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Finally, my upper body and gut pleading for mercy, we go outside and run up and down the hill behind Gil’s house. Gil Hill. Quick bursts of power and speed, up and down, up and down, I run until my mind begs me to stop, and then I run some more, ignoring my mind.

Easing into my car at dusk, I often don’t know that I’ll be able to drive home. Sometimes I don’t try. If I don’t have the strength to turn the key in the ignition, I go back inside and curl up on one of Gil’s benches and fall asleep.

After my mini boot camp with Gil, I look as if I’ve traded in my old body, upgraded to the newest model. Still, there’s room for improvement. I could be better about what I eat outside the gym. Gil, however, doesn’t crack the whip about my lapses. He certainly doesn’t like the way I eat when I’m not with him—Taco Bell, Burger King—but he says I need comfort food now and then. My psyche, he says, is more fragile than my back, and he doesn’t want to overstress it. Besides, a man needs one or two vices.

Gil is a paradox, and we both know it. He can lecture me about nutrition while watching me sip a milkshake. He doesn’t slap the milkshake from my hand. On the contrary, he might even take a sip. I like people with contradictions, of course. I also like that Gil’s not a taskmaster. I’ve had enough taskmasters to last me a lifetime. Gil understands me, coddles me, and occasionally—just occasionally—indulges my taste for junk, maybe because he shares it.

At Indian Wells, I face Pete again. If I can beat him I’ll be within an inch of the top spot. I’m in peak condition, but we play a sloppy match, filled with unforced errors. Each of us is distracted. Pete is still distressed
about his coach. I’m worried about my father, who’s having open-heart surgery in a few days. This time, Pete manages to rise above his turmoil, while I let mine consume me. I lose in three sets.

I race to the UCLA Medical Center and find my father strapped to machines with long tubes. They remind me of the ball machine of my youth.
You can’t beat the dragon
. My mother hugs me. He watched you play yesterday, she says. He watched you lose to Pete.

I’m sorry, Pops.

He’s on his back, drugged, helpless. His eyelids flutter open. He sees me and gestures with his hand. Come closer.

I lean in. He can’t speak. He has a tube in his mouth and down his throat. He mumbles something.

I don’t understand, Pops.

More gestures. I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me. Now he’s getting angry. If he had the strength he’d get out of this bed and knock me out.

He motions for a pad and pen.

Tell me later, Pops.

No, no. He shakes his head. He
must
tell me now.

The nurses hand him a pad and pen. He scrawls a few words, then makes a brushing gesture. Like an artist, gently brushing. At last I understand.

Backhand, he’s trying to say. Hit to Pete’s backhand.
You should have hit more to Pete’s backhand
.

Vork your wolleys
. Hit
harder
.

I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can’t help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself. My father is what he is, and always will be, and though he can’t help himself, though he can’t tell the difference between loving me and loving tennis, it’s love all the same. Few of us are granted the grace to know ourselves, and until we do, maybe the best we can do is be consistent. My father is nothing if not consistent.

I put my father’s hand at his side, force him to stop gesturing, tell him that I understand. Yes, yes, to the backhand. I’ll hit to Pete’s backhand next week in Key Biscayne. And I’ll beat his ass. Don’t worry, Pops. I’ll beat him. Now rest.

He nods. His hand still flapping against his side, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

The next week I beat Pete in the final of Key Biscayne.

After the match we fly together to New York, where we’re due to catch a flight to Europe for the Davis Cup. But first, upon landing, I drag Pete to the Eugene O’Neill Theater to see Brooke as Rizzo in
Grease
. It’s the first time Pete has seen a Broadway show, I think, but it’s my fiftieth time seeing
Grease
. I can recite every word of We Go Together, a trick I’ve performed, deadpan, to much laughter on the
Late Show with David Letterman
.

I like Broadway. I find the ethos of the theater familiar. The work of a Broadway actor is physical, strenuous, demanding, and the nightly pressure is intense. The best Broadway actors remind me of athletes. If they don’t give their best, they know it, and if they don’t know it, the crowd lets them know it. All this is lost on Pete, however. From the opening number he’s yawning, fidgeting, checking his watch. He doesn’t like the theater, and he doesn’t get actors, since he’s never pretended anything in his life. In the quasi-darkness of the footlights, I smile at his discomfort. Somehow, forcing him to sit through
Grease
feels more satisfying than beating him in Key Biscayne. We go together, like rama lama lama …

I
N THE MORNING
we catch the Concorde to Paris, then a private plane to Palermo. I’m barely settled into my hotel room when the phone rings.

Perry.

In my hand, he says, I hold the latest rankings.

Hit me with it.

You—are number one.

I’ve knocked Pete off the mountaintop. After eighty-two weeks at number one, Pete’s looking up at me. I’m the twelfth tennis player to be number one in the two decades since they started keeping computer rankings. The next person who phones is a reporter. I tell him that I’m happy about the ranking, that it feels good to be the best that I can be.

It’s a lie. This isn’t at all what I feel. It’s what I want to feel. It’s what I expected to feel, what I tell myself to feel. But in fact I feel nothing.

I
SPEND MANY HOURS ROAMING
the streets of Palermo, drinking strong black coffee, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I did it—I’m the number one tennis player on earth, and yet I feel empty. If being number one feels empty, unsatisfying, what’s the point? Why not just retire?

I picture myself announcing that I’m done. I choose the words I’ll speak at the news conference. Several images then come to mind. Brad, Perry, my father, each disappointed, aghast. Also, I tell myself that retiring won’t solve my essential problem, it won’t help me figure out what I want to do with my life. I’ll be a twenty-five-year-old retiree, which sounds a lot like a ninth-grade dropout.

No, what I need is a new goal. The problem, all this time, is that I’ve had the wrong goals. I never really wanted to be number one, that was just something others wanted for me. So I’m number one. So a computer loves me. So what? What I think I’ve always wanted, since I was a boy, and what I want now, is far more difficult, far more substantial. I want to win the French Open. Then I’ll have all four slams to my credit. The complete set. I’ll be only the fifth man to accomplish such a feat in the open era—and the first American.

I’ve never cared about computer rankings, and I’ve never cared about the number of slams I won. Roy Emerson has the most slams (twelve), and nobody thinks he’s better than Rod Laver. Nobody. My fellow players, along with any tennis expert or historian I respect, agree that Laver was the best, the king, because he won all four. More, he did it in the same year—twice. Granted, there were only two surfaces back then, grass and clay, but still, that’s godlike. That’s inimitable.

I think about the greats from past eras, how they all chased Laver, how they dreamed of winning all four slams. They all skipped certain slams, because they didn’t give a damn about quantity. They cared about versatility.
They all feared that they wouldn’t be considered truly great if their resumes were incomplete, if one or two of the game’s four prizes could elude them.

The more I think about winning all four slams, the more excited I become. It’s a sudden and shocking insight into myself. I realize this is what I’ve long wanted. I’ve simply repressed the desire because it didn’t seem possible, especially after reaching the final of the French Open two years in a row and losing. Also, I’ve allowed myself to get sidetracked by sportswriters and fans who don’t understand, who count the number of slams a player won and use that bogus number to gauge his legacy. Winning all four is the true Holy Grail. So, in 1995, in Palermo, I decide that I will chase this Grail, full speed ahead.

Brooke, meanwhile, never wavers in pursuit of her own personal Grail. Her run on Broadway is deemed a great success, and she doesn’t feel empty. She feels hungry. She wants more. She looks to the next big thing. Offers are slow to come in, however. I try to help. I tell her that the public doesn’t know her. They think they do, but they don’t. A problem with which I have some experience. Some people think she’s a model, some think she’s an actress. She needs to hone her image. I ask Perry to step in, have a look at Brooke’s career.

It doesn’t take him long to form an opinion and a plan. He says what Brooke needs now is a TV show. Her future, he says, lies in TV. So she immediately begins searching for scripts and pilots in which she can shine.

Just before the start of the 1995 French Open, Brooke and I go to Fisher Island for a few days. We both need rest and sleep. I can’t get either, though. I can’t stop thinking about Paris. I lie in bed at night, taut as a wire, playing matches on the ceiling.

I continue to obsess on the plane to Paris, even though Brooke is with me. She’s not working just now, so she’s able to get away.

Our first time in Paris together, she says, kissing me.

Yes, I say, stroking her hand.

How to tell her that this is not, even partially, a vacation? That this trip isn’t remotely about us?

We stay at the Hôtel Raphael, just around the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. Brooke likes the creaky old elevator with the iron door that manually closes. I like the small candlelit bar off the lobby. The rooms are small too, and they have no TVs, which appalls Brad. He can’t take it, in fact. He checks out a few minutes after checking in, switching to a more modern hotel.

Brooke speaks French, so she’s able to show me Paris through a new, wider lens. I feel comfortable exploring the city, because there’s no fear of getting lost, and she can translate. I tell her about the first time I was here, with Philly. I tell her about the Louvre, the painting that freaked us both out. She’s fascinated and wants me to take her to see it.

Another time, I say.

We eat at fancy restaurants, visit out-of-the-way neighborhoods I’d never venture into on my own. Some of it charms me, but most leaves me cold, because I’m loath to break my concentration. The owner of one café invites us down to his ancient wine cellar, a musty, medieval tomb filled with dust-covered bottles. He hands one to Brooke. She peers at the date on the label: 1787. She cradles the bottle like a baby, then holds it up to me, incredulous.

I don’t get it, I whisper. It’s a bottle. It has dust on it.

She glares, as if she’d like to break the bottle over my head.

Late one night we go for a walk along the Seine. It’s her thirtieth birthday. We stop near a flight of stone steps leading down to the river, and I present her with a diamond tennis bracelet. She laughs as I put it around her wrist and fiddle with the clasp. We both admire the way it catches the moonlight. Then, just beyond Brooke’s shoulder, standing on the stone steps, a drunken Frenchman staggers into view and sends a high, looping arc of urine into the Seine. I don’t believe in omens, as a rule, but this seems ominous. I just can’t tell if it portends something for the French Open or my relationship with Brooke.

At last the tournament begins. I win my first four matches without dropping a set. It’s evident to reporters and commentators that I’m a different player. Stronger and more focused. On a mission. No one sees this more clearly than my fellow players. I’ve always noticed the way players silently anoint the alpha dog in their midst, the way they single out the one player who’s feeling it, who’s likeliest to win. At this tournament, for the first time, I’m that player. I feel them all watching me in the locker room. I feel them noting my every move, the little things I do, even studying how I organize my bag. They’re quicker to step aside when I walk by, eager to give up the training table. A new degree of respect is directed toward me, and while I try not to take it seriously, I can’t help but enjoy it. Better me getting this treatment than someone else.

Brooke, however, doesn’t seem to notice any difference in me, doesn’t treat me any differently. At night I sit in the hotel room, staring out the window at Paris, an eagle on a cliff, but she talks to me of this and that,
Grease
and Paris and what so-and-so said about such-and-such. She
doesn’t understand the work I did in Gil’s gym, the trials and sacrifices and concentration that have led to this new confidence—or the huge task that lies ahead. And she doesn’t try to understand. She’s more interested in where we’re going to eat next, which wine cellar we’re going to explore. She takes it for granted that I’m going to win, and she wishes I’d hurry up and do it, so we can have fun. It’s not selfishness on her part, just a mistaken impression that winning is normal, losing is abnormal.

In the quarters I face Kafelnikov, the Russian who likened me to Jesus. I sneer at him across the net as the match begins: Jesus is about to whip you with a car antenna. I know I can beat Kafelnikov. He knows it too. It’s written all over his face. But early in the first set, I lunge for a ball and feel something snap. My hip flexor. I ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, pretend I don’t have a hip, but the hip sends lines of pain up and down my leg.

I can’t bend. I can’t move. I ask for the trainer, who gives me two aspirin and tells me there’s nothing he can do. His eyes are the size of poker chips when he tells me.

I lose the first set. Then the second. In the third I rally. I’m up 4–1, the crowd urging me onward.
Allez, Agassi!
But I grow less mobile with every minute. Kafelnikov, moving well, ties the set, and I feel my limbs go slack. It’s another Russian crucifixion. Au revoir, Grail. I walk off the court without collecting my rackets.