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In the press room, one reporter asks why I think the New York crowd was pulling for me, cheering so loudly.

I wish I knew. But I take a guess: They’ve watched me grow up.

Of course fans everywhere have watched me grow up, but in New York their expectations were higher, which helped accelerate and validate my growth.

It’s the first time I’ve felt, or dared to say aloud, that I’m a grown-up.

STEFANIE FLIES WITH ME TO VEGAS. We do all the typical Vegasy things. We gamble, see a show, take in a boxing match with Brad and Kimmie. Oscar De La Hoya vs. Félix Trinid-ad—our first official public date. Our coming-out party. The next day a photo of us holding hands, kissing at ringside, appears in newspapers.

No turning back now, I tell her.

She stares, then slowly, thankfully, smiles.

She spends the weekend at my house. The weekend turns into a week. Then a month.

J.P. phones one day and asks how things are going.

I’ve never been better.

When are you going to see Stefanie again?

She’s still here.

What do you mean?

I cup my hand over my mouth and whisper: It’s still Date Three. She hasn’t left.

Well—what?

I assume she’ll leave eventually, go back to Germany, get her stuff, but we don’t talk about it, and I don’t want to bring it up. I don’t want to do anything to disrupt things.

The way you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker.

But soon it’s time for me to go back to Germany. To play Stuttgart. She wants to come along—she even agrees to sit in my box—and I’m delighted to have her there with me. After all, Stuttgart is an important city for us both. It’s where she turned pro, and where I re-turned pro. And yet we don’t talk about tennis on the flight. We talk kids. I tell her I want them—with her. A bold thing to say, but I can’t help myself. She takes my hand, tears in her eyes, then looks out the window.

On our last morning in Stuttgart, Stefanie needs to get up early, she has an early flight.

She kisses my forehead goodbye. I pull the pillow over my head and go back to sleep. When I wake an hour later and stumble to the bathroom, I see, lying in my open shaving kit, Stefanie’s birth control pills. As if to say: I won’t be needing these anymore.

I NOT ONLY REACH NUMBER ONE, I finish 1999 number one, the first time I’ve ever ended a year in the top slot. I snap Pete’s streak of six year-end finishes at number one. I then win the Paris Open and become the first man ever to win the Paris Open and the French Open in the same year. But at the ATP World Tour Championship I lose to Pete. Our twenty-eighth meeting. He leads 17–11. In slam finals he leads 3–1. Not much of a rivalry, sportswriters say, since Pete usually wins. I can’t argue, and I can’t be upset about Pete anymore.

I do the only thing I can do. I go to Gil’s house and burn muscles. I run up and down Gil Hill until I see visions. I run in the morning, I run in the evening. I run on Christmas Eve, Gil timing me with a stopwatch. He says I’m breathing so loudly when I reach the top of the hill that he can hear me from the bottom. I run until I lean over the sticker bushes and vomit. Finally he meets me at the summit and tells me to stop. We stand and look at all the Christmas lights in the distance, and then we watch for shooting stars.

I’m proud of you, he says. Being out here. Tonight. Christmas Eve. It says something.

I thank him for being out here with me. For giving up his Christmas Eve.

Must be so many other places that you’d rather be.

No place I’d rather be, he says.

As the 2000 Australian Open begins I beat Mariano Puerta in straight sets and he publicly praises my concentration. I feel it, I’m on a collision course with Pete again, and sure enough we face off in the semis. I’ve lost four of the last five times we’ve played, and he’s as good this day as ever. He hits me with thirty-seven aces, more than he’s ever notched against me.

But I’ve got Christmas Eve with Gil. Two points from losing the match I mount a furious comeback. I win the match and become the first man since Laver to reach the final in four straight slams.

In the final I face Kafelnikov again. It takes time to warm up. I’m still rubbery after my tussle with Pete. I lose the first set, but find my stride, my touch, and take him in four. My sixth slam. At the post-match news conference I thank Brad and Gil for teaching me that my best is good enough. A fan shouts out Stefanie’s name, asks what’s the story there.

Mind your business, I say, joking. I’d actually like to tell the world about it. And I will. Soon.

Gil tells the New York Times: I really believe we will never see Andre stop fighting ever again.

Brad tells the Washington Post: He’s got a 27–1 match record over the last four Grand Slams. Only Rod Laver, Don Budge, and Steffi Graf have ever done better.

Even Brad doesn’t fully realize how floored I am to be mentioned in that company.

25

STEFANIE TELLS ME her father is coming to Vegas for a visit. (Her parents are long divorced, and her mother, Heidi, already lives fifteen minutes from us.) Thus, the unavoidable moment has arrived. Our fathers are going to meet. The prospect unnerves us both.

Peter Graf is suave, sophisticated, well read. He likes to make jokes, lots of jokes, none of which I get, because his English is spotty. I want to like him, and I see that he wants me to like him, but I’m uneasy in his presence, because I know the history. He’s the German Mike Agassi. A former soccer player, a tennis fanatic, he started Stefanie playing before she was out of diapers. Unlike my father, however, Peter never stopped managing her career and her finances, and he spent two years in jail for tax evasion. The subject never comes up, but feels at times like the German Elefant in the room.

I should have expected it: the first thing Peter wants to see when he arrives in Nevada isn’t Hoover Dam or the Strip but my father’s ball machine. He’s heard all about it, and now he wants to study it up close. I drive him to my father’s house, and along the way he chatters amiably. But I don’t understand much. Is it German? No, it’s a hybrid of German and English and tennis. He’s asking questions about my father’s game. How often does my father play?

How well does he play? He’s trying to size up my father before we get there.

My father doesn’t do well with people who don’t speak perfect English, and he doesn’t do well with strangers, so I know we have two strikes on us as we walk through my parents’ front door. I’m relieved, however, to see that sport is a universal language, that these two men, both aficionados, both former athletes, know how to use their bodies to communicate, through swings and gestures and grunts. I tell my father that Peter would like to see the famous ball machine. My father is flattered. He takes us outside to his backyard court and wheels out the dragon. He revs the motor, raises the pedestal high. He’s talking nonstop, giving Peter a lecture, shouting to be heard above the dragon—blissfully unaware that Peter doesn’t understand a word.

Go stand there, my father tells me.

He hands me a racket, points me to the other side of the court, aims the machine at my head.

Demonstrate, he says.

I’m having shuddering, violent flashbacks, and only the thought of the tequila waiting for me back home keeps me functioning.

Peter positions himself behind me and watches while I hit.

Ahh, he says. Ja. Good.

My father cranks up the machine. He clicks the dial until the balls are coming almost in twos. My father must have added a gear to the dragon. I don’t remember balls ever coming this fast. I don’t have time to bring back my racket and hit the second ball. Peter scolds me for missing. He takes the racket from me, pushes me aside. This, he says, is the shot you should have had. You never had this shot. He shows me the famous Stefanie Slice, which he claims to have taught Stefanie. You need a quieter racket, he says. Like this.