The talent assembled at Wimbledon is stunning. There’s Jim Courier, ranked number one, fresh off two Grand Slam victories. There’s Pete Sampras, who keeps getting better. There’s Stefan Edberg, who’s playing out of his mind. I’m the 12th seed, and the way I’ve been playing I should be seeded lower.

In the quarters I go up against Boris Becker, who’s reached six of the last seven Wimbledon finals. This is his de facto home court. But I’ve been seeing his serve well lately. I win in five sets, played over two days.

In the semis I face John McEnroe, a three-time Wimbledon champion. He’s 33, nearing the end of his career, and unseeded. The fans want him to win, of course. Part of me wants him to win also. But I beat him in three sets. I’m in the final.

I’m expecting to face Pete, but he loses his semi to Goran Ivanisevic, a big, strong serving machine from Croatia. I’ve played him twice before, and both times he’s shellacked me in straight sets. I have no chance against him. It’s a middleweight versus a heavyweight. The only suspense is whether it will be a knockout or a TKO.

As powerful as Ivanisevic’s serve is under normal circumstances, in the final it’s a work of art. He’s acing me left and right, monster serves that the speed gun clocks as fast as 138mph. But it’s not just the speed, it’s the trajectory. They land at a 75-degree angle. Each time he serves a ball past me, I say under my breath that he can’t do that every time. The match will be decided on second serves.

He wins the first set, 7-6. I don’t break him once. I concentrate on breathing in, breathing out, remaining patient. When the thought crosses my mind that I’m on the verge of losing my fourth Grand Slam final without a victory, I casually set it aside.

In the second set Ivanisevic gives me a few freebies, makes a few mistakes, and I break him. I take the second set. Then the third. Which makes me feel almost worse, because once again I’m a set away from a Slam.

Ivanisevic rises up in the fourth set and destroys me. I’ve made the Croat mad. He loses only a handful of points. As the fifth set begins I run in place to get the blood flowing and tell myself: You want this. The problem in the last three Slams was that you didn’t want them enough, and you didn’t bring it, so this time you need to let Ivanisevic and everyone else in this joint know you want it.

Now Ivanisevic is serving at 4-5. He double faults. Twice. He’s down love-30. He’s cracking under the strain. He misses another first serve. I know precisely what’s happening inside Ivanisevic’s body. His throat is closing. His legs are quivering. But then he quiets his body and hits a second serve to the back of the box, a beam of yellow light that barely nicks the line. A puff of chalk shoots up. Then he hits another unreturnable serve. Suddenly it’s 30-all.

He misses another first serve, makes the second. I crush a return, he hits a half volley, I run in and pass him and start the long walk back to the baseline. I tell myself, you can win this thing with one swing. One swing. You’ve never been this close.

You may never be again.

And that’s the problem. What if I get this close and don’t win? The ridicule. The condemnation. I pause, try to shift my focus back to Ivanisevic. I need to guess which way he’s coming with his serve. OK, a typical lefty, serving to the ad court in a pressure point, will hit a bending slider out wide, to sweep his opponent off the court. But Ivanisevic isn’t typical.

His serve in a pressure point is usually a flat bomb up the middle. Sure enough, here he comes, but he nets the serve. Good thing, because that thing was a comet, right on the line. Even though I guessed right, I couldn’t have put my racket on it.

Now the crowd rises. I call time, to have a talk with myself, saying aloud: Win this point or I’ll never let you hear the end of it, Andre. Don’t hope he double-faults. You control what you can control. Return this serve with all your strength, and if you return it hard but miss, you can live with that. You can survive that. One return, no regrets.

Hit harder.

He tosses the ball, serves to my backhand. I jump in the air, swing with all my strength, but I’m so tight that the ball to his backhand side has mediocre pace. Somehow he misses the easy volley. His ball smacks the net, and just like that, after 22 years and 22 million swings of a tennis racket, I’m a Grand Slam champion.

Later in the afternoon, trembling, I dial my father in Vegas.

Pops? It’s me! Can you hear me? What’d you think? Silence.

Pops? You had no business losing that fourth set.

Stunned, I wait, not trusting my voice. Then I say, Good thing I won the fifth set, though, right? He says nothing. Not because he disagrees or disapproves, but because he’s crying.

Faintly I hear my father sniffling, and I know he’s proud, just incapable of expressing it. I can’t fault the man for not knowing how to say what’s in his heart. It’s the family curse.

1999 Battle of the sexes I didn’t mind losing

She 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 done it since winning the French Open that way months ago, and I’m never going back.

We talk for the first time about tennis. When I tell her I hate it, she turns to me with a look that says, Of course. Doesn’t everybody? 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 metres.

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, after separating from Brooke, 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 her peals of laughter carry back to me like streamers on the wind.

I’ve never been so happy to lose.

2000 Competitive dads pulling no punches

Stefanie tells me her father is coming to Vegas for a visit. 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 before 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.

I should have expected it: The first thing Peter wants to see in Nevada isn’t Hoover Dam or the Strip but my father’s ball machine.

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 former athletes, know how to use their bodies to communicate, through swings and gestures and grunts. My father takes us to his backyard court and wheels out the dragon. He revs the motor, raises the pedestal high. He’s talking nonstop, 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. Peter positions himself behind me and watches while I hit. Ahh, he says. Ja. Good.

My father clicks the dial until the balls are coming almost in twos. I don’t have time to bring back my racket and hit the second ball. Peter scolds me for missing. He takes the racket, 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 her.

My father is livid. He comes around the net, shouting: That slice is bulls***! 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 32 Slams!

The two men can’t understand each other, yet they’re having a heated argument. I turn my back, concentrate on hitting balls. I hear Peter mention my rivals, Sampras and Patrick Rafter, and my father responds with Stefanie’s nemeses, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport. My father then uses a boxing analogy, and Peter howls in protest.

I was a boxer, too, Peter says — and I would have knocked you out.

I cringe, knowing what’s coming. I wheel just in time to see Stefanie’s 63-year-old father take off his shirt and tell my 69-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.

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.

They’re winded, sweating. My father’s eyes are dilated. Peter’s 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.

2006 Fitting farewell? Just get me a doctor

Everyone travels to New York for my last US Open. The whole team. Stefanie, the children, my parents, my brother Philly, Gil, my friend Perry Rogers, my coach Darren Cahill. We invade the Four Seasons, colonise my favourite Manhattan restaurant, Campagnola. The children smile to hear the applause as we walk in. To my ear, the applause sounds different this time. It has a subtext. They know this isn’t about me, it’s about all of us finishing something special together.

In the first round I play Andrei Pavel, from Romania. My back seizes up midway through the match, but despite standing stick straight I manage to tough out a win. I ask Darren to arrange a cortisone shot for the next day. Even with the shot, I don’t know if I’ll be able to play my next match.

I certainly won’t be able to win. Not against Marcos Baghdatis. He’s ranked number eight in the world. He’s a big strong kid from Cyprus, in the midst of a great year. He’s reached the final of the Australian Open and the semis of Wimbledon.

And then somehow I beat him, in five furious, agonising sets. Afterwards I’m barely able to stagger up the tunnel and into the locker room before my back gives out. Darren and Gil lift me onto the training table, while Baghdatis’s people hoist him onto the table beside me. He’s cramping badly. A trainer says the doctors are on the way. He turns on the TV above the table and everyone clears out, leaving just me and Baghdatis, both of us writhing and groaning in pain.

The TV flashes highlights from our match. SportsCenter. In my peripheral vision I detect slight movement. I turn to see Baghdatis extending his hand. His face says, We did that. I reach out, take his hand, and we remain this way, holding hands, as the TV flickers with highlights of our savage battle. We relive the match, and then I relive my life.

Finally the doctors arrive. It takes them and the trainers half an hour to get Baghdatis and me on our feet. Gil and Darren lead me out to the parking lot. It’s two in the morning. Christ, Darren says. The car is several hundred yards away. I tell him I can’t make it.

No, of course not, he says. Wait here and I’ll bring it around. He runs off.

I need to lie down while we wait. Gil sets my tennis bag on the cement and I sit, then lie back, using the bag as a pillow.

I look up at the stars. So many stars. I look at the light stanchions that rim the stadium. They seem like bigger, closer stars.

Suddenly, an explosion. A sound like a giant can of tennis balls being opened. One stanchion goes out. Then another, and another.

I close my eyes. It’s over.

No. Hell no. It will never really be over.

The next morning I’m hobbling through the lobby of the Four Seasons when a man steps out of the shadows. He grabs my arm.

Quit, he says.

What?

It’s my father — or a ghost of my father. He looks ashen. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in weeks.

Pops? What are you talking about? Just quit. Go home. You did it. It’s over.

He says he prays for me to retire. He says he can’t wait for me to be done, so he won’t have to watch me suffer anymore. He won’t have to sit through my matches with his heart in his mouth. He won’t have to stay up until two in the morning to catch a match from the other side of the world, so he can scout some new wonder boy I might soon have to face. He’s sick of the whole miserable thing. He sounds as if — is it possible?

Yes, I see it in his eyes. I know that look.

© Andre Agassi 2009 Extracted from Open: An Autobiography, to be published on November 9 by HarperCollins at £20.

Copies can be ordered for £18 (free p&p) from The Times BooksFirst on 0845-271-2134