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Even though he has a yacht, Costner seems like the classic man’s man. Easy-going, funny, cool. He loves sports, follows them avidly, and assumes I do too. I tell him shyly that I don’t follow sports. That I don’t like them.

How do you mean?

I mean, I don’t like sports.

He laughs. You mean besides tennis?

I hate tennis most of all.

Right, right. I guess it’s a grind. But you don’t actually hate tennis.

I do.

Wendi and I spend much of the boating trip watching Costner’s three children. Well mannered, personable, they’re also remarkably beautiful. They look as if they tumbled out of one of my mother’s Norman Rockwell puzzles. Shortly after meeting me, four-year-old Joe Costner grabs at my pants leg and looks up at me with his big blue eyes. He shouts: Let’s play wrestle! I pick him up and hold him upside down, and the sound of his giggling is one of the most delicious sounds I’ve ever heard. Wendi and I tell ourselves we’re hopelessly charmed by the little Costners, but in reality we’re deliberately playing at being their parents.

Now and then I catch Wendi slipping away from the grownups to have another look at the children. I can see that she’s going to be a great mother. I imagine being there by her side, through it all, helping her raise three towheads with green eyes. The thought thrills me—and her. I broach the subject of family, the future. She doesn’t blink. She wants it too.

Weeks later, Costner invites us to his house in Los Angeles for a preview of his new film, The Bodyguard. Wendi and I don’t think much of the movie, but we swoon over the theme song, I Will Always Love You.

This will be our song, Wendi says.

Always.

We sing this song to each other, quote it to each other, and when the song comes on the radio we stop whatever we’re doing and make goo-goo eyes at each other, which makes everyone around us sick. We couldn’t care less.

I tell Philly and Perry that I can imagine spending the rest of my life with Wendi, that I might soon propose. Philly gives me a full nod. Perry gives me the green light.

Wendi is the one, I tell J.P.

What about Steffi Graf?

She blew me off. Forget her. It’s Wendi.

I’M SHOWING OFF my new toy for J.P. and Wendi.

J.P. asks, What’s this thing called again?

A Hummer. They used it in the Gulf War.

Mine is one of the first to be sold in the U.S. We’re driving it all over the desert outside Vegas when we get stuck in the sand. J.P. jokes that they must not have run into any sand during the Gulf War. We hop out and set across the desert. I have a flight this afternoon and a match tomorrow. If I can’t get us out of this desert, all kinds of people are going to be angry with me. But as we walk and walk, my match suddenly seems a trivial matter. Survival starts to be a real concern. In every direction, we see nothing, and darkness is coming on.

It feels as though this might become a turning point in our lives, J.P. says. And I don’t mean in a good way.

Thanks for the positive thinking.

Finally we come to a shack. An old hermit loans us his shovel. We hike back to the Hummer, and I hurriedly set about digging around the back wheel. Suddenly my shovel hits something hard. Caliche, the cement-like layer of soil under the Nevada desert. I feel something snap deep inside my wrist. I cry out.

What is it? Wendi says.

I don’t know.

I look at my wrist.

Rub some dirt on it, J.P. says.

I dig out the Hummer, make my flight, even win my match the next day. Days later, however, I wake in agony. The wrist feels broken. I can barely bend it back and forth. I feel as if several sewing needles and rusty razor blades have been implanted in the joint. This is bad.

This is big.

Then the pain goes away. I’m relieved. Then it comes back. I’m scared. Soon the occasional pain becomes constant. It’s tolerable in the morning, but by day’s end the needle-razor feeling is all I can think about.

A doctor says I have tendinitis. Specifically dorsal capsulitis. Tiny rips in the wrist that refuse to heal. The result of overuse, he says. The only possible cures are rest and surgery.

I choose rest. I shut myself down, gentle the wrist. After weeks of carrying the wrist around like a wounded bird, I still can’t work out, do a push-up, or open a door without grimacing.

The one upside of the wrist injury is that I get to spend more time with Wendi. Instead of hard-court season, the start of 1993 becomes Wendi Season, and I throw myself into it. She enjoys the extra attention, but she also worries that she’s neglecting her studies. She’s en-rolled in yet another college. Her fifth. Or sixth. I’ve lost track.

Driving along Rainbow Boulevard, steering with my left hand to avoid engaging my bad right wrist, I roll down the window and turn up the radio. The spring breeze flutters Wendi’s hair. She turns down the radio and says how long it’s been since she really knew what she wanted.

I nod and turn up the radio.

She turns down the radio and says she’s attended all these different colleges, lived in all these different states, she’s been searching her whole life for meaning, purpose—nothing ever feels right. She just can’t seem to figure out who she is.

Again, I nod. I agree. I know that feeling. Winning Wimbledon has done nothing to salve it.

Then I look over at Wendi and realize she’s not just idly talking, she’s going somewhere with this. She’s making a point—about us. She turns in her seat and looks me in the eye. Andre, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I just don’t think I can be happy, really happy, until I figure out who I am and what I’m supposed to do with my life. And I don’t see how I can do that if we stay together.

She’s crying.

I can’t be your traveling companion, she says, your sidekick, your fan, anymore. Well, I’ll always be your fan, but you know what I mean.

She needs to find herself, and to do that she needs to be free.

And so do you, she says. We can’t realize our separate goals if we stay together.

Even an open relationship is too confining.

I can’t argue with her. If that’s how she feels, there’s nothing I can say. I want her to be happy. Of course at this moment our song comes on the radio. I will always love you. I stare at Wendi, try to catch her eye, but she keeps her face turned away. I make a U-turn, drive back to her house, walk her to the door. She gives me one long, last hug.

I drive away and barely make it to the end of the block before pulling over and phoning Perry. When he answers I can’t speak. I’m crying too hard. He thinks it’s a prank call.

Hello, he says, annoyed. Hel-lo?

He hangs up.

I call back, but still can’t speak. Again he hangs up.

I GO UNDERGROUND. I hole up in the bachelor pad, boozing, sleeping, eating junk. I feel shooting pains in my chest. I tell Gil. He says it sounds like a typical broken heart. Tiny rips that refuse to heal. The result of overuse.

Then he says, What are we doing about Wimbledon? Time to start thinking about getting ourselves overseas. Time to throw down, Andre. It’s on.

I can barely hold the phone, let alone a tennis racket. Still, I want to go. I could use the distraction. I could use some time on the road with Gil, working on a common goal. Also, I’m defending champion. I have no choice. Right before our flight Gil arranges for a doctor in Seattle, who’s supposed to be the best, to give me a shot of cortisone. The shot works. I arrive in Europe wiggling the wrist, pain-free.

We go first to Halle, Germany, for a tune-up tournament. Nick meets us there and immediately puts the touch on me for money. He sold the Bollettieri Academy, because he got himself into debt, and it was the biggest mistake of his life. He let it go for too little. Now he needs cash. He’s not himself—or maybe he’s more himself. He says he’s not getting paid what he’s worth. He says I’ve been an unsound investment. He’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing me, and he’s entitled to hundreds of thousands above the hundreds of thousands I’ve already given him. I ask if we can please talk about this back home. I have a few things weighing on my mind right now.