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Ho ho, he says, beaming. Millions.

Good—then you won’t mind if I buy a car.

He frowns. Checkmate.

I know just the kind I want. A white Corvette with all the extras. My father insists that he and my mother go with me to the dealership, to make sure the salesman doesn’t screw me. I can’t say no. My father is my landlord and keeper. I no longer live full-time at the Bolletieri Academy, so once again I live under my father’s roof, and thus under his control. I’m traveling the world, making good money, winning a measure of fame, and yet my old man essentially keeps me on an allowance. It’s inappropriate, but hell, my whole life is inappropriate. I’m only seventeen, not ready to live on my own, barely ready to stand alone on a tennis
court, and yet I was just in Rio, holding a girl in a thong with one hand and a $90,000 check with the other. I’m an adolescent who’s seen too much, a man-child without a checking account.

At the car dealership my father goes back and forth with the salesman, and the negotiation quickly turns contentious. Why am I not surprised? Every time my father makes a new offer the salesman walks off to consult his manager. My father clenches and unclenches his fists.

The salesman and my father eventually agree on a price. I’m seconds from owning my dream car. My father puts on his glasses, gives the paperwork a last look. He runs his finger down the itemized list of charges. Wait, what’s this? A charge for $49.99?

Small fee for the paperwork, the salesman says.

Ain’t my fucking paper. That’s your fucking paper. Pay for your own fucking paper.

The salesman doesn’t care for my father’s tone. Hard words are exchanged. My father gets that look in his eye, the same look he had before dropping the trucker. Just the sight of all these cars is giving him the old road rage.

Pops, the car costs $37,000, and you’re flipping out about a $50 fee?

They’re screwing you, Andre! They’re screwing me. The world is trying to screw me!

He storms out of the salesman’s office and into the main showroom, where the managers sit along a high counter. He screams at them: You think you’re safe back there? You think you’re safe behind that counter? Why don’t you come out from behind there?

His dukes are up. He’s ready to fight five men at once.

My mother puts an arm around me and says the best thing we can do now is go outside and wait.

We stand on the sidewalk and watch my father’s tirade through the plate-glass window of the dealership. He’s pounding the desk. He’s waving his hands. It’s like watching a terrible silent movie. I’m mortified, but also slightly envious. I wish I possessed some of my father’s rage. I wish I could tap into it during tough matches. I wonder what I could do in tennis if I could access that rage and aim it across the net. Instead, whatever rage I have, I turn on myself.

Mom, I ask, how do you take it? All these years?

Oh, she says, I don’t know. He hasn’t gone to jail yet. And nobody’s killed him yet. I think we’re pretty lucky, all things considered. Hopefully we’ll get through this incident without either of those two things happening, and move on.

Along with my father’s rage, I wish I had a fraction of my mother’s calm.

Philly and I go back to the dealership the next day. The salesman hands me the keys to my new Corvette, but treats me with pity. He says I’m nothing like my father, and though he means it as a compliment, I feel vaguely offended. Driving home, the thrill of my new Corvette is dampened. I tell Philly that things are going to be different from now on. Weaving in and out of traffic, gunning the engine, I tell him: The time has come. I need to take control of my money. I need to take control of my fucking life.

I’
M RUNNING OUT
of steam in long matches. And for me every match is long, because my serve is average. I can’t serve my way out of trouble, I get no easy points off my serve, so every opponent takes me the full twelve rounds. My knowledge of the game is improving, but my body is breaking down. I’m skinny, brittle, and my legs give out quickly, followed in short order by my nerve. I tell Nick that I’m not fit enough to compete with the best in the world. He agrees. Legs are everything, he says.

I find a trainer in Vegas, a retired military colonel named Lenny. Tough as burlap, Lenny curses like a sailor and walks like a pirate, the result of being shot in a long-ago war he doesn’t like to talk about. After one hour with Lenny I wish someone would shoot me. Few things give Lenny more pleasure than abusing me and hurling obscenities at me in the process.

In December 1987 the desert turns unseasonably cold. The blackjack dealers wear Santa hats. The palm trees are strung with lights. The hookers on the Strip wear Christmas ornaments for earrings. I tell Perry I can’t wait for this new year. I feel strong. I feel as if I’m starting to
get
tennis.

I win the first tournament of 1988, in Memphis, and the ball sounds alive as it leaves my racket. I’m growing into my forehand. I’m hitting the ball
through
opponents. Each one turns to me with a look that says, Where the hell did that come from?

I notice something on the faces of fans too. The way they watch me and ask for my autograph, the way they scream as I enter an arena, makes me uncomfortable, but also satisfies something deep inside me, some hidden craving I didn’t know was there. I’m shy—but I like attention. I cringe when fans start dressing like me—but I also dig it.

Dressing like me in 1988 means wearing denim shorts. They’re my signature.
They’re synonymous with me, mentioned in every article and profile. Oddly, I didn’t choose to wear them; they chose me. It was 1987, in Portland, Oregon. I was playing the Nike International Challenge and Nike reps invited me up to a hotel suite to show me the latest demos and clothing samples. McEnroe was there, and of course he was given first choice. He held up a pair of denim shorts and said, What the fuck are these?

My eyes got big. I licked my lips and thought,
Whoa
. Those are cool. If you don’t want those, Mac, I’ve got dibs.

The moment Mac set them aside, I scooped them up. Now I wear them at all my matches, as do countless fans. Sportswriters murder me for it. They say I’m trying to stand out. In fact—as with my mohawk—I’m trying to hide. They say I’m trying to change the game. In fact I’m trying to prevent the game from changing me. They call me a rebel, but I have no interest in being a rebel, I’m only conducting an everyday, run-of-the-mill teenage rebellion. Subtle distinctions, but important. At heart, I’m doing nothing more than being myself, and since I don’t know who that is, my attempts to figure it out are scattershot and awkward—and, of course, contradictory. I’m doing nothing more than I did at the Bollettieri Academy. Bucking authority, experimenting with identity, sending a message to my father, thrashing against the lack of choice in my life. But I’m doing it on a grander stage.

Whatever I’m doing, for whatever reasons, it strikes a chord. I’m routinely called the savior of American tennis, whatever that means. I think it has to do with the atmosphere at my matches. Besides wearing my outfits, fans come sporting my hairdo. I see my mullet on men
and
women. (It looks better on the women.) I’m flattered by the imitators, embarrassed, thoroughly confused. I can’t imagine all these people trying to be like Andre Agassi, since I don’t want to be Andre Agassi.

Now and then I start to explain this in an interview, but it never comes out right. I try to be funny, and it falls flat or offends someone. I try to be profound, and I hear myself making no sense. So I stop, fall back on pat answers and platitudes, tell journalists what they seem to want to hear. It’s the best I can do. If I can’t understand my motivations and demons, how can I hope to explain them to journalists on deadline?

To make matters worse, journalists write down exactly what I say, while I’m saying it, word for word, as if this represented the literal truth. I want to tell them, Hold it, don’t write that down, I’m only thinking out loud here. You’re asking about the subject I understand least—me. Let me edit myself, contradict myself. But there isn’t time. They need black-and-white
answers, good and evil, simple plot lines in seven hundred words, and then they’re on to the next thing.

Eighteen years old, wearing a frosted mullet and denim shorts, my first signature look

If I had time, if I were more self-aware, I would tell journalists that I’m trying to figure out who I am, but in the meantime I have a pretty good idea of who I’m not. I’m not my clothes. I’m certainly not my game. I’m not anything the public thinks I am. I’m not a showman simply because I come from Vegas and wear loud clothes. I’m not an
enfant terrible
, a phrase that appears in every article about me. (I think you can’t be something you can’t pronounce.) And, for heaven’s sake, I’m not a
punk rocker
. I listen to soft, cheesy pop, like Barry Manilow and Richard Marx.

Of course the key to my identity, the thing I know about myself but can’t bring myself to tell journalists, is that I’m losing my hair. I wear it long and fluffy to conceal its rapid departure. Only Philly and Perry know, because they’re fellow sufferers. In fact Philly recently flew to New York to meet with an owner of Hair Club for Men, to buy himself a few toupees. He’s finally given up on the headstands. He phones to tell me about the astonishing variety of toupees the Hair Club offers. It’s a hair smorgasbord, he says. It’s like the salad bar at Sizzler, only all hair.

I ask him to pick one up for me. Every morning I find a little more of my identity on my pillow, in my sink, in my drain.

I ask myself: You’re going to wear a hairpiece? During
tournaments?

I answer: What choice do I have?

A
T
I
NDIAN
W
ELLS
, in February 1988, I blaze my way to the semis, where I meet Boris Becker, from West Germany, the most famous tennis player in the world. He cuts an imposing figure, with a shock of hair the color of a new penny and legs as wide as my waist. I catch him at the peak of his powers, but win the first set. Then I lose the next two, including a hard, tough third. We walk off the court glowering at each other like rutting bulls. I promise myself I won’t lose to him the next time we meet.

In March, at Key Biscayne, I face an old schoolmate from the Bollettieri Academy, Aaron Krickstein. We’re often compared to each other, because of our connection with Nick and our precocious skills. I’m up two sets to none and then wear out. Krickstein wins the next two sets. As the fifth set starts I’m cramping. I’m still not where I need to be, physically, to reach the next level. I lose.

I go to Isle of Palms, near Charleston, and win my third tournament. In the middle of the tournament I turn eighteen. The tournament director
rolls a cake out to center court, and everyone sings. I’ve never liked birthdays. No one ever took note of my birthday when I was growing up. But this feels different. I’m legal, everyone keeps saying. In the eyes of the law, you’re a grown-up.

Then the law is an ass.

I go to New York City, the Tournament of Champions, a significant milestone because it’s a clash of the top players in the world. Once more I square off against Chang, who’s developed a bad habit since we last met. Every time he beats someone, he points to the sky. He thanks God—credits God—for the win, which offends me. That God should take sides in a tennis match, that God should side against me, that God should be in Chang’s box, feels ludicrous and insulting. I beat Chang and savor every blasphemous stroke. Then I take revenge on Krickstein. In the final I face Slobodan Zivojinovic, a Serb better known for his doubles play. I beat him in straight sets.

I’m winning more often. I should be happy. Instead I’m uptight, because it’s over. I’ve enjoyed a triumphant hard-court season, my body wants to keep playing on hard courts, but clay season is starting. The sudden switch from one surface to another changes everything. Clay is a different game, thus your game must become different, and so must your body. Instead of sprinting from side to side, stopping short and starting, you must slide and lean and dance. Familiar muscles now play supporting roles, dormant muscles dominate. It’s painful enough, under the best of circumstances, that I don’t know who I am. To suddenly become a different person, a clay person, adds another degree of frustration and anxiety.

A friend tells me that the four surfaces in tennis are like the four seasons. Each asks something different of you. Each bestows different gifts and exacts different costs. Each radically alters your outlook, remakes you on a molecular level. After three rounds of the Italian Open, in May 1988, I’m no longer Andre Agassi. And I’m no longer in the tournament.

I go to the 1988 French Open expecting more of the same. Walking into the locker room at Roland Garros, I see all the clay experts leaning against the walls, leering. Dirt rats, Nick calls them. They’ve been here for months, practicing, waiting for the rest of us to finish hard courts and fly into their clay lair.

Disorienting as the new surface is, Paris itself is more of a shock to the system. The city has all the same logistical problems of New York and London, the large crowds and cultural anomalies, but with an added language barrier. Also, the presence of dogs in restaurants unsettles me. The
first time I walk into a café, on the Champs-Élysées, a dog raises its leg and unleashes a stream of pee against the table next to mine.