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Stefanie is crying. My eyes are filled with tears. Gil is standing ten feet away, in front of the leg extension machine. He has his trademark pencil behind his ear, his glasses on the end of his nose, his da Vinci notebook open. He reaches me in three steps and folds me in his arms. I feel his necklace against my cheek. Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

I’
M CLOSE TO BEATING
R
AFTER
at the 2001 Wimbledon. Fifth set, serving for the match, two points from winning, I net a tentative forehand. On the next point I miss an easy backhand. He’s broken back. Now it’s he who thinks he’s close to beating me.

I shout,
Motherfucker
.

A lineswoman promptly reports me to the umpire.

I get an obscenity warning.

Now I can think of nothing but this busybody lineswoman. I lose the set, 8–6, and the match. It feels disappointing and unimportant at the same time.

Along with Stefanie’s health and our budding family, my thoughts are never far from my school, which is due to open this fall, with two hundred students, grades three through five—though we have plans to expand quickly to include kindergarten through twelfth grade. In two years we’ll have the middle school built. In another two years, the high school.

I love our concepts, our designs, but I’m particularly proud of our commitment to putting money behind our ideas. Lots of money. Perry and I were horrified to learn that Nevada spends less than almost any other state on education—$6,800 per pupil, as compared with the national average of nearly $8,600. Thus, at my school we’ve vowed to make up the difference, and then some. Through a mix of state funding and private donors, we’re going to invest heavily in kids and thereby prove that in education, as in all things, you get what you pay for.

We’re also going to keep our kids in school more hours each day—eight instead of Nevada’s customary six. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that time and practice equal achievement. Further, we’re going to insist that parents become intimately involved with the school. At least one parent per child will be required to spend twelve hours a month volunteering as a student aide in the classrooms or a monitor on school trips. We want parents to feel like shareholders. We want them fully committed and responsible for getting their children into college.

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.

I
N
O
CTOBER
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.

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.

S
TEFANIE AND
J
ADEN 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.

I’d like to win this tournament for my wife and six-month-old son, and yet I don’t worry about losing, don’t care if I lose,
because
of them. Each night, within minutes of coming home from the courts, as I’m cradling Jaden and cuddling Stefanie, I can barely recall if I won or lost. Tennis fades as quickly as the daylight. I almost imagine that the calluses on my playing hand are disappearing, the inflamed nerves in my back cooling and mending. I’m a father first, a tennis player second, and this evolution happens without my being aware.

One morning Stefanie goes off to buy groceries and get in a fast workout. She dares to leave me alone with Jaden. My first time flying solo.

You two going to be OK? she asks.

Of course.

I sit Jaden on the bathroom counter, lean him against the mirror, let him play with my toothbrush while I get ready. He likes to suck on the toothbrush while watching me shave my head with the electric shearers.

I ask him, What do you think of your bald daddy?

He smiles.

You know, son, I was once like you: long hair flowing in every direction. You’re not fooling anyone with that comb-over.

He smiles wider, no idea what I’m saying, of course.

I measure his hair with my fingers.

Actually, you look a little ratty there, buddy. You could use a clean-up.

I put a different attachment on the shearer, the attachment for trimming. When I run the shearer across Jaden’s little head, however, it leaves a bright stripe of scalp down the middle, as white as a baseline.

Wrong attachment.

Stefanie will murder me. I need to even this boy’s hair out before she gets home. But in my frantic attempt to even out the hair, I make it shorter. Before I know what’s happened, my son is balder than I. He looks like Mini-Me.

When Stefanie comes through the door she stops in her tracks and stares, saucer-eyed. What the—? Andre, she says, what on earth is the matter with you? I leave you alone for forty-five minutes and
you shave the baby
?

Then she lets fly a burst of histrionic German.

I tell her it was an accident. The wrong attachment. I beg her forgiveness.

I know, I say, it looks like I did this on purpose. I know I’m always joking about wanting to
shave the world
. But honest, Stefanie, this was a mistake.

I try to remind her of that old wives’ tale, that if you shave a child’s head the hair will grow back faster and thicker, but she holds up a hand and starts laughing. She’s bent over laughing. Now Jaden is laughing at Mommy laughing. Now we’re all giggling, rubbing Jaden’s head and mine, joking that the only one left is Stefanie, and she’d better sleep with one eye open. I’m laughing too hard to speak, and days later, in the final of Key Biscayne, I beat Federer. It’s a good win. He’s as hot as anyone on tour. He came into this tournament with twenty-three wins so far this year.