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Have a nice time, Brooke says. She kisses me on the cheek.

I pull away slowly, glancing at Brooke in the rearview mirror. Once more I drive away from her in Lily. But I know this time will be the last, and that we’ll never speak again.

O
N THE WAY TO
S
AN
D
IEGO
, where Stefanie is playing, I phone J.P., who gives me a pep talk. Don’t try too hard, he says. Don’t try to be perfect. Be yourself.

I think I know how to follow that advice on a tennis court, but on a date, I’m at a loss.

Andre, he says, some people are thermometers, some are thermostats. You’re a thermostat. You don’t register the temperature in a room, you change it. So be confident, be yourself, take charge. Show her your essential self.

I think I can do that. Should I pick her up with the top up or down?

Up. Girls worry about their hair.

Don’t we all. But isn’t it cooler with the top down?

Her hair, Andre, her hair.

I keep the top down. I’d rather be cool than chivalrous.

S
TEFANIE IS RENTING A CONDO
at a large resort. I find the resort but can’t find the condo, so I phone her for directions.

What kind of car are you driving?

A Cadillac as big as a Carnival cruise ship.

Ahh. Yes. I see you.

I look up. She’s standing on a tall grassy hill, waving.

She shouts: Wait there!

She comes running down the hill and makes as if to jump in my car.

Wait, I say. I have something I want to give you. Can I come up a minute?

Oh. Um.

Just a minute.

Reluctantly, she walks back up the hill. I drive around and park outside the front door of her condo.

I present her with a gift, a box of fancy candles I bought for her in Los Angeles. She seems to like them.

OK, she says. Ready?

I was hoping we could have a drink first.

A drink? Like what?

I don’t know. Wine?

She says she doesn’t have any wine.

We could order room service.

She sighs. She hands me a wine list and asks me to pick out a bottle.

When the room-service guy knocks at the door, she asks me to wait in the kitchen. She says she doesn’t want to be seen together. She feels uncomfortable about our date. Guilty. She can imagine the room-service guy going back to tell his fellow room-service guys. She has a boyfriend, she reminds me.

But we’re just—

There’s no time to explain, she says. She pushes me into the kitchen.

I can hear the poor room-service guy, slightly enamored of Stefanie, who’s just as nervous, for very different reasons. She’s trying to rush him, he’s fumbling with the bottle, and of course he drops it. A 1989 Château Beychevelle.

When the guy leaves I help Stefanie pick up the pieces of broken glass.

I say, I think we’re off to a fine start, don’t you?

I’
VE RESERVED A TABLE
by the window at Georges on the Cove, overlooking the ocean. We both order chicken and vegetables on a bed of mashed potatoes. Stefanie eats faster than I and doesn’t touch her wine. I realize she’s not a foodie, not a three-course-meal-and-linger-over-coffee kind of girl. She’s also fidgeting, because someone she knows is sitting behind us.

We talk about my foundation. She’s fascinated to hear about the charter
school I’m building; she has her own foundation, which gives psychological counseling to children scarred by war and violence in places like South Africa and Kosovo.

The subject of Brad, naturally, comes up. I tell her about his tremendous coaching skills, his odd people skills. We laugh about his efforts to make tonight happen. I don’t tell her about his prediction. I don’t ask about her boyfriend. I ask what she likes to do in her free time. She says she loves the ocean.

Would you like to go to the beach tomorrow?

I thought you were supposed to go to Canada.

I could take a red-eye tomorrow night.

She thinks.

OK.

After dinner I drop her at the resort. She gives me the double-cheek kiss, which is starting to feel like a karate self-defense move. She runs inside.

Driving away, I phone Brad. He’s already in Canada, and it’s hours later there. I woke him. But he rouses himself when I tell him the date went well.

Come on, he says groggily, stifling a yawn. Let’s go!

S
HE SPREADS A TOWEL ON THE SAND
and pulls off her jeans. Underneath she’s wearing a white one-piece bathing suit. She walks out into the water, up to her knees. She stands with one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes from the sun, scanning the horizon.

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.

I’
M IN
C
ANADA
, 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.

P
LAYING IN
M
ONTREAL
, 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.

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.

S
TEFANIE FLIES WITH ME TO
V
EGAS
. 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 Trinidad—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.