I confess I was late in joining the Andre Agassi fan club. When he was a brash young gun with a mane and a forehand fresh out of Nick Bollietieri’s tennis academy in Bradenton, Florida, I was a staunch Stefan Edberg supporter, entranced by the graceful Swede’s effortless glide to the net and stinging first volleys. As Andre came into his own, shocking the tennis world in ascending the Wimbledon throne, I was hooked by the power, precision and efficiency of Pete Sampras’s dominating game. It took me a decade and a dozen fortnights to fully appreciate Agassi’s genius as a strategist and tactician. But what finally, ultimately, endeared Andre to me was something far greater than his skill with a racquet.
Tennis’s renaissance man redefined himself at every stage of the journey that was his professional tennis career, and each incarnation produced a more complete player and human being. One of the most-photographed athletes of our time, he made the journey from boy-wonder to man-on-a-mission with the whole world looking on. And like other trailblazers before him, along that journey he changed how the game is played and inspired a generation of young players to conceive and play the game in a revolutionary new way. Waning were the days of the serve and volley; the new game demanded speed and power, and the stamina to outlast and out-blast your opponent.
A master of the tactical game
The tennis court with Agassi on it seemed to take on greater dimensions. He created angles that hadn’t previously existed, and forced opponents into long-running rallies that inevitably, invariably, ended badly for them. If tennis can be likened to chess, or boxing, or both, then Agassi perfected the art. In tennis, as in chess, the player who can dominate the center commands the court. From that strong position, he can find ever-wider angles or quickly move in for the kill. A wide-slicing serve allowed Andre to dictate play from the first ball, as it sent his opponents out of bounds and opened the court for his lethal two-fisted backhand or penetrating forehand.
Rarely caught backpedaling, Agassi stalked his opponent like a prizefighter who stakes the center of the ring and refuses to let his prey out of arm’s reach. With a combination of shots to the corners, followed by an unearthly angle and back again to the same spot, he didn’t dazzle his opponent so much as pound him into submission. Like a boxer delivering a series of body blows that weaken his opponent’s defenses and ability to counterpunch, Andre took the wind out of his opponent with a flurry of shots from side to side before delivering the knockout.
It was this strategy of commanding the center of the court and making his opponent do all the work that led an exhausted Edberg to declare that competing against Agassi was harder on the legs than anything he’d ever experienced on a tennis court. And so it was fitting that the only man who could beat Andre at his best was Sampras, the one player whose shot-making ability allowed him to end a point with one powerful swing of his racquet.
Holding his own (and then some) against the greatest
It was Sampras who brought out the best tennis in Agassi, as he was forced to counterpunch, invent and improvise — things he hadn’t had to do often. Against Sampras, we learned to see Andre as a work in progress, a prodigy who had still to reach his full potential. It was his rivalry with Sampras that nearly defined his career as second fiddle, and it was the passion and intensity of that rivalry that propelled Agassi to his greatest heights as a performer. Andre developed his signature departing bow and kiss during the Sampras years, and this, too, would be another way in which he would leave his mark on the sport. Today’s players pay tribute to Andre each time they take the court after victory to salute the crowd in their trademark way.
How untimely that after Sampras retired, leaving Andre as the sole heir to the throne, along came two of the most dominant players the game has ever witnessed. Andy Roddick, with his 140-plus mph serve, could quickly erase any thoughts of breaking serve. And Roger Federer, undeniably the most versatile and talented player anyone has seen in the Open era, simply had too much game for the aging Agassi. Still, Andre competed brilliantly and often stole the show if not the match.
Agassi’s professional career spanned two full decades, years in which the world saw more than a dozen current and future Hall of Fame players take center stage — from McEnroe, Lendl, Becker and Wilander to Edberg, Courier, Chang and Sampras to Muster, Kafelnikov, Ivanisevic and Rafter to Roddick, Hewitt, Nadal and Federer. And there was Andre, standing shoulder to shoulder with them all, often besting them at their peak.
Much is made of the fact, and rightly so, that Agassi is one of only five men in the history of the game to have won all four Grand Slam titles. Along with Don Budge, Fred Perry, Roy Emerson and Rod Laver, Andre has held aloft the championship trophies at Wimbledon, Roland Garros, the US Open and the Australian. Yet Andre is the only man to have accomplished the feat on three different surfaces — the grassy turf, the brick-red clay and the painted asphalt.
A focus on fitness
It is practically legendary how Agassi prepared his body for the physical abuse that 10 months and 18 to 24 tournaments a year doles out. When he came out of Bollietieri’s, he had speed and endurance, but it took years of work and a special relationship with a renowned trainer to cut the figure that would enable Andre to compete at or near the top of the sport well into his 30s. In Gil Reyes, perhaps best known for whipping Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV basketball team into NCAA-championship shape, Andre found the man who would take his fitness to a whole new level.
Fitter and stronger than ever under Reyes’ guidance, Las Vegas’s brightest star still needed to reign in his thoroughbred-like talent, which could at times run away with him. In Brad Gilbert, he found a coach who could teach him the discipline not to gamble too soon but instead to use his superior fitness to wear down opponents and soften them for the kill. Under Gilbert, Agassi began to punish opponents like never before, working them over until they had nothing left to attack him with.
The combination of Reyes’ and Gilbert’s tutelage helped Agassi mold himself into the kind of player most feared on a tennis court — fit, fast, strong and relentless. He had developed into a player whose intellect ruled his instinct, knowing how to play the percentages and when to go for broke. Most likely this transformation was the key to Andre’s four Grand Slam titles after the age of 30.
From Zen master to master of his own destiny
Anyone who spends as much time in the public eye as Agassi cannot help but run afoul of the yellow journalists, and Andre spent his share of time in the pulp magazines. When it became known that Barbra Streisand and Andre had developed a cross-generational friendship, the press had a field day. Streisand’s effusive admiration for the young tennis star created quite a buzz, but failed to deter Andre one bit, as he seemed to grasp that the real motivation behind it all was to sell rag.
The irony in it was that the pop diva may have been right when, referring to Andre’s emotional maturity and self-awareness, Streisand had said he played like a “Zen master.” Anyone witnessing his matches in his final years on the tour would be hard-pressed not to come to a similar conclusion. One could actually see in Andre’s eyes whether he was in the zone — one with the ball and channeling his energies — or whether he would struggle to get in the moment.
When Agassi decided finally to hang up his sticks after nearly twenty years in the top echelon of the game, equaled in modern times only by Jimmy Connors and Ken Rosewall, one could not help but feel that he had given his all and would have no regrets. He seemed to have reached a place of peace that only a person possessing the intellect, the compassion and the self-awareness to be cognizant of his time and his place can achieve.
Giving back
In the later years of his career, one would be hard-pressed to find a more eloquent spokesman for his sport. He was the ultimate sportsman, always speaking highly of his opponent, in both victory and defeat, and reaching into his heart to find the words that would reflect the gravity or levity of the moment.
Well-spoken and reflective — an unusual trait among athletes, but even more impressive given that he had foregone formal schooling after eighth grade to pursue tennis full time — interviews with Andre Agassi never failed to reveal something profound about the man and the state of the game. He was gracious in defeat, and he was the first to tell the world about the gifts the young Roger Federer brought to the game. And, in an interview with Larry King after his exit from the 2006 U.S. Open, Andre extended the ultimate praise for his fellow patriot, James Blake, when he said of him, “[James is] somebody you want your son to grow up to be.” (Read a transcript of the Andre Agassi interview on CNN's Larry King Live.)
In the dog-eat-dog world of professional tennis, there were few players as fair-minded as Agassi. Oftentimes Andre would overrule the linesperson in favor of his opponent, signaling with a nod of his head and a brisk walk to the other receiver’s box that the serve had clipped the line. He wanted to win, but he insisted on winning on his own terms.
Never one to talk at length about his charitable giving, there are few in the sporting world who have given back to their community as Andre has. With his Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, he has committed his considerable resources and talent to providing educational and recreational opportunities to at-risk children of southern Nevada. He established a prep school in the heart of Las Vegas’ most at-risk neighborhood, and each year his Foundation receives several millions in donations from his fundraising efforts.
Andre Agassi has gone the distance and left it all out on the court; taken it all in and given it all back, in spades. And somehow, one senses that he’s just getting started on his life’s true mission.
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