Steffi Graf.

As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Butterflies are funny. Some days they make you run to the toilet. Other days they make you horny. Other days they make you laugh, and long for the fight. Deciding which type of butterflies you’ve got going (monarchs or moths) is the first order of business when you’re driving to the arena. Figuring out your butterflies, deciphering what they say ab

She’s sitting on a stool at the butcher block island. Always an island. One way or another, we spend all our time together on islands. We are islands. Two islands. And I can’t recall when it was different.

On the day of a match, I don’t worry about calories and nutrition. I worry about having energy and feeling full. Also, because of my nerves, it’s rare that I’m hungry on match day, so any time I have an appetite I try to capitalize. I give my stomach whatever it asks for.

She tells me, however, that my father decided long before I was born that I would be a professional tennis player.

think of my skeleton on display at the museum with all the other dinosaurs. Tennis-aurus Rex.

Unless I can accept that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’ll never belong there again.

My father named me Andre Kirk Agassi, after his bosses at the casino. I ask my mother why my father named me after his bosses. Were they friends? Did he admire them? Did he owe them money? She doesn’t know. And it’s not the kind of question you can ask my father directly. You can’t ask my father anything directly. So I file it away with all the oth