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I don’t have the slightest idea what he means. I lose in the second round.

We fly to Paris for the French Open. More red clay. I manage to win my first-rounder, but get spanked in the second. Again, Philly and I try to see something of the city, to improve ourselves. We go to the Louvre. The sheer number of paintings and sculptures daunts us. We don’t know where to turn, how to stand. We can’t comprehend all that we’re seeing. We pass from room to room, dumbstruck. Then we come to a piece that we understand all too well. It’s a painting from the Italian Renaissance and it depicts a young man, naked, standing on a cliff.

With one hand he clutches a bare, breaking tree limb. With the other he holds a woman and two infants. Wrapped around his neck is an old man, perhaps his father, who also grasps a sack of what looks like money. Below them lies an abyss strewn with the bodies of those who couldn’t hold on. Everything depends on this one naked man’s strength—his grip.

The longer you look, I tell Philly, the tighter that old guy’s arm around the hero’s neck feels.

Philly nods. He looks up at the man on the cliff and says softly: Hang in there, bro.

IN JUNE 1987 we go to Wimbledon. I’m scheduled to play a Frenchman, Henri Leconte, on Court 2, known as the Graveyard Court because so many players have suffered fatal losses there. It’s my first time at the most hallowed venue in tennis, and from the moment we arrive I dislike it. I’m a sheltered teenager from Las Vegas with no education. I reject all that’s alien, and London feels as alien as a place can be. The food, the buses, the venerable tradi-tions. Even the grass of Wimbledon smells different from the grass back home, what little there is of it.

More off-putting, Wimbledon officials appear to take a haughty, high-handed pleasure in telling players what to do and what not to do. I resent rules, but especially arbitrary rules. Why must I wear white? I don’t want to wear white. Why should it matter to these people what I wear?

Above all, I take offense at being barred and blocked and made to feel unwanted. I need to show a badge to get into the locker room—and not the main locker room at that. I’m playing in this tournament, but I’m treated as an intruder, not even allowed to practice on the courts where I’ll be competing. I’m restricted to indoor courts up the street. Consequently the first time I ever hit a ball on grass is the first time I play Wimbledon. And what a shock. The ball doesn’t bounce right, doesn’t bounce at all, because this grass isn’t grass, but ice slathered with Vaseline. And I’m so afraid of slipping that I tiptoe. When I look around, to see if the British fans have noticed my discomfort, I get a scare: they’re right on top of me. The building is like a dollhouse. Add my name to the list of those who’ve expired on Graveyard Court. Leconte euthanizes me. I tell Nick that I’m never coming back. I’ll hug my father again before I embrace Wimbledon.

· · ·

STILL IN A FOUL MOOD, I travel several weeks later to Washington, D.C. In the first round, playing Patrick Kuhnen, I come up empty. Bone dry. After the long slog across Europe I have nothing left. The travel, the losses, the stress, it’s all sapped me. Plus, the day is op-pressively hot and I’m not physically fit. I’m wholly unprepared, so I become unpresent. When we’re tied at one set apiece, I leave the court, mentally. My mind departs my body and goes floating out of the arena. I’m long gone when the third set starts. I lose 6–0.

I walk to the net and shake Kuhnen’s hand. He says something, but I can’t see or hear him. He’s a blob of energy at the end of a tube. I grab my tennis bag and stumble out of the arena. I walk across the street, into Rock Creek Park, into some woods, and when I feel sure no one is around, I berate the trees.

I can’t take this shit anymore! I’m fucking done! I quit!

I keep walking, walking, until I come to a clearing, where I find myself surrounded by a group of homeless men. Some are sitting on the ground, some are stretched out on logs, sleeping. Two are playing cards. They all look like trolls in a fairy tale. I walk up to one who seems fairly alert. I unzip my bag and remove several Prince rackets.

Here, man, you want these? Do you? Because I don’t have any use for them anymore.

The man isn’t sure what’s happening, but he’s pretty confident that he’s finally met someone crazier than himself. His buddies shuffle over and I tell them, Gather round, fellas, gather round. It might be a hundred degrees in the shade, but it’s Christmas Eve.

I dump out my tennis bag, pull out the rest of the rackets, each one worth hundreds of dollars, and pass them around.

Here, help yourselves! I sure as hell won’t be needing them!

Then, reveling in how much lighter my tennis bag feels, I walk to the hotel where Philly and I are staying. I sit on one bed and Philly sits on the other, just like old times, in more ways than one. I tell him I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.

He doesn’t argue. He understands. Who better to understand? We knuckle down to details, making a plan. How to tell Nick, how to tell my father, how I can earn a living.

What do you want to do instead of playing tennis?

I don’t know.

We go out for dinner, talk it over, analyze where I stand financially—a few hundred dollars above zero. We joke that we’re getting close to potato-and-lentil-soup territory.

Back at the hotel the phone in our room is flashing. I have one message. The organizers of a tennis exhibition in North Carolina phoned to say a player canceled on them. They want to know if I can play. If I do, they’ll guarantee me $2,000.

Philly agrees it would be nice to walk away from tennis with a little coin in my pocket.

OK, I say. One last tournament. I better get some more rackets.

IN THE FIRST ROUND I draw a kid named Michael Chang. I grew up playing him. I played him all through juniors, and I’ve never lost to him. I’ve never even had problems with him. Also, he’s only fifteen, two years younger than I. He comes up to my navel. So this is just what the doctor ordered for my bruised psyche. A preordained beat-down. I walk onto the court, smiling.

Chang, however, has undergone some kind of metamorphosis since our last meeting.

He’s made a quantum leap in his game, and now he plays like a flea on speed. It takes everything I’ve got to beat him. Still, I do beat him. My first win in months. I decide to postpone my retirement. Just a few more weeks. I tell Philly I want to go to Stratton Mountain, where I did well last year. Stratton will be a fitting place for my last hurrah.

We fly up to Vermont with two fellow players, Peter Doohan and Kelly Evernden. Kelly says he grabbed the Stratton draw right before we left.

Anyone want to hear who he’ll be playing?

I do.

No, Andre. You don’t.

Uh-oh. Who did I draw?

Luke Jensen.

Fuck.

Luke’s the best junior in the world, by far the most promising kid on the tour. I sink in my seat and watch the clouds. Should have quit while I was ahead. Should have retired after Chang.

LUKE SERVES BOTH lefty and righty, which is why they call him Dual Hand Luke, and he can bring it 130 miles an hour from either side. But today, against me, his first serve is off, and I cane his second. I’m more surprised than he is when I scrape by him in three sets and advance.

Next up is Pat Cash—who just won Wimbledon, twelve days after I met my demise on Graveyard Court. Cash is a machine, a finely tuned athlete who moves well and covers the net like a hydra. I don’t even think about beating him, only about holding my own. But in the early going I find that he doesn’t have a lot of top on his ball, so I’m getting nice, clean, eye-level looks, hitting one winner after another. Since I have no chance to win, since I want only to be credible, I’m free, loose, and this makes Cash tight. He appears shocked by what’s unfolding. He’s missing first serves, which lets me cheat in a half step, put everything I’ve got behind my return. Every time I hit a ball past him, Cash glares across the net with an expression that says, This wasn’t in the plan. You’re not supposed to be doing this.