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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.