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Still, as the first few games unfold, I realize that several things are in my favor. Martin is better on grass than hard court. This is
my
surface. Also, like me, he’s an underachiever. He’s a fellow slave to nerves. I understand the man I’m playing, therefore, understand him intimately. Simply knowing your enemy is a powerful advantage.

Above all, Martin has a tic. A tell. Some players, when serving, look at their opponent. Some look at nothing. Martin looks at a particular spot in the service box. If he stares a long time at that spot, he’s serving in the opposite direction. If he merely glances, he’s serving right at that spot. You might not notice it at 0–0, or 15–love, but on break point, he stares at that spot with psycho eyes, like the killer in a horror movie, or glances and looks away like a beginner at the poker tables.

The match unfolds so easily, however, that I don’t need Martin’s tell. He seems unsteady, dwarfed by the occasion, whereas I’m playing with uncommon determination. I see him doubt himself—I can almost hear his doubt—and I sympathize. As I walk off the court, the winner in four sets, I think, He’s got some maturing to do. Then I catch myself. Did I really just say that—about someone else?

In the final I face Michael Stich, from Germany. He’s been to the final at three slams, so he’s not like Martin, he’s a threat on every surface. He’s also a superb athlete with an unreal wingspan. He has a mighty first serve, heavy and fast, and when it’s on, which it usually is, he can serve you into next week. He’s so accurate, you’re shocked when he misses, and you have to overcome your shock to stay in the point. Even when he does miss, however, you’re not out of the woods, because then he falls back on his safe serve, a knuckleball that leaves you with your jock on the ground. And just to keep you a bit more off balance, Stich is without any patterns
or tendencies. You never know if he’s going to serve and volley or stay back at the baseline.

Hoping to seize control, dictate the terms, I come fast out of the blocks, hitting the ball clean, crisp, pretending to feel no fear. I like the sound the ball makes off my racket. I like the sound of the crowd, their oohs and aahs. Stich, meanwhile, comes out skittish. When you lose the first set as quickly as he does, 6–1, your instinct is to panic. I can see in his body language that he’s succumbing to that instinct.

He pulls himself together in the second set, however, and gives me a two-fisted battle. I win
7–6
, but feel lucky. I know it could have gone either way.

In the third set we both raise the stakes. I feel the finish line pulling, but now he’s mentally committed to this fight. There have been times in the past when he’s given up against me, when he’s taken unnecessary risks because he hasn’t believed in himself. Not this time. He’s playing smart, proving to me that I’m going to have to rip the trophy from him if I really want it. And I do want it. So I will rip it. We have long rallies off my serve, until he realizes I’m committed, I’m willing to hit with him all day. I catch sight of him grabbing his side, winded. I start picturing how the trophy will look in the bachelor pad back in Vegas.

There are no breaks of serve through the third set. Until 5–all. Finally I break him, and now I’m serving for the match. I hear Brad’s voice, as clearly as if he were standing behind me.
Go for his forehand. When in doubt, forehand, forehand
. So I hit to Stich’s forehand. Again and again he misses. The outcome feels, to both of us, I think, inevitable.

I fall to my knees. My eyes fill with tears. I look to my box, to Perry and Philly and Gil and especially Brad. You know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph. I’ve believed in Brad’s talent from the beginning, but now, seeing his pure and unrestrained happiness for me, I
believe
unrestrainedly in him.

Reporters tell me I’m the first unseeded player since 1966 to win the U.S. Open. More importantly, the first man who ever did it was Frank Shields, grandfather of the fifth person in my box. Brooke, who’s been here for every match, looks every bit as happy as Brad.

My new girlfriend, my new coach, my new manager, my surrogate father.

At last, the team is firmly, irrevocably, in place.

I
THINK
you should get rid of that hairpiece, Brooke says. And that ponytail. Shave your hair short, short, and be done with it.

Impossible. I’d feel naked.

You’d feel liberated.

I’d feel exposed.

It’s as though she’s suggesting I have all my teeth pulled. I tell her to forget it. Then I go away and think about it for a few days. I think about the pain my hair has caused me, the inconvenience of the hairpieces, the hypocrisy and the pretending and the lying. Maybe it isn’t crazy after all. Maybe it’s the first step toward sanity.

I stand before Brooke one morning and say, Let’s do it.

Do what?

Cut it off. Let’s cut it
all
off.

We schedule the ceremonial shearing for late at night, at an hour normally reserved for séances and raves. It’s to be in the kitchen of Brooke’s brownstone, after she returns from the theater. (She got the part in
Grease.)
We’ll make a party of it, she says, invite some friends.

Perry is there. And, despite our breakup, Wendi. Brooke is openly irritated by the presence of Wendi, and vice versa. Perry is baffled by it. I explain to Brooke and Perry that despite our romantic history, Wendi is still a close friend, a lifelong friend. Being shorn is a dramatic step, and I need friends in the room for moral support, just as I needed Gil there when I had my wrist surgery. In fact, it crosses my mind that for this surgery I should also be sedated. We send out for wine.

Brooke’s hairdresser, Matthew, puts my head over the sink, washes my hair, then pulls it all tight.

Andre—are you sure?

No.

Are you ready?

No.

Do you want to do this in front of a mirror?

No. I don’t want to watch.

He puts me in a wooden chair and then—snip. There goes the pony-tail.

Everyone applauds.

He begins cutting the hair on the sides of my head, tight, close to the skull. I think of the mohawk at the Bradenton Mall. I close my eyes, feel my heart pound, as if I’m about to play a final. This was a mistake. Maybe the defining mistake of my life. J.P. warned me not to do this. J.P. said that whenever he attends one of my matches, he hears people talking about my hair. Women love me for it, men hate me for it. Now that J.P. has quit pastoring, devoted himself to music, he’s been doing some work in advertising, writing jingles for radio and TV commercials, so he spoke with some authority when he proclaimed: As far as the corporate world is concerned, Andre Agassi
is
his hair. And when Andre Agassi’s hair is gone, corporate sponsors will be gone.

He also suggested pointedly that I reread the Bible story about Samson and Delilah.

As Matthew cuts and cuts,
and cuts
, I realize I should have listened to J.P. When has J.P. ever steered me wrong? With clumps of my hair falling to the floor, I feel clumps of me falling away.

It takes eleven minutes. Then Matthew whisks away the smock and says,
Ta-dah!

I walk to the mirror. I see a person I don’t recognize. Before me stands a total stranger. My reflection isn’t different, it’s simply not me. But, really, what the hell have I lost? Maybe I’ll have an easier time being
this
guy. All this time with Brad, trying to fix what’s
in
my head, it never occurred to me to fix what’s
on
my head. I smile at my reflection, run a hand over my scalp. Hello. Nice to meet you.

As night turns to morning, as we work our way through several bottles of wine, I feel exhilarated, and heavily indebted to Brooke. You were right, I tell her. My hairpiece was a shackle, and my natural hair, grown to absurd lengths, dyed three different colors, was a weight as well, holding me down. It seems so trivial—hair. But hair has been the crux of my public image, and my self-image, and it’s been a sham.

Now the sham is lying on Brooke’s floor in tiny haystacks. I feel well rid of it. I feel true. I feel free.

And I play like it. At the 1995 Australian Open I come out like the Incredible Hulk. I don’t drop one set in a take-no-prisoners blitz to the
final. This is the first time I’ve played in Australia, and I can’t imagine why I’ve waited so long. I like the surface, the venue—the heat. Having grown up in Vegas, I don’t feel the heat the way other players do, and the defining characteristic of the Australian Open is the unholy temperature. Just as cigar and pipe smoke lingers in the memory after playing Roland Garros, the hazy memory of playing in a giant kiln stays with you for weeks after you leave Melbourne.

I also enjoy the Australian people, and they apparently enjoy me, even though I’m not me, I’m this new bald guy in a bandana and a goatee and a hoop earring. Newspapers go to town with my new look. Everyone has an opinion. Fans who rooted for me are disoriented. Fans who rooted against me have a new reason to dislike me. I read and hear a remarkable succession of pirate jokes. I never knew there could be so many pirate jokes. But I don’t care. I tell myself that everyone is going to have to deal with this pirate, accept this pirate, when I hoist that trophy.

In the final I run smack into Pete. I lose the first set in nothing flat. I lose it gutlessly, on a double fault. Here we go again.

I take time before the second set to collect myself. I glance toward my box. Brad looks frustrated. He’s never believed that Pete is the better player. His face says,
You’re
the better player, Andre. Don’t respect him so much.

Pete is serving live grenades, one after another, a typical Pete fusillade. But in the middle of the second set, I feel him tiring. His grenades still have the pins in them. He’s wearing down physically, and emotionally, because he’s been through hell these last few days. His longtime coach, Tim Gullickson, suffered two strokes, and then they discovered a tumor in his brain. Pete is traumatized. As the match turns my way, I feel guilty. I’d be willing to stop, let Pete go into the locker room, get an IV, and come back as that other Pete who likes to kick my ass at slams.

I break him twice. He slumps his shoulders, concedes the set.

The third set comes down to a jittery tiebreak. I grab a 3–0 lead and then Pete wins the next four points. Suddenly he’s up 6–4, serving for the set. I let out a caveman scream, as if I’m in the weight room with Gil, and put everything I’ve got into a return that nicks the net and stays inside the line. Pete stares at the ball, then me.

On the next point he hits a forehand that sails long. We’re deadlocked at 6. A furious rally ends when I shock him by coming to the net and hitting a soft backhand drop volley. It works so well, I do it again. Set, Agassi. Momentum, ditto.

The fourth set is a foregone conclusion. I keep my foot on the gas and
win, 6–4. Pete looks resolved. Too much hill to climb. In fact, he’s maddeningly unruffled as he comes to the net.

It’s my second slam in a row, my third overall. Everyone says it’s my best slam yet, because it’s my first victory over Pete in a slam final. But I think twenty years from now I’ll remember it as my first bald slam.

T
HE TALK TURNS IMMEDIATELY
to my reaching number one. Pete’s been number one for seventy weeks, and everyone on my team says I’m destined to kick him off the top of that vaunted mountain. I tell them that tennis has nothing to do with destiny. Destiny has better things to do than count ATP points.

Still, I make it my goal to be number one, because my team wants it.

I cloister myself in Gil’s gym and train with fury. I tell him about the goal, and he draws up a battle plan. First, he designs a course of study. He sets about collecting a master list of phone numbers and addresses for the world’s most acclaimed sports doctors and nutritionists, and reaches out to all of them, turns them into his private consultants. He huddles with experts at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He flies coast to coast, interviewing the best and brightest, famed researchers on health and wellness, recording every word they tell him in his da Vinci notebooks. He reads everything, from muscle magazines to obscure medical studies and dry reports. He subscribes to the
New England Journal of Medicine
. In no time he makes himself a portable university, with one professor and one subject. The student body: me.

Then he determines my physical limit, and pushes me right up to it. He soon has me bench-pressing almost twice my weight, five to seven sets of more than three hundred pounds. He has me lifting fifty-pound dumbbells in excruciating sets of three-ways: back-to-back-to-back flexes that burn three different muscles in my shoulders. Then we work on biceps and triceps. We burn my muscles to ashes. I like when Gil talks about burning muscles, setting them afire. I like being able to put my pyromania to constructive use.

Next we concentrate on my midsection, beginning with a special machine Gil designed and built. As with all his machines, he chopped it, cut it, re-welded it. (The blueprints in his da Vinci notebooks are stunning.) It’s the only machine of its kind in the world, he says, because it allows me to work my abs without engaging my fragile back. We’re going to stack heavy on your abs, he says, work them until they’re on fire, and
then we’re going to do Russian Twists: you’ll hold a forty-five-pound iron plate, a big wheel, and rotate left, right, left, right. That will burn down your sides and obliques.

Last, we move to Gil’s homemade lat machine. Unlike every lat machine in every gym the world over, Gil’s doesn’t compromise my back or neck. The bar I pull to work my lats is slightly in front of me. I’m never awkwardly positioned.

While I’m lifting, Gil also feeds me constantly, every twenty minutes. He wants me taking in four parts carbs to one part protein, and he times my intake to the nanosecond.
When
you eat, he says, and
how
you eat, that’s the thing. Every time I turn around he’s shoving a bowl of high-protein oatmeal at me, or a bacon sandwich, or a bagel with peanut butter and honey.