. He wants no part of this.

He didn’t sign on for anything like this.

As the fourth set opens, I’m oozing confidence. I hop up and down. I want Moyá to see how much energy I’ve got left. He sees, and he sighs. I put him away and sprint to the locker room. Brad gives me a fist bump that almost breaks my fist.

In the hotel elevator, I feel Gil staring again.

Gil, what is it?

I have a feeling.

What feeling?

I feel like you’re on a collision course.

With what?

Destiny.

I’m not sure I believe in destiny.

We’ll see. We can’t build a fire in the rain …

WE HAVE TWO DAYS OFF. Two days to relax and think about something besides tennis.

Brad discovers that Springsteen is in our hotel. He’s playing a concert in Paris. Brad suggests we attend. He scores us three seats, down front.

At first I’m not sure. I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to go out and paint Paris red. But the TV has mostly news about the tournament, which isn’t good for my mood either. I remember the tennis official who mocked my playing a challenger, comparing it to Springsteen playing a corner bar. Yes, I say. Let’s take the night off. Let’s go see the Boss.

Brad, Gil, and I enter the arena a few seconds before Springsteen comes onstage. As we run down the aisle, several people spot me and point. A man yells my name. Andre! Allez, Andre! A few more men take up the cry. We slip into our seats. A spotlight scans the crowd—and suddenly lands on us. Our faces appear on the giant video screen above the stage. The crowd roars. They begin to chant: Allez, Agassi! Allez, Agassi! Some sixteen thousand people—about the same number as the crowd at Roland Garros—are chanting, cheering, stomping their feet. Allez, Agassi! It has a lilt the way they chant it, a bouncing rhythm like a children’s nursery rhyme. Deet-deet, da da da. It’s contagious. Brad chants too. I stand, wave. I’m honored. Inspired. I wish I could play the next match right now. Here. Allez, Agassi!

I stand once more, my heart in my throat. Then, at last, the Boss comes on.

IN THE QUARTERS I face Marcelo Filippini, from Uruguay. The first set is easy. The second set is easy. I run him, he crumbles. Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run. I enjoy this as much as winning—cutting the legs out from under my opponents, seeing the many years with Gil pay dividends in one concentrated two-week span. I win the third set without any resistance from Filippini, 6–0.

You’re maiming guys! Brad shouts. Oh my God, Andre, you’re freaking maiming them.

I’m in the semis. My opponent is Hrbaty, who just whooped me in Key Biscayne, when I was in a stupor over Steffi. I win the first set, 6–4. I win the next set, 7–6. Clouds roll in. A light drizzle starts to fall. The ball is getting heavier, which keeps me from playing offense. Hrbaty takes advantage and wins the third set, 6–3. In the fourth he goes up 2–1, and a match that I had won is slipping, slipping away. He’s down a set, but clearly he’s seized the momentum. I feel as if I’m just hanging on.

I look to Brad. He points to the skies. Stop the match.

I signal the supervisor and umpire. I point to the clay, which is mud. I tell them I’m not playing under these conditions. It’s dangerous. They examine the mud like miners panning for gold. They confer. They halt play.

At dinner with Gil and Brad, I’m in a foul mood because I know the match was turning against me. Only the rain saved me. Otherwise we’d be at the airport right now. And now I can’t believe I have all night to stew over the match, to worry about tomorrow.

I stare at my food, silent.

Brad and Gil discuss me as if I’m not at the table.

He’s OK physically, Gil says. He’s in fine condition. So give him a good speech, Brad.

Coach him up.

What do you want me to say?

Think of something.

Brad takes a swig of beer and turns to me. OK, Andre. Look. Here’s the deal. I need twenty-eight minutes from you tomorrow.

What?

Twenty-eight minutes. It’s a sprint through the tape. You can do it. You’ve got five games to win, that’s all, and that shouldn’t take any more than twenty-eight minutes.

The weather. The ball.

The weather is going to be fine.

They’re saying rain.

No, it’s going to be fine. Just give us twenty-eight great minutes.

Brad knows my mind, the way it works. He knows that order, specificity, a clear and precise goal, are like candy to me. But does he also know the weather? For the first time it crosses my mind that Brad isn’t a coach but a prophet.

Back at the hotel, Gil and I squeeze into the elevator.

It’s going to be OK, Gil says.

Yeah.

Before bed, he forces me to drink my Gil Water.

I don’t want to.

Drink it.

When I’m so hydrated that I’m pissing pure cottony white, he lets me go to sleep.

The next day I come out tight. Down 1–2 in the fourth, serving, I fall behind two break points. No, no, no. I fight back to deuce. I hold. The set is now tied. Having averted disaster, I’m suddenly loose, happy. It’s so typical in sports. You hang by a thread above a bottomless pit. You stare death in the face. Then your opponent, or life, spares you, and you feel so blessed that you play with abandon. I win the fourth set and the match. I’m in the final.

My first look is to Brad, who’s excitedly pointing to his watch and the digital play clock on the court.

Twenty-eight minutes. On the dot.

· · ·

MY OPPONENT IN THE FINAL is Andrei Medvedev, from Ukraine, which is not possible.

It’s simply not possible. Just months ago, in Monte Carlo, Brad and I bumped into Medvedev in a nightclub. He’d suffered a heartbreaking loss that day and was drinking to numb the pain.

We invited him to join us. He threw himself into a chair at our table and announced that he was quitting tennis.

I can’t play this fucking game anymore, he said. I’m old. The game has passed me by.

I talked him out of it.

How dare you, I said. Here I am, twenty-nine, injured, divorced, and you’re bitching about being washed up at twenty-four? Your future is bright.

My game is shit.

So? Fix it.

He asked me for tips, pointers. He asked me to analyze his game, just as I’d once asked Brad to analyze mine. And I was Brad-esque. I was brutally honest. I told Medvedev he had a huge serve, a big return, and a world-class backhand. His forehand was not his best shot, of course, that was no secret, but he could hide it, because he was big enough to push opponents around.

You’re a good mover! I shouted. Get back to the basics. Keep moving, slam your first serve, and rip the backhand up the line.

Ever since that night he’s followed my advice to the letter and he’s been on fire. He’s been winning consistently on the tour and dominating guys in this tournament. Each time we’ve bumped into each other in the locker room, or around Roland Garros, we’ve exchanged sly winks and waves.

I never once dreamed we were on a collision course.

So Gil was wrong. I haven’t been on a collision course with destiny, but with a fire-breathing dragon that I helped to build.

EVERYWHERE I GO, Parisians rush up and wish me luck. The tournament is the talk of the city. In restaurants and cafés, on the street, they yell my name, kiss my cheek, urge me onward. The story of my reception at the Springsteen concert has made the newspapers. The people, the press, are fascinated by my improbable run. Everyone can identify with it. They see something of themselves in my comeback, in my return from the dead.

It’s the night before the final and I’m sitting in my hotel room, watching TV. I shut it off. I go to the window. I feel sick. I think about this last year, these last eighteen months, these last eighteen years. Millions of balls, millions of decisions. I know this is my final chance to win the French Open, my final chance to win all four slams and complete the set, which means my final shot at redemption. The idea of losing scares me, and the thought of winning scares me nearly as much. Would I be grateful? Would I be worthy? Would I build on it—or squander it?

Also, Medvedev is never far from my thoughts. He has my game. I gave it to him. He even has my first name. Andrei. It’s going to be Andre versus Andrei. Me versus my doppelgänger.

Brad and Gil knock at the door.

Ready for dinner?

I hold the door open and tell them to come in for one second.

They stand just inside the door and watch me open the minibar. I pour myself a huge vodka. Brad’s mouth falls open as I down the drink in one gulp.

What the hell do you think—?

I’m sick nervous, Brad. I haven’t been able to eat a bite all day. I need to eat, and the only way I can eat is if I take the edge off.

Don’t worry, Gil says to Brad. He’s fine.

At least drink a big glass of water too, Brad says.

After dinner, when I get back to my room, I take a sleeping pill and slide into bed. I phone J.P. He says it’s early afternoon where he is.

What time is it there?

It’s late. It’s so very late.

How are you feeling?

Please, please, talk to me for a few minutes about anything but tennis.

Are you OK?

Anything but tennis.

OK. Well. Let’s see. How about I read you a poem? I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately.

Yeah. Good. Whatever.

He goes to his bookshelf, takes down a book. He reads softly.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I fall asleep without hanging up the phone.

GIL KNOCKS AT MY DOOR, dressed as if he’s meeting de Gaulle. He’s got the nice black sport coat, the creased black slacks—the black hat. And he’s wearing the necklace I gave him. I’m wearing the matching earring. Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

In the elevator he says: It’s going to be OK.

Yeah.

But it’s not OK. I know it during warm-ups. I’m soaked in sweat. I’m sweating as if I’m about to get married. I’m so overcome with nerves that my teeth are clicking. The sun is bright, which should make me happy, because the ball will be drier and lighter. But the warmth of the day is also making me sweat that much more.

As the match begins, I’m a sweat-soaked wreck. I’m making stupid mistakes, rookie mistakes, every kind of error and fuck-up you can make on a tennis court. It takes just nineteen minutes to lose the first set, 6–1. Medvedev, meanwhile, couldn’t look calmer. And why not?

He’s doing everything he’s supposed to do, everything I told him to do in Monte Carlo. He’s directing the pace, moving nimbly, ripping the backhand up the line whenever he chooses.

His game is cool, precise, pitiless. If I move in, if I try to take over a point by creeping forward, he hits a crushing backhand past me.

He’s wearing plaid shorts, as if we’re at the beach, and in fact he looks as if he’s frolicking on the Riviera. He’s fresh, vigorous, having a holiday. He could be out here for days and days and not get tired of this.

As the second set starts, dark clouds appear. Suddenly a light rain falls. Hundreds of umbrellas appear in the stands. Play is halted. Medvedev runs into the locker room, and I follow.

No one is in there. I walk up and down. Water drips from a faucet. The sound pings off the metal lockers. I sit on a bench, sweating, staring into an open locker.

In come Brad and Gil. Brad, wearing a white jacket and white hat, a stark contrast against Gil’s all-black ensemble, slams the door as hard as he can and yells, What’s going on?

He’s too good, Brad. He’s just too good. I can’t beat him. This fucker is six-five, serving bombs, never missing. He’s hurting me with his serve, he’s hurting me with his backhand, I can’t get back in the point on his serve. I don’t have this.

Brad says nothing. I think of Nick, standing in about the same spot, saying nothing to me during the rain delay when I lost to Courier eight years ago. Some things never change. Same elusive tournament, same queasy feeling, same callous reaction from my coach.

I yell at Brad: Are you kidding me? You’re going to pick this moment, of all moments, to decide not to talk? Of all times, this is the moment you’re finally going to shut the hell up?

He stares. Then starts screaming. Brad, who never raises his voice to anybody, comes apart.

What do you want me to say, Andre? What is it that you want me to say? You tell me he’s too good. How the fuck would you know? You can’t judge how he’s playing! You’re so confused out there, so blind with panic, I’m surprised you can even see him. Too good? You’re making him look good.

But—

Just start letting go. If you’re going to lose, at least lose on your own terms. Hit the fucking ball.

But—

And if you’re not sure where to hit it, here’s an idea. Just hit it to the same place he hits it.

If he hits a backhand crosscourt, you hit a backhand crosscourt. Just hit yours a little better.

You don’t have to be better than the whole fucking world, remember? You just have to be better than one guy. There isn’t one shot he has that you don’t have. Fuck his serve. His serve will break down when you start making your shots. Just hit. Just fucking hit. If we’re going to lose today, fine, I can live with it, but let’s lose on our terms. The last thirteen days, I’ve seen you lay it on the line. I’ve seen you rip it, under pressure, maim guys. So please stop feeling sorry for yourself, and stop telling me he’s too good, and for the love of God stop trying to be perfect! Just see the ball, hit the ball. Do you hear me, Andre? See the ball. Hit the ball. Make this guy deal with you. Make him feel you out there. You’re not moving. You’re not hitting. You may think you are, but trust me, you’re just standing there. If you’re going down, OK, go down, but go down with guns blazing. Always, always, always, go down with both guns blaaazing.

He opens a locker and slams it shut. The door flaps and clangs.

The referee appears.

We’re back on court, gentlemen.

Brad and Gil walk out of the locker room. I notice that as they slip through the door Gil gives Brad’s back a furtive pat.

I walk slowly onto the court. We have a brief warm-up, then resume play. I’ve forgotten the score. I have to look at the scoreboard to remind myself. Oh yes. I lead, 1–0, in the second set. But Medvedev is serving. I think again of the final against Courier in 1991, the rain delay that disrupted my rhythm. Maybe this will be payback. Tennis karma. Maybe, as that rain delay befuddled me, this rain delay will help me right myself.

But Medvedev is counting on his own Ukrainian karma. He picks up right where he left off, keeps the pressure on, forces me continually to retreat and play defense, which is not my game. The day is now heavily overcast, and damp, which seems to further strengthen Medvedev. He likes the pace slow. He’s an angry elephant, taking his sweet time, crushing me un-derfoot. In the first game after the delay, he serves the ball 120 miles an hour. Within seconds the score is even at 1–1.

Then he breaks me. Then he holds, then breaks me again, going on to win the second set with remarkable ease, 6–2.

In the third set, we hold serve through five games. Suddenly, inexplicably, for the first time in the match, I break him. I’m ahead, 4–2. I hear gasps and murmurs in the crowd.

But Medvedev breaks me right back. He holds and knots the set at 4–all.

The sun reappears. It’s shining brightly, and the clay begins to dry. The pace of play picks up considerably. I’m serving, and at 15–all we play a frantic point, which I win with a beautiful backhand volley. Now, at 30–15, I hear Brad telling me to see the ball, hit the ball. I let it fly. I cut loose my first serve with an extra loud grunt. Out. I hurry the second serve. Out again.

Double fault. 30–30.

So. There you have it. I’m still going to lose—Medvedev is now just six points from the championship—but I’m going to lose on Brad’s terms instead of mine.

I serve again. Out. I stubbornly refuse to take anything off the second serve. Out again.

Two double faults in a row.

Now it’s 30–40. Break point. I walk in circles, squeezing my eyes, on the verge of tears. I need to pull myself together. I toe the line, toss the ball into the air, and miss yet another serve. I’ve now missed five straight serves. I’m falling apart. I’m one missed serve away from Medvedev serving for the French Open.

He leans in, ready to obliterate this second serve. As a returner you’re always guessing about your opponent’s psyche, and Medvedev knows my psyche is in tatters after missing five serves in a row. He’s guessing, therefore, with a high degree of certainty, that I won’t have the stomach to be aggressive. He expects a nice soft kick serve. He thinks I have no other choice. He steps up, well inside the baseline, sending me a message that he anticipates a softie, and when he gets hold of it he’s going to ram it down my throat. He wears a look on his face that unmistakably says: Go ahead, bitch. Be aggressive. I dare you.

This moment is the crucial test for both of us. This is the turning point in the match, perhaps in both of our lives. It’s a test of wills, of heart, of manhood. I toss the ball in the air and refuse to back down. Contrary to Medvedev’s expectations, I serve hard and aggressive to his backhand. The ball takes a wicked skidding bounce. Medvedev stretches out and shovels the ball to the center of the court. I hit a forehand behind him. He gets there, hits a backhand at my feet. I bend, play an awkward forehand volley that lands on the line, he shovels it over the net, and then I tap it ever so lightly back over, where it dies, a huge winner for such a soft shot.

I go on to hold serve.

I have a bounce in my step as I walk to my chair. The crowd is going crazy. The momentum hasn’t shifted, but it’s twitched. That was Medvedev’s moment, and he missed it, and I think I can see on his face that he knows it.

Allez, Agassi! Allez!

One good game, I think. Play one good game, and you’ll have won a set, and then at least you can walk out of here holding your head up.

The clouds have blown away. The sun has dried the clay hard and the pace is now lightning fast. I catch Medvedev sneaking a worried look at the sky as we retake the court. He wants those rain clouds to return. He wants no part of this blazing sun. He’s starting to sweat.

His nostrils are flaring. He looks like a horse—like a dragon. You can beat the dragon. He falls behind love–40. I break him and win the third set.

Now we play on my terms. I move Medvedev side to side, hit the ball big, do everything Brad said to do. Medvedev is a step slower, notably distracted. He’s had too long to think about winning. He was five points away, five points, and it’s haunting him. He’s going over and over it in his mind. He’s telling himself, I was so close. I was there. The finish line! He’s living in the past, and I’m in the present. He’s thinking, I’m feeling. Don’t think, Andre. Hit harder.

In the fourth set, I break him again. Then we settle into a dogfight. We play good solid tennis, each of us sprinting and grunting and digging deep. The set could go either way. But I have one distinct advantage, a secret weapon I can pull out any time I need a point—my net play. Everything I do at the net is working, and it’s clearly troubling Medvedev, messing with his head. He becomes skittish, almost paranoid. If I merely pretend to rush the net, he flinches. I jump, he lunges.

I win the fourth set.

I break him early in the fifth set and go up 3–2. It’s happening. It’s turning. The thing that should have been mine in 1990 and 1991 and 1995 is coming around again. I’m up 5–3. He’s serving, 40–15. I have two match points. I need to win this thing right now, or I’m going to have to serve out the match, and I don’t want that. If I don’t win this thing right now, maybe I don’t win at all. If I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll be in Medvedev’s shoes, haunted by how close I was. If I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll have to think about the French Open in my old age, in my rocking chair, mumbling about Medvedev with a plaid blanket over my legs.

I’ve already obsessed about this tournament for the last ten years. I can’t bear the idea of obsessing about it for another eighty. After all this work and sweat, after this improbable comeback and this miraculous tournament, if I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll never be happy, truly happy, again. And Brad will have to be institutionalized. The finish line is close enough to kiss. I feel it pulling me.

Medvedev wins both match points. He staves off death. We’re back to deuce. I win the next point, however. Match point, again.

I yell at myself: Now. Now. Win this now.

But he wins the next point, then wins the game.

The changeover takes an eternity. I mop my face with a towel. I look at Brad, expecting him to be disconsolate, as I am. But his face is determined. He holds up four fingers. Four more points. Four points equals all four slams. Come on! Let’s go!

If I’m going to lose this match, if I’m doomed to live with withering regret, it won’t be because I didn’t do what Brad said. I hear his voice in my ear: Go back to the well.

Medvedev’s forehand is the well.

We walk onto the court. I’m going to hit everything to Medvedev’s forehand, and he knows I’m going to. On the first point he’s tight, tentative on a passing shot up the line. He puts the ball into the net.

He wins the next point, however, when I net my running forehand.

Suddenly I rediscover my serve. Out of nowhere I uncork a big first serve that he can’t handle. He hits a tired forehand that flies long. I hit my next first serve, even bigger, and he nets a forehand.

Championship point. Half the crowd is yelling my name, the other half is yelling, Ssssh. I hit another sizzling first serve, and when Medvedev steps to the side and takes a chicken-wing swing, I’m the second person to know that I’ve won the French Open. Brad is the first. Medvedev is third. The ball lands well beyond the baseline. Watching it fall is one of the great joys of my life.

I raise my arms and my racket falls on the clay. I’m sobbing. I’m rubbing my head. I’m terrified by how good this feels. Winning isn’t supposed to feel this good. Winning is never supposed to matter this much. But it does, it does, I can’t help it. I’m overjoyed, grateful to Brad, to Gil, to Paris—even to Brooke and Nick. Without Nick I wouldn’t be here. Without all the ups and downs with Brooke, even the misery of our final days, this wouldn’t be possible. I even reserve some gratitude for myself, for all the good and bad choices that led here.

I walk off the court, blowing kisses in all four directions, the most heartfelt gesture I can think of to express the gratitude pulsing through me, the emotion that feels like the source of all other emotions. I vow that I will do this from now on, win or lose, whenever I walk off a tennis court. I will blow kisses to the four corners of the earth, thanking everyone.

WE HAVE A SMALL PARTY at an Italian restaurant, Stressa, in downtown Paris, close to the Seine, close to the spot where I gave Brooke the tennis bracelet. I’m drinking champagne out of my trophy. Gil is drinking a Coke and he’s physically incapable of not smiling. Every now and then he puts his hand on mine—it’s as heavy as a dictionary—and says, You did it.

We did it, Gilly.

McEnroe is there. He hands me a phone and says: Someone wants to say hello.

Andre? Andre! Congratulations. I got such joy watching you tonight. I envy you.

Borg.

Envy? Why?

Doing something so few of us have done.

The sun is coming up when Brad and I walk back to the hotel. He puts his arm around me and says, The journey ended the right way.

Seconds after beating Andrei Medvedev to capture the 1999

French Open

How so?

He says, Usually in life the journey ends the wrong fucking way. But this one time it ended the right way.

I throw an arm around Brad. It’s one of the few things the prophet has gotten wrong all month. The journey is just beginning.

23

ON THE CONCORDE BACK TO NEW YORK, Brad tells me it’s destiny—destiny. He’s had a couple of beers.

You won the 1999 French Open on the men’s side, he says. And who should happen to have won it on the women’s side? Who? Tell me.

I smile.

That’s right. Steffi Graf. It’s destiny you end up together. Only two people in the history of the world have won all four slams and a gold medal—you and Steffi Graf. The Golden Slam.

It’s destiny that you two should be married.

In fact, he says, here’s my prediction. He takes the Concorde promotional literature from the seat pocket and scribbles on the upper right-hand corner: 2001—Steffi Agassi.

What the hell does that mean?

You guys will be married by 2001. And you’ll have your first kids together in 2002.

Brad, she has a boyfriend. Have you forgotten?

After the two weeks you’ve just had, you’re going to tell me anything is impossible?

Well, I’ll say this. Now that I’ve won the French Open, I do feel slightly more—I don’t know.

Worthy?

There. Now you’re talking.

I don’t believe people are destined to win tennis tournaments. Destined to come together, maybe, but not destined to hit more winners and aces than their opponent. Still, I’m reluctant to question anything Brad says. So, just in case, and because I like the way it looks, I tear off the corner of the Concorde program on which he’s written his latest prophecy and I put it in my pocket.

We spend the next five days on Fisher Island, recuperating and celebrating. Mostly the latter. The party keeps growing. Brad’s wife, Kimmie, flies in. J.P. and Joni fly in. Late at night we crank the stereo, listening over and over to Sinatra singing That’s Life, Kimmie and Joni dancing like go-go girls atop the table and bed.

Then I take to the grass courts at the hotel. I hit with Brad for several days, and we board a plane for London. Halfway across the Atlantic, I realize that we’re going to land on Steffi’s birthday. What are the chances? What if we bump into her? It would be nice to have something for her.

I look at Brad, sleeping. I know he’ll want to go straight from the airport to the practice courts at Wimbledon, so there won’t be time to stop at a stationery store. I should make some kind of birthday card now. But with what?

I notice that the airplane’s first-class menu is kind of cool. On the cover is a photo of a country church under a sliver of moon. I combine two covers into one card and along the inside I write: Dear Steffi, I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a happy birthday. How proud you must feel. Congratulations on what I know is only a sliver of what is out there for you.

I punch holes in the two menus. Now I just need something to hold them together. I ask the flight attendant if she has any string or ribbon. Maybe some tinsel? She gives me a bit of raffia coiled around the neck of a champagne bottle. I carefully weave the raffia through the holes. It feels as though I’m stringing a tennis racket.

When the card is finished I wake Brad and show him my handiwork.

Old World craftsmanship, I say.

He twirls a knuckle in his eye, nods approvingly. All you need is a look, he says. An opening. I tuck the card in my tennis bag and wait.

THERE ARE THREE LEVELS of practice courts at the Wimbledon practice site, Aorangi Park. It’s a tiered mountain, an Aztec temple of tennis courts. Brad and I hit on the middle tier for half an hour. When we’re done I pack my tennis bag, taking my time, as always. It’s hard to get reorganized after a transatlantic flight. I’m carefully arranging, rearranging, slipping my wet shirt into a plastic bag, when Brad begins punching my shoulder.

She’s coming, dude, she’s coming.

I look up like an Irish setter. If I had a tail it would be wagging. She’s thirty yards off, wearing tight-fitting blue warm-up pants. I notice for the first time that she walks slightly pigeon-toed, like me. Her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail and gleaming in the sun. It looks, yet again, like a halo.

I stand. She gives me the European double-cheek kiss.

Congratulations on the French, she says. I was so happy for you. I had tears in my eyes.

Me too.

She smiles.

Congratulations to you as well, I say. You paved the way. You warmed up the court for me.

Thank you.

Silence.

Luckily, no fans or photographers are around, so she seems relaxed, in no hurry. I’m oddly relaxed as well. Brad, however, is making small squeaking noises, like air being slowly let out of a balloon.

Oh, I say. Hey. I just remembered. I have a gift for you. I knew it was your birthday, so I made you a card. Happy Birthday.

She takes the card, looks at it for several seconds, then looks up, touched.

How did you know it was my birthday?

I just—know.

Thank you, she says. Really.

She walks away quickly.

THE NEXT DAY she’s coming off the practice courts just as Brad and I arrive. This time there are mobs of fans and reporters all around and she seems painfully self-conscious. She slows, gives us a half wave, and in a stage whisper says: How can I reach you?

I’ll give my number to Heinz.

OK.

Goodbye.

Bye.

After practice Perry and Brad and I sit around the house we’ve rented, debating when she’s going to call.

Soon, Brad says.

Very soon, Perry says.

The day passes without a call.

Another day passes.

I’m in agony. Wimbledon starts Monday, and I can’t sleep, can’t think. Sleeping pills are powerless against this kind of anxiety.

She had better call, Brad says, or you’re going to lose in the first round.

Saturday night, just after dinner, the phone rings.

Hello?

Hi. It’s Stefanie.

Stefanie?

Stefanie.

Stefanie—Graf?

Yes.

Oh. You go by Stefanie?

She explains that her mother called her Steffi years ago, and the press picked it up and it stuck. But she thinks of herself as Stefanie.

Stefanie it is, I say.

While talking to her I go skiing around the living room in my sweat socks. I schuss across the wood floors. Brad pleads with me to stop, to sit in a chair. He’s sure I’m going to break a leg or tweak a knee. I settle into an easy cross-country motion around the perimeter of the room. He smiles and tells Perry, We’re going to have a good tournament. It’s going to be a good Wimbledon.

Sssh, I tell him.

Then I lock myself in a back room.

Listen, I tell Stefanie, back in Key Biscayne you said you didn’t want any misunderstandings with me. Well, I don’t want any misunderstandings with you either. So I need to tell you, I just need to say before we go any further, that I think you are beautiful. I respect you, I admire you, and I would absolutely love to get to know you better. That’s my goal. That’s my only agenda. That’s where I am. Tell me this is possible. Tell me we can go to dinner.

No.

Please.

It’s not possible—not here.

Not here. OK. Can we go somewhere else?

No. I have a boyfriend.

I think: the boyfriend. Still. I’ve read about him. Race-car driver. The same boyfriend she’s had for six years. I try to come up with something clever to say, some way of telling her to open herself to the possibility of being with me. With the silence stretching to an uncomfortable length, the moment sliding away, all I can come up with is this: Six years is a long time.

Yes, she says. Yes it is.

If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. I’ve lived that.

She doesn’t say anything. But it’s the way she doesn’t say anything. I’ve struck a chord.

I continue. It can’t be exactly what you’re looking for. I mean, I don’t want to make any as-sumptions—but.

I hold my breath. She doesn’t contradict me.

I say, I don’t want to be disrespectful, or take liberties, but just, can you just, please, could you, maybe, I don’t know, just get to know me?

No.

Coffee?

I can’t be in public with you. It wouldn’t be right.

What about letters? Can I write you?

She laughs.

Can I send you stuff? Can I let you know me before you decide if you want to get to know me?

No.

Not even letters?

There is someone who reads my mail.

I see.

I knock my fist against my forehead. Think, Andre, think.

I say, OK, look, how about this. You’re playing your next tournament in San Francisco. I’ll be there practicing with Brad. You said you love San Francisco. Let’s meet in San Francisco.

This is—possible.

This is—possible?

I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.

So can I call you, or do you just want to call me?

Call me after this tournament, she says. Let’s both play, and call me when you finish the tournament.

She gives me her cell phone number. I write it on a paper napkin, kiss it, and put it in my tennis bag.

I REACH THE SEMIS AND PLAY RAFTER. I beat him in straight sets. I don’t have to wonder who’s waiting for me in the final. It’s Pete. As always, Pete. I stagger back to the house, thinking shower, food, sleep. The phone rings—I’m sure it’s Stefanie, wishing me luck against Pete, confirming our San Francisco date.

But it’s Brooke. She’s in London and asks to come by and see me.

As I hang up the phone and turn, Perry is there, inches from my face.

Andre, please tell me you said no. Please tell me you’re not letting that woman come here.

She’s coming. In the morning.

Before you play the final at Wimbledon?

It’ll be fine.

SHE ARRIVES AT TEN, wearing an enormous British hat with a wide, floppy brim and plastic flowers. I give her a quick tour of the house. We compare it to the houses she and I used to rent, back in the day. I ask if she’d like something to drink.

Do you have any tea?

Sure.

I hear Brad cough in the next room. I know what the cough means. It’s the morning of the final. An athlete should never change his routine on the morning of a final. I’ve had coffee every morning of the tournament. I should be having coffee now.

But I want to be a good host. I make a pot of tea, and we drink it at a table under the kitchen window. We talk without saying anything. I ask if she has anything special she wanted to tell me. She misses me, she says. She wanted to tell me that.

She sees a stack of magazines on the corner of the table, copies of a recent Sports Illustrated. I’m on the cover. The headline is Suddenly Andre. (I’m suddenly starting to hate that word, suddenly.) Tournament officials sent them over, I tell her. They want me to autograph copies for fans and Wimbledon officials and staffers.

Brooke picks up one of the magazines, stares at my photo. I watch her stare. I think of that day thirteen years ago, sitting with Perry in his bedroom, beneath hundreds of Sports Illustrated covers, dreaming about Brooke. Now here she is, I’m on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Perry is a former producer of her TV show, and we’re all barely speaking.

She reads the headline aloud. Suddenly Andre. She reads it again. Suddenly Andre?

She looks up. Oh, Andre.

What?

Oh, Andre. I’m so so sorry.

Why?

Here it is, your big moment, and they make it all about me.

· · ·

STEFANIE IS IN THE FINAL TOO. She loses to Lindsay Davenport. She had been playing mixed doubles as well, with McEnroe, and they had reached the semis, but she pulled out because of a bad hamstring. I’m in the locker room, getting dressed for my match with Pete, and McEnroe is telling a group of players that Stefanie left him in the lurch.

Can you believe this bitch? She asks to play mixed doubles with me and I fucking do it and then we’re in the semis and she backs out?

Brad puts a hand on my shoulder. Steady, champ.

I start strong against Pete. My mind is going in several directions at once—how dare Mac say those things about Stefanie? what was the deal with that hat Brooke was wearing?—but somehow I’m playing solid, crisp tennis. It’s 3–all in the first set, Pete serving at love–40.

Triple break point. I see Brad smiling, punching Perry, shouting, Come on! Let’s go! I let myself think about Borg, the last person to win the French and Wimbledon back to back, a feat now within my grasp.

I imagine Borg phoning me again to congratulate me. Andre? Andre, it’s me. Björn. I envy you.

Pete wakes me from my fantasy. Unreturnable serve. Unreturnable serve. Blur. Ace.

Game, Sampras.

I stare at Pete in shock. No one, living or dead, has ever served like that. No one in the history of the game could have returned those serves.

He takes me out in straight sets, finishing me off with two aces, two fiery exclamation points at the end of a seamless performance. It’s the first match I’ve lost in a slam in the last fourteen matches, a streak of dominance almost without precedence in my career. But history will record that it’s Pete’s sixth Wimbledon, and his twelfth slam overall, tying him for most all-time among men—as history should. Later, Pete tells me he never saw me hit the ball as hard and clean as I did those first six games, and it made him raise his game, amp up his second serve by twenty miles an hour.

In the locker room I need to take the standard drug test. I so badly want to piss and run back to the house and call Stefanie, but I can’t, because I have a bladder like a whale. It takes forever. Finally my bladder cooperates with my heart.

I drop my bag in the front hall and lunge for the phone as if it’s a drop shot. Fingers trembling, I dial. Straight to voice mail. I leave a message. Hi. It’s Andre. Tournament’s over. I lost to Pete. Sorry about your loss to Lindsay. Call me when you can.

I sit. I wait. A day passes. No call. Another day. No call.

I hold the phone in front of my face and tell it: Ring.

I dial her again, leave another message. Nothing.

I fly back to the West Coast. As I step off the plane, I check my messages. Nothing.

I fly to New York for a charity event. I check my voice mail every fifteen minutes. Nothing.

J.P. meets me in New York City. We hit the town. P. J. Clarke’s and Campagnola. A big ovation when we walk in. I see my friend Bo Dietl, the cop-turned-TV personality. He’s sitting at a long table with his crew: Mike the Russian, Shelly the Tailor, Al Tomatoes, Joey Pots and Pans. They insist we join them.

J.P. asks Joey Pots and Pans how he got his nickname.

I love to cook!

Later we all break up laughing when Joey’s cell phone rings. He flips it open and yells, Pots!

Bo says he’s having a party in the Hamptons this weekend. He insists that J.P. and I come. Pots is cooking, he says. Tell him your favorite food, whatever it is, he’ll cook it. It makes me think of those long-ago Thursday nights at Gil’s house.

I tell Bo we wouldn’t miss it.

THE CROWD AT BO’S HOUSE is like the cast of GoodFellas meets Forrest Gump. We sit around the pool, smoking cigars, drinking tequila. Every now and then I pull Stefanie’s number out of my pocket and study it. At one point I go into Bo’s house and call her from his landline, in case she’s screening my calls. Straight to voice mail.

Frustrated, restless, I drink three or four too many margaritas, then put my wallet and cell phone on a chair and do a cannonball into the pool, still dressed. Everyone follows. An hour later, I check my voicemail again. You have one new message.

For some reason my cell phone didn’t ring.

Hi, she says. I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I got very sick. My body broke down after Wimbledon. I had to pull out of San Francisco and come home to Germany. But I’m feeling better now. Call me back when you can.

She doesn’t leave her number, of course, because she already gave me her number.

I pat my pockets. Where did I put that number?

My heart stops. I remember writing it on a paper napkin, which was in my pocket when I jumped in the pool. Gingerly I reach into my pocket and pull out the napkin. It looks like Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup.

I remember that I phoned Stefanie once from Bo’s landline. I grab him by the arm and tell him that whatever it takes, whatever favors he has to call in, whoever he needs to grease or bully or kill, he must get the phone records for his house, with all the outgoing phone calls from today. And he must do it right now.

Done, Bo says.

He reaches out to a guy who knows a guy who has a friend who has a cousin who works for the phone company. An hour later we have the records. The list of calls made from the house looks like the Pittsburgh white pages. Bo yells at his crew: I’m going to start keeping an eye on you mutts! No wonder my frigging phone bill is so high!

But there’s the number. I write it down in six different places, including my hand. I dial Stefanie, and she answers on the third ring. I tell her what I’ve been through tracking her down. She laughs.

We’re both playing near Los Angeles soon. Can we meet there? Maybe?

After your tournament, she says. Yes.

I FLY TO LOS ANGELES AND PLAY WELL. I meet Pete in the final. I lose 7–6, 7–6, and don’t care. Running off the court, I’m the happiest guy in the world.

I shower, shave, dress. I grab my tennis bag and head for the door—and there’s Brooke.

She heard I was in town and decided to come down and see me play. She gives me a head-to-toe.

Wow, she says. You’re all dressed up. Got a big date?

Actually, yes.

Oh. With who?

I don’t answer.

Gil, she says, who does he have a date with?

Brooke, I think you should probably ask Andre that.

She stares at me. I sigh.

I’m going out with Stefanie Graf.

Stefanie?

Steffi.

I know we’re both thinking of the photo on the refrigerator door. I say, Please don’t tell anybody, Brooke. She’s a private person, and she doesn’t like any attention.

I won’t tell a soul.

Thank you.

You look nice.

Really?

Uh-huh.

Thanks.

I hoist my tennis bag. She walks me into the tunnel under the stadium, where players park their cars.

Hello, Lily, she says, putting a hand on the gleaming white hood of the Cadillac. The top is already down. I throw my bag on the backseat.

Have a nice time, Brooke says. She kisses me on the cheek.

I pull away slowly, glancing at Brooke in the rearview mirror. Once more I drive away from her in Lily. But I know this time will be the last, and that we’ll never speak again.

ON THE WAY TO SAN DIEGO, where Stefanie is playing, I phone J.P., who gives me a pep talk. Don’t try too hard, he says. Don’t try to be perfect. Be yourself.

I think I know how to follow that advice on a tennis court, but on a date, I’m at a loss.

Andre, he says, some people are thermometers, some are thermostats. You’re a thermostat. You don’t register the temperature in a room, you change it. So be confident, be yourself, take charge. Show her your essential self.

I think I can do that. Should I pick her up with the top up or down?

Up. Girls worry about their hair.

Don’t we all. But isn’t it cooler with the top down?

Her hair, Andre, her hair.

I keep the top down. I’d rather be cool than chivalrous.

STEFANIE IS RENTING A CONDO at a large resort. I find the resort but can’t find the condo, so I phone her for directions.

What kind of car are you driving?

A Cadillac as big as a Carnival cruise ship.

Ahh. Yes. I see you.

I look up. She’s standing on a tall grassy hill, waving.

She shouts: Wait there!

She comes running down the hill and makes as if to jump in my car.

Wait, I say. I have something I want to give you. Can I come up a minute?

Oh. Um.

Just a minute.

Reluctantly, she walks back up the hill. I drive around and park outside the front door of her condo.

I present her with a gift, a box of fancy candles I bought for her in Los Angeles. She seems to like them.

OK, she says. Ready?

I was hoping we could have a drink first.

A drink? Like what?

I don’t know. Wine?

She says she doesn’t have any wine.

We could order room service.

She sighs. She hands me a wine list and asks me to pick out a bottle.

When the room-service guy knocks at the door, she asks me to wait in the kitchen. She says she doesn’t want to be seen together. She feels uncomfortable about our date. Guilty.

She can imagine the room-service guy going back to tell his fellow room-service guys. She has a boyfriend, she reminds me.

But we’re just—

There’s no time to explain, she says. She pushes me into the kitchen.

I can hear the poor room-service guy, slightly enamored of Stefanie, who’s just as nervous, for very different reasons. She’s trying to rush him, he’s fumbling with the bottle, and of course he drops it. A 1989 Château Beychevelle.

When the guy leaves I help Stefanie pick up the pieces of broken glass.

I say, I think we’re off to a fine start, don’t you?

I’VE RESERVED A TABLE by the window at Georges on the Cove, overlooking the ocean. We both order chicken and vegetables on a bed of mashed potatoes. Stefanie eats faster than I and doesn’t touch her wine. I realize she’s not a foodie, not a three-course-meal-and-linger-over-coffee kind of girl. She’s also fidgeting, because someone she knows is sitting behind us.

We talk about my foundation. She’s fascinated to hear about the charter school I’m building; she has her own foundation, which gives psychological counseling to children scarred by war and violence in places like South Africa and Kosovo.

The subject of Brad, naturally, comes up. I tell her about his tremendous coaching skills, his odd people skills. We laugh about his efforts to make tonight happen. I don’t tell her about his prediction. I don’t ask about her boyfriend. I ask what she likes to do in her free time. She says she loves the ocean.

Would you like to go to the beach tomorrow?

I thought you were supposed to go to Canada.

I could take a red-eye tomorrow night.

She thinks.

OK.

After dinner I drop her at the resort. She gives me the double-cheek kiss, which is starting to feel like a karate self-defense move. She runs inside.

Driving away, I phone Brad. He’s already in Canada, and it’s hours later there. I woke him.

But he rouses himself when I tell him the date went well.

Come on, he says groggily, stifling a yawn. Let’s go!

SHE SPREADS A TOWEL ON THE SAND and pulls off her jeans. Underneath she’s wearing a white one-piece bathing suit. She walks out into the water, up to her knees. She stands with one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes from the sun, scanning the horizon.

She asks, You coming in?

I don’t know.

I’m wearing white tennis shorts. I didn’t think to bring a bathing suit, because I’m a desert kid. I don’t do well in the water. But I’ll swim to China right now if that’s what it takes. In just my tennis shorts I walk out to where Stefanie’s standing. She laughs at my swimwear, and pretends to be shocked that I’m going commando. I tell her I’ve been like this since the French Open, and I’m never going back.

We talk for the first time about tennis. When I tell her that I hate it, she turns to me with a look that says, Of course. Doesn’t everybody?

I talk about Gil. I ask about her conditioning. She mentions that she used to train with Germany’s Olympic track team.

What’s your best race?

Eight hundred meters.

Whoa. That’s a gut check. How fast can you run it?

She smiles shyly.

You don’t want to tell me?

No answer.

Come on. How fast are you?

She points down the beach, at a red balloon in the distance.

See that red dot down there?

Yeah.

You’d never beat me to that.

Really.

Really.

She smiles. Off she goes. I go tearing after her. It feels as if I’ve been chasing her all my life, and now I’m literally chasing her. At first it’s all I can do to keep pace, but near the finish line I close the gap. She reaches the red balloon two lengths ahead of me. She turns, and peals of her laughter carry back to me like streamers on the wind.

I’ve never been so happy to lose.

24

I’M IN CANADA, she’s in New York. I’m in Vegas, she’s in Los Angeles. We stay connected by phone. One night she asks for a rundown of my favorites. Song. Book. Food. Movie.

You’ve probably never heard of my favorite movie.

Tell me, she says.

It came out several years ago. It’s called Shadowlands. It’s about C. S. Lewis, the writer.

I hear a sound like the phone dropping.

That’s impossible, she says. That’s simply not possible. That’s my favorite movie.

It’s about committing, opening yourself to love.

Yes, she says. Yes, it is, I know.

We are like blocks of stone … blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.

Yes. Yes. Perfect.

PLAYING IN MONTREAL, in the semis against Kafelnikov, I can’t win a single point. He’s number two in the world and he puts a beating on me that causes people in the stands to cover their eyes. I tell myself: I have no say in the outcome of this match. I have no vote about what’s happening to me today. I’m not just being defeated, I’m being disenfranchised. But I’m OK. In the locker room I see Kafelnikov’s coach, Larry, leaning against the wall, smiling.

Larry, that was the sickest display of tennis I’ve ever seen. I’m going to make you a promise. Tell your boy he has a couple of beatings coming from me.

Later in the day I get a call from Stefanie. She’s at LAX.

I ask, How’d you do in your tournament?

I hurt myself.

Agh. I’m sorry.

Yes. That’s it. I’m done.

Where are you headed?

Back to Germany. I have some—some unfinished business.

I know what this means. She’s going to talk to her boyfriend, tell him about me, break things off. I feel a goofy smile spread across my face.

When she returns from Germany, she says, she’ll meet me in New York. We can spend time together before the 1999 U.S. Open. She mentions that she’ll need to call a news conference.

A news conference? For what?

My retirement.

Your—you’re retiring?

That’s what I just said. I’m done.

When you said done, I thought you meant done for the tournament! I didn’t know you meant—done.

I feel bereft, thinking of tennis without Stefanie Graf, the greatest women’s player of all time. I ask how it feels knowing she’ll never swing a racket in competition again. It’s the kind of question reporters ask me every day, but I can’t help myself. I want to know. I ask with a mixture of curiosity and envy.

She says it feels fine. She’s at peace, more than ready to be done.

I wonder if I’m ready. I meditate on my own tennis mortality. But a week later, I’m in Washington, D.C., playing Kafelnikov in the final. I beat him 7–6, 6–1, and afterward I give his coach, Larry, a look. A promise is a promise.

I realize I’m not done. I have promises yet to keep.

I’M ON THE VERGE of being number one again. This time it’s not my father’s goal, or Perry’s, or Brad’s, and I remind myself that it’s not mine either. It would be nice, that’s all. It would cap off the comeback. It would be a memorable milestone on the journey. I sprint up one side of Gil Hill, down the other. I’m training for the number one ranking, I tell Gil. And for the U.S. Open. And, in a funny way, for Stefanie.

I can’t wait for you to meet her, I say.

She arrives in New York and I whisk her upstate to a friend’s nineteenth-century farmhouse. It has fifteen hundred acres and several large stone fireplaces. In every room we can sit and stare into the flames and talk. I tell her I’m a firebug. Me too, she says. The leaves are just starting to turn, and each window frames a postcard view of red-gold woods and mountains. There is no one around for miles.

We spend our time walking, hiking, driving into nearby towns, puttering in antique shops.

At night we lie on the couch and watch the original Pink Panther. After half an hour we’re both laughing so hard at Peter Sellers that we have to stop the tape and catch our breath.

She leaves after three days. She has to go on holiday with her family. I beg her to come back for the final weekend of the U.S. Open. To be there for me. In my box. I wonder if I’m jinxing myself, presuming that I’ll be playing on the final weekend, but I don’t care.

She says she’ll try.

I reach the semis. I’m scheduled to play Kafelnikov. Stefanie phones and says she’ll come. But she won’t sit in my box. She’s not ready for that.

Well then, let me arrange a seat for you.

I’ll find my own seat, she says. Don’t worry about me. I know my way around that place.

I laugh. I guess so.

She watches from the upper deck, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. Of course the CBS cameras pick her out of the crowd, and McEnroe, doing commentary, says U.S. Open officials should be ashamed, not getting Steffi Graf a better seat. I beat Kafelnikov again. Tell Larry I said hello.

In the final I face Martin. I thought it would be Pete. I said publicly that I wanted Pete, but he pulled out of the tournament with a bad back. So it’s Martin, who’s been there, across the net, at so many critical junctures. At Wimbledon, in 1994, when I was still struggling to absorb Brad’s teachings, I lost to Martin in a nip-and-tuck five-setter. At the U.S. Open that same year, Lupica predicted that Martin would upend me in the semis, and I believed him, but still managed to beat Martin and win the tournament. In Stuttgart, in 1997, it was my appalling first-round loss to Martin that finally pushed Brad to the breaking point. Now it’s Martin who will be a test of my newfound maturity, who will show if the changes in me are fleeting or meaningful.

I break him in the very first game. The crowd is solidly behind me. Martin doesn’t hang his head, however, doesn’t lose any poise. He makes me work for the first set, then comes out stronger in the second, taking it in a tight tiebreak. He then wins the third set—an even tighter tiebreak. He leads two sets to one, a commanding lead at this tournament. No one ever comes back from such a deficit in the final here. It hasn’t happened in twenty-six years. I see in Martin’s eyes that he’s feeling it, and waiting for me to show the old cracks in my mental armor. He’s waiting for me to crumble, to revert to that jittery, emotional Andre he’s played so often in years past. But I neither fold nor yield. I win the fourth set, 6–3, and in the fifth set, with Martin looking spent, I’m on the balls of my feet. I win the set, 6–2, and walk away knowing I’m healed, I’m back, exulting that Stefanie was here to see it. I’ve made only five unforced errors in the final two sets. Not once all day have I lost my serve, the first five-setter of my career in which I haven’t lost my serve, and it comes as I capture my fifth slam. When I get back to Vegas I want to put five hundred on number five at a roulette table.

In the press room, one reporter asks why I think the New York crowd was pulling for me, cheering so loudly.

I wish I knew. But I take a guess: They’ve watched me grow up.

Of course fans everywhere have watched me grow up, but in New York their expectations were higher, which helped accelerate and validate my growth.

It’s the first time I’ve felt, or dared to say aloud, that I’m a grown-up.

STEFANIE FLIES WITH ME TO VEGAS. We do all the typical Vegasy things. We gamble, see a show, take in a boxing match with Brad and Kimmie. Oscar De La Hoya vs. Félix Trinid-ad—our first official public date. Our coming-out party. The next day a photo of us holding hands, kissing at ringside, appears in newspapers.

No turning back now, I tell her.

She stares, then slowly, thankfully, smiles.

She spends the weekend at my house. The weekend turns into a week. Then a month.

J.P. phones one day and asks how things are going.

I’ve never been better.

When are you going to see Stefanie again?

She’s still here.

What do you mean?

I cup my hand over my mouth and whisper: It’s still Date Three. She hasn’t left.

Well—what?

I assume she’ll leave eventually, go back to Germany, get her stuff, but we don’t talk about it, and I don’t want to bring it up. I don’t want to do anything to disrupt things.

The way you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker.

But soon it’s time for me to go back to Germany. To play Stuttgart. She wants to come along—she even agrees to sit in my box—and I’m delighted to have her there with me. After all, Stuttgart is an important city for us both. It’s where she turned pro, and where I re-turned pro. And yet we don’t talk about tennis on the flight. We talk kids. I tell her I want them—with her. A bold thing to say, but I can’t help myself. She takes my hand, tears in her eyes, then looks out the window.

On our last morning in Stuttgart, Stefanie needs to get up early, she has an early flight.

She kisses my forehead goodbye. I pull the pillow over my head and go back to sleep. When I wake an hour later and stumble to the bathroom, I see, lying in my open shaving kit, Stefanie’s birth control pills. As if to say: I won’t be needing these anymore.

I NOT ONLY REACH NUMBER ONE, I finish 1999 number one, the first time I’ve ever ended a year in the top slot. I snap Pete’s streak of six year-end finishes at number one. I then win the Paris Open and become the first man ever to win the Paris Open and the French Open in the same year. But at the ATP World Tour Championship I lose to Pete. Our twenty-eighth meeting. He leads 17–11. In slam finals he leads 3–1. Not much of a rivalry, sportswriters say, since Pete usually wins. I can’t argue, and I can’t be upset about Pete anymore.

I do the only thing I can do. I go to Gil’s house and burn muscles. I run up and down Gil Hill until I see visions. I run in the morning, I run in the evening. I run on Christmas Eve, Gil timing me with a stopwatch. He says I’m breathing so loudly when I reach the top of the hill that he can hear me from the bottom. I run until I lean over the sticker bushes and vomit. Finally he meets me at the summit and tells me to stop. We stand and look at all the Christmas lights in the distance, and then we watch for shooting stars.

I’m proud of you, he says. Being out here. Tonight. Christmas Eve. It says something.

I thank him for being out here with me. For giving up his Christmas Eve.

Must be so many other places that you’d rather be.

No place I’d rather be, he says.

As the 2000 Australian Open begins I beat Mariano Puerta in straight sets and he publicly praises my concentration. I feel it, I’m on a collision course with Pete again, and sure enough we face off in the semis. I’ve lost four of the last five times we’ve played, and he’s as good this day as ever. He hits me with thirty-seven aces, more than he’s ever notched against me.

But I’ve got Christmas Eve with Gil. Two points from losing the match I mount a furious comeback. I win the match and become the first man since Laver to reach the final in four straight slams.

In the final I face Kafelnikov again. It takes time to warm up. I’m still rubbery after my tussle with Pete. I lose the first set, but find my stride, my touch, and take him in four. My sixth slam. At the post-match news conference I thank Brad and Gil for teaching me that my best is good enough. A fan shouts out Stefanie’s name, asks what’s the story there.

Mind your business, I say, joking. I’d actually like to tell the world about it. And I will. Soon.

Gil tells the New York Times: I really believe we will never see Andre stop fighting ever again.

Brad tells the Washington Post: He’s got a 27–1 match record over the last four Grand Slams. Only Rod Laver, Don Budge, and Steffi Graf have ever done better.

Even Brad doesn’t fully realize how floored I am to be mentioned in that company.

25

STEFANIE TELLS ME her father is coming to Vegas for a visit. (Her parents are long divorced, and her mother, Heidi, already lives fifteen minutes from us.) Thus, the unavoidable moment has arrived. Our fathers are going to meet. The prospect unnerves us both.

Peter Graf is suave, sophisticated, well read. He likes to make jokes, lots of jokes, none of which I get, because his English is spotty. I want to like him, and I see that he wants me to like him, but I’m uneasy in his presence, because I know the history. He’s the German Mike Agassi. A former soccer player, a tennis fanatic, he started Stefanie playing before she was out of diapers. Unlike my father, however, Peter never stopped managing her career and her finances, and he spent two years in jail for tax evasion. The subject never comes up, but feels at times like the German Elefant in the room.

I should have expected it: the first thing Peter wants to see when he arrives in Nevada isn’t Hoover Dam or the Strip but my father’s ball machine. He’s heard all about it, and now he wants to study it up close. I drive him to my father’s house, and along the way he chatters amiably. But I don’t understand much. Is it German? No, it’s a hybrid of German and English and tennis. He’s asking questions about my father’s game. How often does my father play?

How well does he play? He’s trying to size up my father before we get there.

My father doesn’t do well with people who don’t speak perfect English, and he doesn’t do well with strangers, so I know we have two strikes on us as we walk through my parents’ front door. I’m relieved, however, to see that sport is a universal language, that these two men, both aficionados, both former athletes, know how to use their bodies to communicate, through swings and gestures and grunts. I tell my father that Peter would like to see the famous ball machine. My father is flattered. He takes us outside to his backyard court and wheels out the dragon. He revs the motor, raises the pedestal high. He’s talking nonstop, giving Peter a lecture, shouting to be heard above the dragon—blissfully unaware that Peter doesn’t understand a word.

Go stand there, my father tells me.

He hands me a racket, points me to the other side of the court, aims the machine at my head.

Demonstrate, he says.

I’m having shuddering, violent flashbacks, and only the thought of the tequila waiting for me back home keeps me functioning.

Peter positions himself behind me and watches while I hit.

Ahh, he says. Ja. Good.

My father cranks up the machine. He clicks the dial until the balls are coming almost in twos. My father must have added a gear to the dragon. I don’t remember balls ever coming this fast. I don’t have time to bring back my racket and hit the second ball. Peter scolds me for missing. He takes the racket from me, pushes me aside. This, he says, is the shot you should have had. You never had this shot. He shows me the famous Stefanie Slice, which he claims to have taught Stefanie. You need a quieter racket, he says. Like this.

My father is livid. In the first place, Peter isn’t listening to my father’s lecture. In the second place, Peter is interfering with my father’s star pupil. My father comes around the net, shouting: That slice is bullshit! If Stefanie had this shot, she would have been better off. He then demonstrates the two-handed backhand he taught me.

With this shot, my father says, Stefanie would have won thirty-two slams!

The two men can’t understand each other, and yet they’re managing a heated argument. I turn my back, concentrate on hitting balls. I train all my attention on the dragon. Occasionally I hear Peter mention my rivals, Pete and Rafter, and then my father responds with Stefanie’s nemeses, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport. My father then mentions boxing. He uses a boxing analogy, and Peter howls in protest.

I was a boxer too, Peter says—and I would have knocked you out.

You can say a lot of things to my father. But not that. Never that. I cringe, knowing what’s coming. I wheel just in time to see Stefanie’s sixty-three-year-old father take off his shirt and tell my sixty-nine-year-old father: Look at me. Look at the shape I’m in. I’m taller than you. I can keep you at bay with my jab.

My father says, You think so? Come on! You and me.

Peter is trash-talking in German, my father is trash-talking in Assyrian, and they’re both putting up their fists. They’re circling, feinting, bobbing and weaving, and just before one of them throws hands, I step in, push them apart.

My father shouts, This fucker is talking shit!

That may be, Pops, but—please.

They’re winded, sweating. My father’s eyes are dilated. Peter’s bare chest is beaded with sweat. They see, however, that I’m not going to let them mix it up, so they go to neutral corners. I turn off the dragon, and we all walk off the court.

At home, Stefanie kisses me and asks how it went.

I’ll tell you later, I say, reaching for the tequila.

I don’t know when a margarita has ever tasted so good.

AFTER PLAYING WELL IN THE DAVIS CUP, I lose early in Scottsdale, a tournament I typically own. I play poorly in Atlanta and pull a hamstring. I lose in the third round in Rome and realize, reluctantly, that this can’t go on. I can’t play every tournament. Approaching thirty years old, I must choose my battles more carefully.

Every other interview now is about the end. I tell reporters that my best tennis is ahead of me, and they smile, wincingly, as if they hope I’m kidding. I’ve never been more serious.

When the time comes to defend at the 2000 French Open, I walk into Roland Garros expecting to feel waves of nostalgia. But it’s all different—the place has been renovated.

They’ve added more seats. They’ve redone the locker rooms. I don’t like it. Not one bit. I wanted Roland Garros to stay the same forever. I want everything to stay the same. I hoped to walk on center court every year and conjure up 1999—when life changed. At the news conference after my win against Medvedev I told reporters that I could now leave tennis with no regrets. But one year later I realize that I was wrong. I will always have one regret—that I can’t go back and relive the 1999 French Open again and again.

In the second round I face Kucera. He always has my number. The mere sight of me fills him with a quart of adrenaline. Even when I see him in the locker room before our match, he looks as if he’s just been reminiscing about the time he beat me at the 1998 U.S. Open. He comes out playing superbly, running me ragged, and though I’m keeping pace, I develop blisters all over my right foot. I limp to the side and ask for an injury timeout. A trainer re-tapes my foot, but the real blister is on my brain. I don’t win another game from that point on.

I look up at my box. Stefanie has her head down. She’s never seen me lose like this.

Later I tell her that I don’t understand why I sometimes come apart—still. She gives me insights from her experience. Stop thinking, she says. Feeling is the thing. Feeling.

It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. It sounds like a sweeter, softer version of my father.

But when Stefanie says it, the words go in deeper.

We talk for days about thinking versus feeling. She says it’s one thing not to think, but you can’t then decide to feel. You can’t try to feel. You have to let yourself feel.

Other times, Stefanie knows there is nothing to be said. She touches my cheek and tilts her head and I see that she gets it—that she’s been there—and that’s enough. That’s exactly what I need.

We go to the 2000 Wimbledon. I take great pleasure in watching Stefanie explore London.

At last, she says, she can actually see this beautiful city, because she’s not looking at it through a haze of pressure and injuries. Tennis players travel as much as any athletes, but the stress and rigors of the game keep us from seeing. Now Stefanie gets to see everything.

She walks everywhere, exploring all the shops and parks. She drops into a famous pancake restaurant she’s always wanted to try. It serves 150 different kinds of pancake, and she samples just about every kind, without having to worry about feeling heavy-footed on the court.

True to form, I see nothing in London but my draw. With blinders on I fight my way to the semis. I face Rafter. He’s putting together a beautiful career. Two-time U.S. Open champ.

Former number one. Now they say he’s trying to come back from shoulder surgery, though he’s acing me left and right. When he’s not acing me he’s dancing in behind his serve, letting nothing past. I try lobbing him. I hit what feel like unreturnable shots as they leave my racket, but he always gets back in time. We play for three and a half hours, high-quality tennis, and it all comes down to the sixth game of the fifth set. Trying to put something extra on a second serve, I double-fault.

Break point.

I serve, he hits a crisp return, I net the ball.

I can’t break him back. He’s landing 74 percent of his first serves, and he first-serves his way into the final. He’s earned the right to play Pete for the championship. I wanted to play Pete with Stefanie watching, but it’s not to be. A year ago I beat Rafter here in the semis, when he felt the first twinges in his shoulder. Now he comes back and beats me in the semis with his shoulder fully healed. I like Rafter, and I like symmetry. I can’t argue with that story line.

Stefanie and I fly home. I need rest. Then the bad news starts pouring in. My sister Tami has gotten a diagnosis of breast cancer. Days later, my mother gets the same diagnosis. I give up my spot on the Olympic team going to Sydney. I want to spend as much time as possible with my family. I need to shut down for the year, until January at least.

My mother won’t hear of it.

Go, she says. Play. Do your job.

I try. I go to D.C., but play the way I always do when I can’t concentrate. Against Corretja I break three rackets in anger and lose in two spiritless sets.

At the 2000 U.S. Open, I’m the number one seed. The favorite to win it. On the eve of the tournament, I sit with Gil at the Lowell Hotel, feeling not favored, but fucked. It should be a happy time. I could win this thing, I could shock the world. And I don’t care.

Gil, why go on?

Maybe you shouldn’t.

Why do I feel—this way—the old way—again?

It’s a rhetorical question. Kacey is fully recovered, thriving, talking about college, but Gil never forgets what it’s like to have someone you love lying in a hospital bed. He knows what I’m saying without my saying it: Why must the people we love suffer? Why can’t life be perfect? Why, every day, somewhere on this earth, does someone have to lose?

You can’t play, Gil says, unless you feel inspired. That’s your nature. That’s always been your nature, since you were nineteen years old. But you can’t feel inspired unless the people around you are OK. I love you for that.

I’m letting people down if I don’t play. I’m letting my family down if I do.

He nods.

Why do tennis and life always seem opposed?

He says nothing.

We’ve done it, haven’t we? I mean, we’ve run the race—right? We’re at the end of this bullshit, no?

I can’t answer that, he says. I only know that there is still more inside you, and there is more inside me. If we walk away, fine. But we still have something left, and I think you promised yourself that you were going to see your game to the finish line.

On the first day of practice, hitting with Brad, I can’t make a serve to save my life. I walk off the court, and Brad knows not to ask. I go back to the hotel and lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling for two hours, knowing I’m not going to be in New York for long.

In the first round I play a Stanford student, Alex Kim, who’s sick with anxiety. I feel for him, but take him out in straight sets. In the second round I meet Clément. It’s a hot day and we both have a full sweat going before the first point. I start fine, break him, go ahead 3–1. All’s well. Then, suddenly, I’ve never played tennis before. In front of a packed house I disintegrate.

Again the sportswriters sound the old dirge. The end nears for Agassi. Gil tries to tell them what I’m going through. He says: Andre is fueled by his heart, emotions, and beliefs, and those he holds dearest to him. When all is not well you can see it in his actions.

On the way out of Arthur Ashe Stadium, a young girl says, I’m sorry you lost.

Oh honey, don’t be too sorry.

She smiles.

I HURRY HOME TO VEGAS, to spend time with my mother. But she’s untroubled, absorbed in her books and jigsaw puzzles, putting the rest of us to shame with her unshakable calm. I see that I’ve underestimated her through the years. I’ve mistaken her silence for weakness, acquiescence. I see that she is what my father made her, as we all are, and yet, beneath the surface, she’s so much more.

I also see that, in this perilous moment of her life, she’d like a little credit. I’ve always taken it for granted that my mother wanted to be taken for granted, that she wanted to blend into the woodwork. But what she wants right now is to be noticed, appreciated. She wants me to know that she’s stronger than I suspected. She’s getting her treatments, not complaining, and if she takes pride in this, if she wants me to be proud, she also wants me to know I’m made of the same stuff. She survived my father, as did I. She’ll survive this, and I will too.

Tami, getting treatment in Seattle, is also doing better. She’s had surgery, and before she starts chemotherapy she comes to Vegas to spend time with the family. She tells me she’s dreading the loss of her hair. I tell her I don’t know why. Losing my hair was the best thing that ever happened to me. She laughs.

She says maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of her hair before the cancer takes it.

An act of defiance, a seizing of control.

I like the sound of that, I say. I’ll help.

We arrange a barbecue at my house, and before everyone arrives we shut ourselves into a bathroom. With only Philly and Stefanie as witnesses, we hold a formal head-shaving ceremony. Tami wants me to do the honors. She hands me the electric shearer. I set the blade at 000, the tightest setting, and ask if she wants a mohawk first.

This might be your last chance to see how you look with one.

No, she says. Let’s just go for broke.

I shave her fast and close. She smiles like Elvis on the day he went into the Army. As her hair cascades to the floor, I tell her everything’s going to be great. You’re free now, Tami.

Free. Also, I tell her, at least your hair will grow back. With me and Philly—it’s gone forever, baby. She laughs and laughs, and it feels good to make my sister laugh when every day does its best to make her cry.

BY NOVEMBER 2000 MY FAMILY is sufficiently on the mend that I’m ready to train again.

In January we fly to Australia. I feel good when we land. I do love this place. I must have been an aborigine in another life. I always feel at home here. I always enjoy walking into Rod Laver Arena, playing under Laver’s name.

I bet Brad that I’m going to win the whole thing. I can feel it. And when I do, he will have to jump in the Yarra River—a fetid, polluted tributary that wends through Melbourne. I batter my way to the semis and face Rafter again. We play three hours of hammer-and-tong tennis, filled with endless I-grunt-you-grunt rallies. He’s ahead, two sets to one. Then he withers. The Australian heat. We’re both drenched with sweat, but he’s cramping. I win the next two sets.

In the final I face Clément, a grudge match four months after he knocked me out of the U.S. Open. I rarely leave the baseline. I make few mistakes, and those I do make, I put quickly behind me. While Clément is muttering to himself in French, I feel a serene calm. My mother’s son. I beat him in straight sets.

It’s my seventh slam, putting me tenth on the all-time list. I’m tied with McEnroe, Wilander, and others—one ahead of Becker and Edberg. Wilander and I are the only ones to win three Australian Opens in the open era. At the moment, however, all I care about is seeing Brad do the backstroke in the Yarra, then getting home to Stefanie.

WE SPEND THE EARLY PART of 2001 nesting at Bachelor Pad II, converting it from bachelor pad to proper home. We shop for furniture that we both like. We give small dinner parties. We talk late into the night about the future. She buys me a kitchen chalkboard, for honey-do lists, but I convert it into an Appreciation Board. I hang the board on the kitchen wall and promise Stefanie that every evening I’ll write something about my love for her—and the next evening I’ll wipe the board clean and write something new. I also buy a crate of 1989

Beychevelle and we promise to share a bottle every year on the anniversary of our first date.

At Indian Wells I reach the final and face Pete. I beat him, and in the locker room after the match he tells me he’s going to marry Bridgette Wilson, the actress he’s been dating.

I’m still allergic to actress, I say.

He laughs, but I’m not kidding.

He tells me he met her on the set of a movie—Love Stinks.

I laugh, but he’s not kidding.

There is much I want to say to Pete, about marriage, about actresses, but I can’t. Ours isn’t that kind of relationship. There is much I’d like to ask him—about how he stays so focused, about whether or not he regrets devoting so much of his life to tennis. Our different personalities, our ongoing rivalry, precludes such intimacy. I realize that despite the effect we’ve had on each other, despite our quasi-friendship, we’re strangers, and may always be. I wish him the best, and I mean it. To my mind, being with the right woman is true happiness.

After all the time I’ve spent putting together my so-called team, the only thing I want now is to feel like a valued member of Stefanie’s team. I hope he feels the same way about his fiancée.

I hope he cares as much about his place in her heart as he seems to care about his place in history. I wish I could tell him so.

An hour after the tournament, Stefanie and I give a tennis lesson. Wayne Gretzky bought us at a charity auction, and he wants us to teach his kids. We have fun with the Gretzkys.

Then, as darkness falls, we drive slowly back to Los Angeles. Along the way we talk about how cute the kids were. I think of the Costner kids.

Stefanie squints out the window, then at me. She says: I think I’m late.

What for?

Late.

Oh. You mean—oh!

We stop at several drugstores, buy every kind of pregnancy test on the shelves, then hole up at the Hotel Bel-Air. Stefanie goes into the bathroom, and when she comes out her expression is unreadable. She hands me the stick.

Blue.

What does blue mean?

I think it means—you know.

A boy?

I think it means I’m pregnant.

She does the test again. And again. Blue every time.

It’s what we both wanted, and she’s delighted, but frightened too. So many changes. What will happen to her body? We only have a few hours left together before I catch a red-eye to Miami and she flies to Germany. We go out to dinner, to Matsuhisa. We sit at the sushi bar, holding hands, telling each other it’s going to be fantastic. I don’t realize until later that this is the same restaurant where it all unraveled with Brooke. Just like tennis. The same court on which you suffer your bloodiest defeat can become the scene of your sweetest triumph.

After we’re done eating and crying and celebrating, I say: I guess we should get married.

Her eyes widen. I guess so.

There will be no hoopla, we decide. No church. No cake. No dress. We’ll do it on a free day during a lull in the tennis season.

I SIT DOWN FOR AN HOUR-LONG INTERVIEW with Charlie Rose, the genial TV host, during which I lie through my teeth.

I don’t mean to lie, but each question Rose asks seems to come with an implied answer, an answer he’s ready and eager to hear.

Did you love tennis at an early age?

Yes.

You loved the game.

I would sleep with a racket.

You look back on what your father did for you, do you say now: I’m glad that he gave me those early things that made me tough?

I’m definitely glad that I play tennis. I’m glad my dad started me in tennis.

I sound as though I’ve been hypnotized, or brainwashed, which isn’t new. I say the same things I’ve said before, the same things I’ve mouthed during countless news conferences and interviews and cocktail-party conversations. Are they lies if I’ve come to partially believe them? Are they lies if, through sheer repetition, they’ve taken on a veneer of truth?

This time, however, the lies sound and feel different. They hang in the air, they have a bitter aftertaste. When the interview is over I feel a vague queasiness. Not guilt so much, but regret. A sense of missed opportunity. I wonder what would have happened, what Rose might have done or said, how much more we might have enjoyed the hour, if I’d leveled with him, and with myself. Actually, Charlie, I hate tennis.

The queasiness stays with me for days. It gets worse when the interview airs. I promise myself that one day I’ll look an interviewer of Rose’s stature right in the eye and tell him the unvarnished truth.

AT THE 2001 FRENCH OPEN, an invisible person is in my box. Stefanie is four months along, and the presence of our unborn child gives me the legs of a teenager. I reach the round of sixteen and play Squillari, with whom I have such history. It feels as we walk onto the court as if we have more history than France has with England. The sight of Squillari takes me straight back to 1999—one of the toughest matches of my career. One of the turning points. If he’d beaten me that day, two years ago, I don’t know if I’d be here. I don’t know if Stefanie would be here—and therefore our unborn child wouldn’t be here.

Inspired by these thoughts, I’m locked in. As the match wears on, I grow fresher, more focused. My concentration is unbreakable. An unruly fan yells something obscene about me. I laugh. I take a nasty fall, twisting and cutting my knee. I shrug it off. Nothing can deter me—least of all Squillari. Gradually I lose all awareness of him. I’m out here by myself, more so than usual.

In the quarters I play Sébastien Grosjean, from France. I breeze through the first set, losing only one game, then Grosjean taps into some hidden reservoir of faith that he can win.

Now our self-confidence is equal, but his shot-making is superior. He breaks me to go up 2–0, then breaks me again and wins the second set as easily as I won the first.

In the third set he breaks me right away, winning the game with a pretty lob. Then he holds, then breaks me again. I’m done for.

In the fourth set I have chances to break his serve, but I can’t capitalize. I hit a backhand that’s weak, unworthy of me, and as I watch it sail wide I know I’m running out of time. He’s serving for the match, I’m holding on by my fingernails, and then I net a forehand. Match point. He closes me out with an ace.

Afterward, reporters ask if my concentration was broken by the arrival of President Bill Clinton. Of all the reasons I’ve ever heard, and offered, for losing a match, even I couldn’t come up with one that lame. I didn’t even know Clinton was there, I tell them. I had other things on my mind. Other invisible spectators.

I BRING STEFANIE TO GIL’S GYM, under the guise of a workout. She’s beaming, because she knows why we’re really here.

Gil asks Stefanie if she’s feeling all right, if she’d like something to drink, if she’d like to sit.

He guides her to an exercise cycle and she mounts sidesaddle. She studies the shelf Gil has built along one wall, to hold the trophies from my slams, including those I’ve had replaced since my post-Friends tantrum.

I fiddle with a stretching cord and then say: So, uhh, Gil, listen. We’ve picked out a name for our son.

Aw. What is it?

Jaden.

I like that, Gil says, smiling, nodding. Yes I do. I like that.

And—we also think we’ve got the perfect middle name.

What’s that?

Gil.

He stares.

I say, Jaden Gil Agassi. If he grows up to be half the man you are, he’ll be phenomenally successful, and if I can be half the father you’ve been to me, I’ll have surpassed my own standards.

Stefanie is crying. My eyes are filled with tears. Gil is standing ten feet away, in front of the leg extension machine. He has his trademark pencil behind his ear, his glasses on the end of his nose, his da Vinci notebook open. He reaches me in three steps and folds me in his arms.

I feel his necklace against my cheek. Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

I’M CLOSE TO BEATING RAFTER at the 2001 Wimbledon. Fifth set, serving for the match, two points from winning, I net a tentative forehand. On the next point I miss an easy backhand. He’s broken back. Now it’s he who thinks he’s close to beating me.

I shout, Motherfucker.

A lineswoman promptly reports me to the umpire.

I get an obscenity warning.

Now I can think of nothing but this busybody lineswoman. I lose the set, 8–6, and the match. It feels disappointing and unimportant at the same time.

Along with Stefanie’s health and our budding family, my thoughts are never far from my school, which is due to open this fall, with two hundred students, grades three through five—though we have plans to expand quickly to include kindergarten through twelfth grade.

In two years we’ll have the middle school built. In another two years, the high school.

I love our concepts, our designs, but I’m particularly proud of our commitment to putting money behind our ideas. Lots of money. Perry and I were horrified to learn that Nevada spends less than almost any other state on education—$6,800 per pupil, as compared with the national average of nearly $8,600. Thus, at my school we’ve vowed to make up the difference, and then some. Through a mix of state funding and private donors, we’re going to invest heavily in kids and thereby prove that in education, as in all things, you get what you pay for.

We’re also going to keep our kids in school more hours each day—eight instead of Nevada’s customary six. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that time and practice equal achieve-ment. Further, we’re going to insist that parents become intimately involved with the school.

At least one parent per child will be required to spend twelve hours a month volunteering as a student aide in the classrooms or a monitor on school trips. We want parents to feel like shareholders. We want them fully committed and responsible for getting their children into college.

Many days, when I feel run-down or low, I drive to the neighborhood and watch the school take shape. Of all my contradictions, this is the most amazing, and the most amusing—a boy who despised and feared school becomes a man inspired and reenergized by the sight of his own school being built.

I can’t be there on opening day, however. I’m playing in the 2001 U.S. Open. I’m playing for the school, therefore playing my best. I burn through four rounds and meet Pete in the quarters. From the moment we come out of the tunnel, we know this will be our fiercest battle yet. We just know. It’s the thirty-second time we’ve played, he leads 17–14, and each of us wears an unusually grim game face. Right here, right now, this one will decide the rivalry.

Winner take all.

Pete is supposed to be at half speed. He hasn’t won a slam in fourteen months. He’s been balky, and openly talking retirement. But all of that is irrelevant, because he’s playing me. Still, I win the first set in a tiebreak, and now I feel good about my chances. I have a 49–1 record at this tournament when I win the first set.

Someone please remind Pete of the stats. He wins the second set in a tiebreak.

The third set also goes to a tiebreak. I make several foolish mistakes. Fatigue. He wins the third set.

In the fourth set we have several epic rallies. We go to still another tiebreak. We’ve played three hours, and neither of us has yet broken the other’s serve. It’s after midnight. The fans—23,000 plus—rise. They won’t let us start the fourth tiebreak. Stomping and clapping, they’re staging their own tiebreak. Before we press on they want to say thanks.

I’m moved. I see that Pete is moved. But I can’t think about the fans. I can’t let myself think about anything but reaching the sanctuary of a fifth set.

Pete knows that the advantage tips in my direction if this goes five sets. He knows that he needs to play a perfect tiebreak to prevent a fifth set. And so he does. A night of flawless tennis ends with my forehand in the net.

Pete screams.

I actually feel my pulse decrease. I don’t feel bad. I try to feel bad, but I can’t. I wonder if I’m growing accustomed to losing to Pete in big matches, or simply growing content with my career and life. Whatever the case, I put my hand on Pete’s shoulder and wish him well, and though it doesn’t feel like goodbye, it feels like a rehearsal for a goodbye that can’t be far off.

IN OCTOBER 2001, three days before Stefanie is due to give birth, we invite our mothers and a Nevada judge to the house.

I love watching Stefanie with my mother. The two shy women in my life. Stefanie often brings her a couple of new jigsaw puzzles. And I adore Stefanie’s mother, Heidi. She looks like Stefanie, so she had me at guten tag. Stefanie and I, barefoot and wearing jeans, stand before the judge in the courtyard. For wedding bands we use twists of old raffia Stefanie found in a drawer—the same stuff I used to decorate her first birthday card. Neither of us notices the coincidence until later.

My father insists he’s not the least bit slighted by not getting an invite. He doesn’t want an invite. The last thing he wants to do is attend a wedding. He doesn’t like weddings. (He walked out in the middle of my first.) He doesn’t care where or when or how I make Stefanie my wife, he says, so long as I do it. She’s the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, he says. What’s not to like?

The judge runs through his legal rigmarole, and Stefanie and I are just about to say I do, when a team of landscapers arrive. I run outside and ask them to please turn off their lawnmowers and leaf blowers for five minutes so that we can get married. They apologize. One holds a finger over his lips.

By the power vested in me, the judge says, and at last, at long last, with two mothers and three landscapers looking on, Steffi Graf becomes Stefanie Agassi.

26

A SEASON OF BIRTH AND REBIRTH. Weeks after my school opens, my son arrives. In the delivery room, when the doctor hands me Jaden Gil, I feel bewildered. I love him so much that my heart splits open, like something overripe. I can’t wait to get to know him, and yet, and yet. I also wonder, Just who is this beautiful intruder? Are Stefanie and I ready for a perfect stranger in the house? I’m a stranger to myself—what will I be to my son? Will he like me?

We bring Jaden home, and I spend hours staring at him. I ask him who he is, where he came from, what he’ll be. I ask myself how I can be everything to him that I needed and never had. I want to retire, immediately, spend all my time with him. But now more than ever I need to play. For him, his future, and my other children at my school.

My first match as a father is a win against Rafter at the Tennis Masters Series tournament in Sydney. I tell reporters afterward that I doubt I’ll be able to do this long enough that my new son will get to see me play, but it sure is a nice dream.

Then I pull out of the 2002 Australian Open. My wrist is throbbing, and I can’t compete.

Brad is frustrated. I wouldn’t expect anything less. But this time he has trouble brushing aside his frustration. This time is different.

Days later he says we need to talk. We meet for coffee, and he lays it out.

We’ve had a great run, Andre, but we’ve gone as far as we can go. We’re growing stagnant. Creatively. I’ve burned through my bag of tricks, buddy.

But—

We’ve had eight years, we could go on a few more, but you’re thirty-two. You have a new family, new interests. It might not be such a bad idea to find a new voice for your home stretch. Someone to re-motivate you.

After beating Pete at Indian Wells, I celebrate with Brad, not knowing it will be one of our last tournament victories together.

He pauses. He looks at me, then looks away. Bottom line, he says. We’re so close, my worst fear is that we get into an argument as the end approaches, and it carries over.

I think: That could never happen, but better safe than sorry.

We hug.

As he walks out the door I feel the kind of melancholy you feel on a Sunday night after an idyllic weekend. I know Brad does too. It might not be the right way to end our journey, but it’s the best way possible.

I CLOSE MY EYES and try to picture myself with someone new. The first face I see is Darren Cahill. He’s just finished a brilliant span coaching Lleyton Hewitt, who’s ranked number one, and among the best shot selectors in the history of tennis, and a great deal of the credit must go to Darren. Also, I recently bumped into Darren down in Sydney and we had a long talk about fatherhood. It was a bonding moment. Darren, a fellow new father, turned me on to a book about getting infants to sleep. He swore by this book and said his son is known on tour as the baby who sleeps like a drunkard.

I’ve always liked Darren. I like his easygoing style. I find his Aussie accent soothing. It almost puts me to sleep. I read the book he recommended and phoned Stefanie from Australia to read her passages. It worked. Now I dial him and tell him I’ve parted from Brad. I ask if he has any interest in the job.

He says he’s flattered, but he’s on the verge of signing to coach Safin. He’ll think about it, though, and get back to me.

No problem, I say. Take your time.

I call him back in half an hour. I ask him, What the hell is there to think about? You can’t coach Safin. He’s a loose cannon. You’ve got to work with me. It feels right. I promise you, Darren, I have game left. I’m not done. I’m focused—I just need someone to help me keep the focus.

OK, he says, laughing. OK, mate.

He never once mentions money.

STEFANIE AND JADEN COME WITH ME to Key Biscayne. It’s April 2002, days before my thirty-second birthday, and the tournament is crawling with players half my age, young Turks like Andy Roddick, the next next savior of American tennis, poor bastard. Also, there’s a hot new wunderkind from Switzerland named Roger Federer.

I’d like to win this tournament for my wife and six-month-old son, and yet I don’t worry about losing, don’t care if I lose, because of them. Each night, within minutes of coming home from the courts, as I’m cradling Jaden and cuddling Stefanie, I can barely recall if I won or lost. Tennis fades as quickly as the daylight. I almost imagine that the calluses on my playing hand are disappearing, the inflamed nerves in my back cooling and mending. I’m a father first, a tennis player second, and this evolution happens without my being aware.

One morning Stefanie goes off to buy groceries and get in a fast workout. She dares to leave me alone with Jaden. My first time flying solo.

You two going to be OK? she asks.

Of course.

I sit Jaden on the bathroom counter, lean him against the mirror, let him play with my toothbrush while I get ready. He likes to suck on the toothbrush while watching me shave my head with the electric shearers.

I ask him, What do you think of your bald daddy?

He smiles.

You know, son, I was once like you: long hair flowing in every direction. You’re not fooling anyone with that comb-over.

He smiles wider, no idea what I’m saying, of course.

I measure his hair with my fingers.

Actually, you look a little ratty there, buddy. You could use a clean-up.

I put a different attachment on the shearer, the attachment for trimming. When I run the shearer across Jaden’s little head, however, it leaves a bright stripe of scalp down the middle, as white as a baseline.

Wrong attachment.

Stefanie will murder me. I need to even this boy’s hair out before she gets home. But in my frantic attempt to even out the hair, I make it shorter. Before I know what’s happened, my son is balder than I. He looks like Mini-Me.

When Stefanie comes through the door she stops in her tracks and stares, saucer-eyed.

What the—? Andre, she says, what on earth is the matter with you? I leave you alone for forty-five minutes and you shave the baby?

Then she lets fly a burst of histrionic German.

I tell her it was an accident. The wrong attachment. I beg her forgiveness.

I know, I say, it looks like I did this on purpose. I know I’m always joking about wanting to shave the world. But honest, Stefanie, this was a mistake.

I try to remind her of that old wives’ tale, that if you shave a child’s head the hair will grow back faster and thicker, but she holds up a hand and starts laughing. She’s bent over laughing. Now Jaden is laughing at Mommy laughing. Now we’re all giggling, rubbing Jaden’s head and mine, joking that the only one left is Stefanie, and she’d better sleep with one eye open.

I’m laughing too hard to speak, and days later, in the final of Key Biscayne, I beat Federer. It’s a good win. He’s as hot as anyone on tour. He came into this tournament with twenty-three wins so far this year.

It’s my fifty-first tournament victory, my seven hundredth victory overall. And yet I have no doubt I’ll remember this tournament less for beating Federer than for that one belly laugh. I wonder if the laugh had something to do with the win. It’s easier to be free and loose, to be yourself, after laughing with the ones you love. The right attachments.

I FALL INTO A NICE GROOVE with Darren in early 2002. We speak the same language, see the world in similar colors. Then he cements my trust, my unwavering confidence, by daring to fuss with my racket strings—and improving them.

I’ve always played with ProBlend, a string that’s half Kevlar, half nylon. You can reel in an eight-hundred-pound marlin with ProBlend. It never breaks, never forgives, but also never generates spin. It’s like hitting the ball with a garbage can lid. People talk about the game changing, about players growing more powerful, and rackets getting bigger, but the most dramatic change in recent years is the strings. The advent of a new elastic polyester string, which creates vicious topspin, has turned average players into greats, and greats into legends.

Still, I’ve always been reluctant to change. Now Darren urges me to try. We’re in Italy, at the Italian Open. I’ve just played Nicolas Kiefer, from Germany, in the first round. I’ve beaten him, 6–3, 6–2, and I’m telling Darren that I should have lost. I played lousy. I have no confidence on this dirt, I tell him. The clay game has passed me by.

Give the new string a go, mate.

I frown. I’m skeptical. I tried changing my racket once. It wasn’t pretty.

He puts the string on one of my rackets and says again, Just try.

In a practice session I don’t miss a ball for two hours. Then I don’t miss a ball for the rest of the tournament. I’ve never won the Italian Open before, but I win it now, because of Darren and his miracle string.

I SUDDENLY LOOK FORWARD TO the 2002 French Open. I’m excited, eager for the fight, and guardedly optimistic. I’m coming off a win, Jaden is sleeping a bit more, and I have a new weapon. In the fourth round I’m down two sets and a break to a wild card, a Frenchman named Paul-Henri Mathieu. He’s twenty, but he’s not in the shape I’m in. There’s no clock in tennis, son. I can be out here all day.

Down comes the rain. I sit in the locker room and reminisce about Brad yelling at me in 1999. I hear his tirade, word for word. When we walk back onto the court I’m smiling. I’m up 40–love, and Mathieu breaks me. I don’t care. I simply break back. In the fifth set he goes up, 3–1. Again I refuse to lose.

If it had been anyone but Agassi, Mathieu tells reporters afterward, I would have won.

Next I face Juan Carlos Ferrero, from Spain. Again it rains; this time I ask that the match be halted for the night. Ferrero is ahead, and he doesn’t want to stop. He gets surly when officials grant my request and suspend the match. The next day he takes his surliness out on me. I have a small opportunity in the third set, but he quickly closes it. He wins the set, and I can see his confidence rising off him like steam as he closes me out.

I feel peaceful walking with Darren off the court. I like the way I played. I made mistakes, my game sprang leaks, but I know we’ll work to patch them. My back is sore, but mostly from stooping to help Jaden walk. A wonderful soreness.

Weeks later we go to the 2002 Wimbledon, and my great new attitude abandons me, because my new string undoes me. On grass my newly augmented topspin makes the ball sit up like a helium balloon. In the second round I play Paradorn Srichaphan, from Thailand. He’s good, but not this good. He’s crushing everything I hit. He’s ranked number sixty-seven, and I think it’s impossible that he’ll beat me, and then he breaks me in the first set.

I try everything to get back on track. Nothing works. My ball is a cream puff, and Srichaphan devours it. I’ve never seen an opponent’s eyes grow quite so large as Srichaphan’s when he tees up my forehand. He’s swinging from his heels, and my only conscious, coherent thought is: I wish I could swing from my heels and be rewarded. How can I let everyone in this stadium know that this isn’t me, this isn’t my fault? It’s the strings. In the second set I make adjustments, fight back, play well, but Srichaphan is supremely confident.

He thinks it’s his day, and when you think it’s your day, it usually is. He hits a wild shot that magically catches a piece of the back line, then wins a tiebreak, going up two sets. In the third set I surrender peacefully.

It’s cold comfort that, the same day, Pete loses.

Darren and I spend the next two days experimenting with different combinations of strings.

I tell him I can’t continue with his new polyester, and yet he’s ruined me for the old string. If I have to go back to ProBlend, I say, I won’t play tennis anymore.

He looks grim. After being my coach for six months, he’s made one tiny adjustment to my strings, and he may have inadvertently hastened my retirement. He promises that he’ll do everything in his power to find a combination of strings that’s just right.

Find something, I tell him, that lets me swing from my heels and get rewarded. Like Srichaphan. Make me like Srichaphan.

Done, mate.

He works night and day and comes up with a combination he likes. We go to Los Angeles, and it’s perfection. I win the Mercedes-Benz Cup.

We go to Cincinnati and I play well, just not well enough to win. Then in D.C. I beat Enqv-ist, always a tough matchup for me. I then face another kid who’s supposed to be the next big thing—twenty-two-year-old James Blake. He plays pretty, graceful tennis, and I’m not in his league, not today. He’s simply younger, faster, a better athlete. He also thinks enough of my history, my accomplishments, to bring his A game. I like that he comes out loaded for bear.

It’s flattering, even though it means I have no chance. The loss is nothing I can blame on my strings.

I go to the 2002 U.S. Open unsure what to expect from myself. I sail through the early rounds, and in the quarters I face Max Mirnyi, a Belarusian from Minsk. They call him the Beast, and it’s an understatement. He’s six foot five and hits a serve that’s among the scariest I’ve ever faced. It has a burning yellow tail, like a comet, as it arcs high above the net and then swoops down upon you. I have no answer for that serve. He wins the first set with beastly ease.

In the second set, however, Mirnyi makes several unforced errors, giving me a boost, a bit of momentum. I start to see his first serve a little better. We play high-quality tennis all the way to the finish, and when his last forehand flies long, I can’t believe it. I’m in the semis.

For my efforts I win a date with Hewitt, the number one seed, the winner of this year’s Wimbledon. More germane, he’s Darren’s former pupil. That Darren coached Hewitt for years adds an extra level of intensity and pressure. Darren wants me to beat Hewitt; I want to beat Hewitt for Darren. But in the first set I quickly fall behind, 0–3. I have all this information in my head about Hewitt, data from Darren and from past experience, but it takes a while to sort through the data and solve him. When I do, everything quickly changes. I storm back and win the first set, 6–4. I see the pilot light in Hewitt’s eyes go out. I win the second set. He rallies, wins the third. In the fourth set he suddenly can’t make a first serve, and I’m able to pounce on his second. Jesus, I’m in the final.

Which means Pete. As always, Pete. We’ve played thirty-three times in our careers, four times in slam finals. He’s got the overall edge, 19–14, and 3–1 in slam finals. He says I bring out the best in him, but I think he’s brought out the worst in me. The night before the final I can’t help but think of all the different times I thought I was going to beat Pete, knew I was going to beat Pete, needed to beat Pete, only to lose. And his success against me started right here, in New York, twelve years ago, when he stunned me in straight sets. I was the favorite then, as I am now.

Sipping Gil’s magic water before bed, I tell myself that this time will be different. Pete hasn’t won a slam in more than two years. He’s nearing the end. I’m just starting over.

I climb under the covers and remember a time in Palm Springs, several years ago. Brad and I were eating at an Italian restaurant, Mama Gina’s, and we saw Pete eating with friends on the other side of the dining room. He stopped by and said hello on his way out. Good luck tomorrow. You too. Then we watched him through the restaurant window, waiting for his car.

We said nothing, each of us thinking of the difference he’d made in our lives. As Pete drove away I asked Brad how much he thought Pete tipped the valet.

Brad hooted. Five bucks, tops.

No way, I said. The guy’s got millions. He’s earned forty mil in prize money alone. He’s got to be good for at least a ten spot.

Bet?

Bet.

We ate fast and rushed outside. Listen, I told the valet, give us the absolute truth: How much did Mr. Sampras tip you?

The kid looked at his feet. He didn’t want to tell. He was weighing, wondering if he was on a hidden-camera show.

We told the kid we had a bet riding on this, so we absolutely were insisting he tell us. Finally he whispered: You really want to know?

Shoot.

He gave me a dollar.

Brad put a hand on his heart.

But that’s not all, the kid said. He gave me a dollar—and he told me to be sure to give it to whichever kid actually brought his car around.

We could not be more different, Pete and I, and as I fall asleep the night before perhaps our final final, I vow that the world will see our differences tomorrow.

WE GET A LATE START, thanks to a New York Jets game that goes into overtime, delay-ing the TV broadcast, and this favors me. I’m in better shape, and I like that we’re going to be out on the court until midnight. But I immediately fall behind two sets. Another drubbing at the hands of Pete—I cannot believe this is happening.

Then I notice Pete looking wrung out. And old. I win the third set by a mile, and the whole stadium can feel the momentum slide my way. The crowd is crazy. They don’t care who wins, they just want to see an Agassi-Sampras five-setter. As the fourth set gets under way I know, deep in my heart, as I always know with Pete, that if I can get this thing to a fifth set, I’ll win.

I’m fresher. I’m playing better. We’re the oldest players to meet in the U.S. Open final in more than thirty years, but I’m feeling like one of the teenagers who have lately been kicking ass on tour. I feel like part of the new generation.

A private word with Pete Sampras after the final of the 2002

U.S. Open

At 3–4, Pete is serving, and I have two break points. If I win this game I’ll serve for the set. So this is it, the game of the match. He locks in, saves the first, and on the second break point I hit a scorching return at his shoes. I think the ball is well behind him—I’m already celebrating—but somehow he turns and finds it and hits a half-volley that flops and dies on my side of the net. Deuce.

I’m spooked. Pete closes out the game, then goes on to break me.

Now he’s serving for the match, and when Pete serves for a match, he’s a coldblooded killer. Everything happens very fast.

Ace. Blur. Backhand volley, no way to reach it.

Applause. Handshake at the net.

Pete gives me a friendly smile, a pat on the back, but the expression on his face is unmistakable. I’ve seen it before.

Here’s a buck, kid. Bring my car around.

27

I OPEN MY EYES SLOWLY. I’m on the floor beside my bed. I sit up to say good morning to Stefanie, then realize she’s in Vegas and I’m in St. Petersburg. No, wait—St. Petersburg was last week.

I’m in Paris.

No, Paris was after St. Petersburg.

I’m in Shanghai. Yes, that’s right, China.

I go to the window, draw back the curtains. A skyline designed by someone on mush-rooms. A skyline that looks like a sci-fi Vegas. Every building is crazily different, and all set against a hard blue sky. It doesn’t matter where I am, strictly speaking, because parts of me are still in Russia and France and the last dozen places I’ve played. And the biggest part of me, as always, is home with Stefanie and Jaden.

No matter where I am, however, the tennis court is the same, and so is the goal—I want to be number one at the end of 2002. If I can put together a win here in Shanghai, one little win, I’ll be the oldest year-end number one in men’s tennis history, breaking Connors’s record.

He’s a punk—you’re a legend!

I want this, I tell myself. I don’t need it, but I do want it.

I order coffee from room service, then sit at the desk and write in my journal. It’s not like me to keep a journal, but I’ve recently begun one, and it’s quickly become a habit. I’m compelled to write. I’m obsessed with leaving a record, in part because I’ve developed a gnawing fear that I won’t be around long enough for Jaden to know me. I live on airplanes, and with the world becoming more dangerous, more unpredictable, I fear that I won’t be able to tell Jaden all that I’ve seen and learned. So every night, wherever I am, I jot a few lines to him. Random thoughts, impressions, lessons learned. Now, before going to the Shanghai stadium, I write: Hey Buddy. You’re in Vegas with Mom and I’m in Shanghai, missing you. I have a chance at finishing number one after this tournament. But I promise I can only think about getting home to you. I put a lot of pressure on myself with my tennis. But I’m strangely driven to continue. It took me a while to figure that out. I fought it for so long. Now I just work as hard as I can and let the rest fall where it may. It still doesn’t feel great most of the time, but I push through it, for the sake of so much good. Good for the game, good for your future, good for many at my school. Always value others, Jaden. There is so much peace in taking care of people. I love you and am there for you always.

I close the journal, walk out of the room, and get clipped by Jiri Novak, from the Czech Re-public. Humiliating. Worse, I can’t leave the country and go home. I have to hang around an extra day to play a kind of consolation match.

Back at the hotel, choked with emotion, I write again to Jaden: I just lost my match and I feel terrible. I don’t want to go back out there tomorrow. So much so I was actually wishing for an injury. Picture that, not wanting to do something so much that you wish upon yourself injury. Jaden, if you ever feel overwhelmed with something like I was tonight, just keep your head down and keep working and keep trying. Face it at its worst and realize it’s not so bad. That will be your chance for peace. I wanted to quit and leave and go home and see you. It’s hard to stay and play, it’s easy to go home and be with you. That’s why I’m staying.

AT THE END OF THE YEAR, as expected, Hewitt is number one. I tell Gil we need to take it up a notch. He outlines a new regimen for the older me. He pulls ideas from his da Vinci notebooks, and we spend weeks working solely on my deteriorating lower body. Day in, day out, he stands over me as I build my legs, yelling, Big thunder! Australia’s calling!

Weak legs command, Gil says. Strong legs obey.

By the time we board the Ambien Express, Vegas to Melbourne, I feel as if I could run or swim there. I’m the second seed in the 2003 Australian Open, and I come out growling, ferocious. I reach the semis and beat Ferreira in ninety minutes. In six matches I’ve dropped only one set.

In the final I face Rainer Schuettler, from Germany. I win three straight sets, losing only five games and tying the most lopsided victory ever at the Australian Open. My eighth slam, and it’s my best performance ever. I tease Stefanie that it’s like one of her matches, the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing her kind of dominance.