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

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

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

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

Then the young pro blows out his shoulder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s up, Brad?

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

What—?

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

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

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

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

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

21

CHANGE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Agassi?

Yes. I’m here. So. What now?

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

Uh huh.

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

Yes. Yes, I knew.

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

And then?

Your letter will be reviewed by a panel.

And then?

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