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Because it’s a Grand Slam, the energy of the match is different from anything I’ve experienced. More frenetic. The play is moving at warp speed, a rhythm with which I’m unfamiliar.

Plus, the day is windy, so points seem to be flying past like the gum wrappers and dust. I don’t understand what’s happening. This doesn’t even feel like tennis. Bates isn’t a better player than I, but he’s playing better, because he came in knowing what to expect. He beats me in four sets, then looks up at my box, where Philly is sitting with Nick, and shoves his fist into the crook of his arm, the international sign for Up yours. Apparently Bates and Nick have a history.

I feel disappointed, slightly embarrassed. But I know that I wasn’t prepared for my first U.S. Open or New York. I see a gap between where I am and where I need to be, and I feel reasonably confident that I can close that gap.

You’re going to get better, Philly says, putting an arm around me. It’s just a matter of time.

Thanks. I know.

And I do know. I really do. But then I begin to lose. Not just lose, but lose badly. Weakly.

Miserably. In Memphis I get knocked out in the first round. In Key Biscayne, first round again.

Philly, I say, what’s going on? I have no clue out there. I feel like a hacker, a weekend player. I’m lost.

The low point is at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. It’s not a tennis facility but a converted basketball arena, and barely that. Cavernous, poorly lit, it’s got two tennis courts, side by side, and two matches taking place simultaneously. At the same moment I’m returning serve, somebody is returning serve in the next court, and if his serve goes wide at the same moment mine kicks, we both need to worry about colliding head-on. My concentration is fragile enough without factoring in collisions with other players. I don’t know yet how to tune out distractions.

After one set I can’t think and can’t hear anything but my own heartbeat.

Also, my opponent is bad, which puts me at a disadvantage. I’m at my worst against less-er opponents. I play down to their level. I don’t know how to maintain my game while adjusting for an opponent’s, which feels like inhaling and exhaling at the same time. Against great players I rise to the challenge. Against bad players I press, which is the tennis term for not letting things flow. Pressing is one of the deadliest things you can do in tennis.

Philly and I stagger back to Vegas. We’re discouraged, but a more immediate problem is that we’re broke. I’ve made no money in months, and with all the traveling and hotels, all the rental cars and restaurant meals, I’ve burned through nearly all my Nike money. From the airport I drive straight to Perry’s house. We hole up in his bedroom with a couple of sodas. As soon as his door is closed I feel safer, saner. I notice that the walls are plastered with a few dozen more covers of Sports Illustrated. I study the faces of all the great athletes, and I tell Perry that I always believed I’d be a great athlete, whether I wanted to be one or not. I took it for granted. It was my life, and though I hadn’t chosen it, my sole consolation was its certainty. At least fate has a structure. Now I don’t know what the future holds. I’m good at one thing, but it looks as though I’m not as good at that one thing as I thought. Maybe I’m finished before I’ve started. In which case, what the hell are Philly and I going to do?

I tell Perry that I want to be a normal sixteen-year-old, but my life keeps getting more abnormal. It’s abnormal to be humiliated at the U.S. Open. It’s abnormal to run around the Spectrum worrying about a head-on collision with some giant Russian. It’s abnormal to be shunned in locker rooms.

Why are you shunned?

Because I’m sixteen and in the top hundred. Also, Nick isn’t well liked, and I’m associated with Nick. I have no friends, no allies. I have no girlfriend.

Jamie and I are done. My latest crush, Jillian, another schoolmate of Perry’s, doesn’t return my calls. She wants a boyfriend who isn’t on the road all the time. I can’t blame her.

Perry says, I had no idea you were dealing with all this.

But here’s the topper, I tell him. I’m broke.

What happened to the twenty grand from Nike?

Travel. Expenses. It’s not just me on the road, it’s Philly, Nick—it adds up. When you’re not winning it adds up faster. You can burn through twenty grand fast.

Can you ask your father for a loan?

No. Absolutely not. Help from him comes with a cost. I’m trying to break free of him.

Andre, everything will be fine.

Yeah, sure.

Really, it’s about to get so much better. Before you know it, you’re going to be winning again. Blink your eyes and your face will be on one of these Sports Illustrated covers.

Pff.

It will! I know it. And Jillian? Please. She’s small time. You’ll always have girl problems.

That’s the nature of the beast. But soon the girl giving you problems will be—Brooke Shields.

Brooke Shields? Where do you get Brooke Shields?

He laughs.

I don’t know, I just read about her in Time. She’s graduating from Princeton. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, she’s brilliant, she’s famous, and someday you’re going to date her. Don’t get me wrong, your life might never be normal—but soon the abnormal will be cool.

Buoyed by Perry, I go to Asia. I have just enough cash to get Philly and me there and back. I play the Japan Open, win a few matches before falling to Andrés Gómez in the quarters. I then go to Seoul, where I reach the final. I lose, but my share of the prize money is $7,000, enough to fund another three months of searching for my game.

As Philly and I land in Vegas, I feel relieved. I feel buoyant. Our father is meeting us at the airport, and I tell Philly as we walk through McCarran International Airport that I’ve made a momentous decision. I’m going to hug Pops.

Hug him? What for?

I feel good. I’m happy, damn it. Why not? I’m going to do it. You only live once.

Our father is at the gate, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. I rush toward him, wrap my arms around him, and squeeze. He doesn’t move. He stiffens. It feels like hugging the pilot.

I release him and tell myself I’ll never try that again.

PHILLY AND I GO TO ROME in May 1987. I’m in the main draw, so our rooms will be comped. We can upgrade from the dump Philly booked, which doesn’t have TVs or shower curtains, to the swank Cavalieri, which sits atop a main hill overlooking the city.

In our free days before the tournament we get out and see the sights. We go to the Sistine Chapel and gaze at the frescoes of Christ handing St. Peter the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. We stare at Michelangelo’s ceiling and learn from the tour guide that he was a tormented perfectionist, eaten up with rage whenever he discovered that his work—or even materials on which he planned to work—had the tiniest flaws.

We spend a day in Milan, stopping in churches and museums. We stand for half an hour before Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. We learn about da Vinci’s notebooks, with their minute observations of the human form, and their futuristic plans for helicopters and toilets.

Both of us are floored that one man could have been so inspired. To be inspired, I tell Philly—that’s the secret.

The Italian Open is on red clay, a surface that feels unnatural to me. I’ve only played on green clay, which is sort of fast. Red clay, I tell Nick, is hot glue and wet tar laid across a bed of quicksand. You can’t put a guy away on this red-clay shit, I complain at our first practice.

He smirks. You’re going to be fine, he says. You just have to get used to it. Don’t be impatient, don’t try to finish every point.