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.
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 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.
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 befor
e 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.
My father is livid. In the first place, Peter isn’t listening to my father’s lecture. In the second place, Peter is interfering with my father’s star pupil. My father comes around the net, shouting: That slice is bullshit! If Stefanie had this shot, she would have been better off. He then demonstrates the two-handed backhand he taught me.
With this shot, my father says, Stefanie would have won thirty-two slams!
The two men can’t understand each other, and yet they’re managing a heated argument. I turn my back, concentrate on hitting balls. I train all my attention on the dragon. Occasionally I hear Peter mention my rivals, Pete and Rafter, and then my father responds with Stefanie’s nemeses, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport. My father then mentions boxing. He uses a boxing analogy, and Peter howls in protest.
I was a boxer too, Peter says—and I would have knocked you out.
You can say a lot of things to my father. But not that. Never that. I cringe, knowing what’s coming. I wheel just in time to see Stefanie’s sixty-three-year-old father take off his shirt and tell my sixty-nine-year-old father: Look at me. Look at the shape I’m in. I’m taller than you. I can keep you at bay with my jab.
My father says, You think so? Come on! You and me.
Peter is trash-talking in German, my father is trash-talking in Assyrian, and they’re both putting up their fists. They’re circling, feinting, bobbing and weaving, and just before one of them throws hands, I step in, push them apart.
My father shouts, This fucker is talking shit!
That may be, Pops, but—please.
They’re winded, sweating. My father’s eyes are dilated. Peter’s bare chest is beaded with sweat. They see, however, that I’m not going to let them mix it up, so they go to neutral corners. I turn off the dragon, and we all walk off the court.
At home, Stefanie kisses me and asks how it went.
I’ll tell you later, I say, reaching for the tequila.
I don’t know when a margarita has ever tasted so good.
AFTER PLAYING WELL IN THE DAVIS CUP, I lose early in Scottsdale, a tournament I typically own. I play poorly in Atlanta and pull a hamstring. I lose in the third round in Rome and realize, reluctantly, that this can’t go on. I can’t play every tournament. Approaching thirty years old, I must choose my battles more carefully.
Every other interview now is about the end. I tell reporters that my best tennis is ahead of me, and they smile, wincingly, as if they hope I’m kidding. I’ve never been more serious.
When the time comes to defend at the 2000 French Open, I walk into Roland Garros expecting to feel waves of nostalgia. But it’s all different—the place has been renovated. They’ve added more seats. They’ve redone the locker rooms. I don’t like it. Not one bit. I wanted Roland Garros to stay the same forever. I want everything to stay the same. I hoped to walk on center court every year and conjure up 1999—when life changed. At the news conference after my win against Medvedev I told reporters that I could now leave tennis with no regrets. But one year later I realize that I was wrong. I will always have one regret—that I can’t go back and relive the 1999 French Open again and again.
In the second round I face Kucera. He always has my number. The mere sight of me fills him with a quart of adrenaline. Even when I see him in the locker room before our match, he looks as if he’s just been reminiscing about the time he beat me at the 1998 U.S. Open. He comes out playing superbly, running me ragged, and though I’m keeping pace, I develop blisters all over my right foot. I limp to the side and ask for an injury timeout. A trainer re-tapes my foot, but the real blister is on my brain. I don’t win another game from that point on.
I look up at my box. Stefanie has her head down. She’s never seen me lose like this.
Later I tell her that I don’t understand why I sometimes come apart—still. She gives me insights from her experience. Stop thinking, she says. Feeling is the thing. Feeling.
It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. It sounds like a sweeter, softer version of my father. But when Stefanie says it, the words go in deeper.
We talk for days about thinking versus feeling. She says it’s one thing not to think, but you can’t then decide to feel. You can’t try to feel. You have to let yourself feel.
Other times, Stefanie knows there is nothing to be said. She touches my cheek and tilts her head and I see that she gets it—that she’s been there—and that’s enough. That’s exactly what I need.
We go to the 2000 Wimbledon. I take great pleasure in watching Stefanie explore London. At last, she says, she can actually see this beautiful city, because she’s not looking at it through a haze of pressure and injuries. Tennis players travel as much as any athletes, but the stress and rigors of the game keep us from seeing. Now Stefanie gets to see everything. She walks everywhere, exploring all the shops and parks. She drops into a famous pancake restaurant she’s always wanted to try. It serves 150 different kinds of pancake, and she samples just about every kind, without having to worry about feeling heavy-footed on the court.
True to form, I see nothing in London but my draw. With blinders on I fight my way to the semis. I face Rafter. He’s putting together a beautiful career. Two-time U.S. Open champ. Former number one. Now they say he’s trying to come back from shoulder surgery, though he’s acing me left and right. When he’s not acing me he’s dancing in behind his serve, letting nothing past. I try lobbing him. I hit what feel like unreturnable shots as they leave my racket, but he always gets back in time. We play for three and a half hours, high-quality tennis, and it all comes down to the sixth game of the fifth set. Trying to put something extra on a second serve, I double-fault.
Break point.
I serve, he hits a crisp return, I net the ball.
I can’t break him back. He’s landing 74 percent of his first serves, and he first-serves his way into the final. He’s earned the right to play Pete for the championship. I wanted to play Pete with Stefanie watching, but it’s not to be. A year ago I beat Rafter here in the semis, when he felt the first twinges in his shoulder. Now he comes back and beats me in the semis with his shoulder fully healed. I like Rafter, and I like symmetry. I can’t argue with that story line.
Stefanie and I fly home. I need rest. Then the bad news starts pouring in. My sister Tami has gotten a diagnosis of breast cancer. Days later, my mother gets the same diagnosis. I give up my spot on the Olympic team going to Sydney. I want to spend as much time as possible with my family. I need to shut down for the year, until January at least.
My mother won’t hear of it.
Go, she says. Play. Do your job.
I try. I go to D.C., but play the way I always do when I can’t concentrate. Against Corretja I break three rackets in anger and lose in two spiritless sets.
At the 2000 U.S. Open, I’m the number one seed. The favorite to win it. On the eve of the tournament, I sit with Gil at the Lowell Hotel, feeling not favored, but fucked. It should be a happy time. I could win this thing, I could shock the world. And I don’t care.
Gil, why go on?
Maybe you shouldn’t.
Why do I feel—this way—the old way—again?
It’s a rhetorical question. Kacey is fully recovered, thriving, talking about college, but Gil never forgets what it’s like to have someone you love lying in a hospital bed. He knows what I’m saying without my saying it: Why must the people we love suffer? Why can’t life be perfect? Why, every day, somewhere on this earth, does someone have to lose?