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Many days, when I feel run-down or low, I drive to the neighborhood and watch the school take shape. Of all my contradictions, this is the most amazing, and the most amusing—a boy who despised and feared school becomes a man inspired and reenergized by the sight of his own school being built.

I can’t be there on opening day, however. I’m playing in the 2001 U.S. Open. I’m playing for the school, therefore playing my best. I burn through four rounds and meet Pete in the quarters. From the moment we come out of the tunnel, we know this will be our fiercest battle yet. We just know. It’s the thirty-second time we’ve played, he leads 17–14, and each of us wears an unusually grim game face. Right here, right now, this one will decide the rivalry.

Winner take all.

Pete is supposed to be at half speed. He hasn’t won a slam in fourteen months. He’s been balky, and openly talking retirement. But all of that is irrelevant, because he’s playing me. Still, I win the first set in a tiebreak, and now I feel good about my chances. I have a 49–1 record at this tournament when I win the first set.

Someone please remind Pete of the stats. He wins the second set in a tiebreak.

The third set also goes to a tiebreak. I make several foolish mistakes. Fatigue. He wins the third set.

In the fourth set we have several epic rallies. We go to still another tiebreak. We’ve played three hours, and neither of us has yet broken the other’s serve. It’s after midnight. The fans—23,000 plus—rise. They won’t let us start the fourth tiebreak. Stomping and clapping, they’re staging their own tiebreak. Before we press on they want to say thanks.

I’m moved. I see that Pete is moved. But I can’t think about the fans. I can’t let myself think about anything but reaching the sanctuary of a fifth set.

Pete knows that the advantage tips in my direction if this goes five sets. He knows that he needs to play a perfect tiebreak to prevent a fifth set. And so he does. A night of flawless tennis ends with my forehand in the net.

Pete screams.

I actually feel my pulse decrease. I don’t feel bad. I try to feel bad, but I can’t. I wonder if I’m growing accustomed to losing to Pete in big matches, or simply growing content with my career and life. Whatever the case, I put my hand on Pete’s shoulder and wish him well, and though it doesn’t feel like goodbye, it feels like a rehearsal for a goodbye that can’t be far off.

IN OCTOBER 2001, three days before Stefanie is due to give birth, we invite our mothers and a Nevada judge to the house.

I love watching Stefanie with my mother. The two shy women in my life. Stefanie often brings her a couple of new jigsaw puzzles. And I adore Stefanie’s mother, Heidi. She looks like Stefanie, so she had me at guten tag. Stefanie and I, barefoot and wearing jeans, stand before the judge in the courtyard. For wedding bands we use twists of old raffia Stefanie found in a drawer—the same stuff I used to decorate her first birthday card. Neither of us notices the coincidence until later.

My father insists he’s not the least bit slighted by not getting an invite. He doesn’t want an invite. The last thing he wants to do is attend a wedding. He doesn’t like weddings. (He walked out in the middle of my first.) He doesn’t care where or when or how I make Stefanie my wife, he says, so long as I do it. She’s the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, he says. What’s not to like?

The judge runs through his legal rigmarole, and Stefanie and I are just about to say I do, when a team of landscapers arrive. I run outside and ask them to please turn off their lawnmowers and leaf blowers for five minutes so that we can get married. They apologize. One holds a finger over his lips.

By the power vested in me, the judge says, and at last, at long last, with two mothers and three landscapers looking on, Steffi Graf becomes Stefanie Agassi.

26

A SEASON OF BIRTH AND REBIRTH. Weeks after my school opens, my son arrives. In the delivery room, when the doctor hands me Jaden Gil, I feel bewildered. I love him so much that my heart splits open, like something overripe. I can’t wait to get to know him, and yet, and yet. I also wonder, Just who is this beautiful intruder? Are Stefanie and I ready for a perfect stranger in the house? I’m a stranger to myself—what will I be to my son? Will he like me?

We bring Jaden home, and I spend hours staring at him. I ask him who he is, where he came from, what he’ll be. I ask myself how I can be everything to him that I needed and never had. I want to retire, immediately, spend all my time with him. But now more than ever I need to play. For him, his future, and my other children at my school.

My first match as a father is a win against Rafter at the Tennis Masters Series tournament in Sydney. I tell reporters afterward that I doubt I’ll be able to do this long enough that my new son will get to see me play, but it sure is a nice dream.

Then I pull out of the 2002 Australian Open. My wrist is throbbing, and I can’t compete.

Brad is frustrated. I wouldn’t expect anything less. But this time he has trouble brushing aside his frustration. This time is different.

Days later he says we need to talk. We meet for coffee, and he lays it out.

We’ve had a great run, Andre, but we’ve gone as far as we can go. We’re growing stagnant. Creatively. I’ve burned through my bag of tricks, buddy.

But—

We’ve had eight years, we could go on a few more, but you’re thirty-two. You have a new family, new interests. It might not be such a bad idea to find a new voice for your home stretch. Someone to re-motivate you.

After beating Pete at Indian Wells, I celebrate with Brad, not knowing it will be one of our last tournament victories together.

He pauses. He looks at me, then looks away. Bottom line, he says. We’re so close, my worst fear is that we get into an argument as the end approaches, and it carries over.

I think: That could never happen, but better safe than sorry.

We hug.

As he walks out the door I feel the kind of melancholy you feel on a Sunday night after an idyllic weekend. I know Brad does too. It might not be the right way to end our journey, but it’s the best way possible.

I CLOSE MY EYES and try to picture myself with someone new. The first face I see is Darren Cahill. He’s just finished a brilliant span coaching Lleyton Hewitt, who’s ranked number one, and among the best shot selectors in the history of tennis, and a great deal of the credit must go to Darren. Also, I recently bumped into Darren down in Sydney and we had a long talk about fatherhood. It was a bonding moment. Darren, a fellow new father, turned me on to a book about getting infants to sleep. He swore by this book and said his son is known on tour as the baby who sleeps like a drunkard.

I’ve always liked Darren. I like his easygoing style. I find his Aussie accent soothing. It almost puts me to sleep. I read the book he recommended and phoned Stefanie from Australia to read her passages. It worked. Now I dial him and tell him I’ve parted from Brad. I ask if he has any interest in the job.

He says he’s flattered, but he’s on the verge of signing to coach Safin. He’ll think about it, though, and get back to me.

No problem, I say. Take your time.

I call him back in half an hour. I ask him, What the hell is there to think about? You can’t coach Safin. He’s a loose cannon. You’ve got to work with me. It feels right. I promise you, Darren, I have game left. I’m not done. I’m focused—I just need someone to help me keep the focus.

OK, he says, laughing. OK, mate.

He never once mentions money.

STEFANIE AND JADEN COME WITH ME to Key Biscayne. It’s April 2002, days before my thirty-second birthday, and the tournament is crawling with players half my age, young Turks like Andy Roddick, the next next savior of American tennis, poor bastard. Also, there’s a hot new wunderkind from Switzerland named Roger Federer.