Andre Agassi

Andre Agassi is best known for his strong, smart playing style, which helped him win tennis championships throughout the 1990s.

Born in 1970, Andre Agassi won several USTA junior national titles before turning professional at the age of 16. In 1992, Agassi won his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon. More victories soon followed with a U.S. Open win in 1994 and the Australian Open in 1995. After a career slump, Agassi returned to top form in 1999 with wins at the U.S. Open and French Open. He retired from competition in 2006.

For 20 years, tennis legend Andre Agassi was one of the dominant players in his sport. He first picked up a racket when he was a toddler at the insistence of his father. His father, an immigrant from Iran and a former Olympic boxer, served as his first coach, making Agassi practice for hours at the family's Las Vegas, Nevada home.

In his mid-teens, Agassi abandoned his education to train full time. He moved to Florida where he went to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. Agassi proved to be one of the top junior players in the sport, winning several U.S. Tennis Association national titles. At the age of sixteen, Agassi decided it was time to compete in the big leagues. The young tennis player turned professional in 1986.

When he first arrived on the tennis scene, Agassi turned heads and raised eyebrows with his wild hair and bright clothing. The boisterous athlete quickly had an endorsement deal with Nike before even winning a title. Some wondered whether there was any substance behind of his youthful good looks and flashy style. While Agassi won his first competition in 1987, but he failed to clinch a major title during his early career. In 1992, Agassi silenced his critics with a win at Wimbledon, his first Grand Slam title.

After his Wimbledon win, Agassi had several more Grand Slam victories in the early 1990s. He took the top spot at the U.S. Open in 1994. He was victorious at the Australian Open in 1995, which helped him climb to the top of rankings that year. Clearly at the top of his game, Agassi won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Georgia. Off the court, charismatic Agassi's personal life became a popular topic in the tabloids. He was romantically linked to singer Barbra Streisand before marrying actress Brooke Shields in 1997.

Beginning in 1997, Agassi went through a difficult patch, both professionally and personally. He failed to win any tournaments that year, and the former number-one player dropped significantly in the rankings. According to his autobiography Open, Agassi had been introduced to crystal meth by a friend. He tested positive for drugs in 1997, but he told the Association of Tennis Professionals that his drug use had been accidental. Agassi claimed that he had "unwittingly" drank a drug-laced beverage belonging to a friend. Speaking about his drug use, he later told People magazine that "I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem.

Agassi credits the dramatic, mid-90s revival in his fortunes to his new coach, Brad Gilbert, author of Winning Ugly. The problem with JR, Andre's book coach, is that he makes Writing Easy. His hand is too obviously dab. It's not that Open reads as if it's been written with a view to a lucrative serial deal (normal enough); it reads as if it's already a serialisation of itself with potential headlines (Agassi took crystal meth!) and pull quotes ("I always hated tennis") thrown in. Perhaps this is why, strangely, it rings least true at moments of maximum declared honesty. "I've always been a truthful person," Andre confesses while preparing a singularly unconvincing lie to explain how he tested positive for meth.


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It might be true that, after arranging "a nest egg of Nike stock" for a friend's sick child, Andre learned that "the only perfection… is the perfection of helping others", but, put like this, it sounds like he's just signed a new endorsement for Compassion Inc. Speaking of which, after shooting himself in the foot with a Canon campaign based around the slogan "Image Is Everything", Agassi feels "betrayed by the advertising agency, the Canon execs", by everyone "who treats this ridiculous throwaway slogan as if it's my Confession". That's the spin he puts on it. But in this Confession – a confession in danger of being reduced to the slogan "I hated tennis and took meth" – maybe we should have been told approximately how many millions it took to lure him to participate in this betrayal in the first place.

Since the autobiography of a tennis player is, by definition, self-serving, it's worth bearing in mind a 1996 essay in which the late David Foster Wallace wrote that he "loathe[d] Agassi with a passion" and found him, in person, "about as cute as a Port Authority whore". So maybe the opprobrium wasn't all about a look – "fluffy, spiky, two-toned mullet, with black roots and frosted tips" – which, in fairness, seems far more preposterous now than it did at the time. Even then, one suspected that Agassi's rebellious image was partly manufactured in consort with his sponsors.

Still, it comes as a shock to learn that by 1990 the hair itself was manufactured. Yes, he was wearing a hairpiece, which disintegrated in the shower the night before the final of the French Open. It wasn't until 1994, by which time he had won titles at Wimbledon and the US Open and was living with Brooke Shields, that Agassi plucked up the courage to show his fuzzy skull to the world. Quite a change: having thought about nothing but hitting tennis balls, he now starts looking like a tennis ball!

The final incarnation – duck-waddle Buddha, oldest surviving veteran of the war of attrition known as the ATP Tour – is still some way off. Before that, he plummets to 146 in the world rankings, takes meth and splits from Brooke. After that, as we all know, he bounces back (that's what tennis balls do), wins more Slams, courts and marries Steffi Graf, has kids and sets up an entirely admirable educational foundation in his home town, Las Vegas. By the time he takes his final, tearful bow at the US Open in 2006, he is universally and understandably adored. Defeated, he goes back to the locker room where players past and present stand in spontaneous applause. All except Jimmy Connors, face blank and "arms tightly folded".

Andre first hit with Connors when he was four and encountered him regularly thereafter. His dad used to string Jimbo's rackets and would ask Andre to take them over to him, an experience rendered mortifying by Connors's boorishness. The young Andre is similarly wounded by the "big, stupid Romanian", Ilie Nastase.

Nobody, however, wounds Andre like his dad. Maniacal Mike Agassi customises a tennis-ball machine so that it sprays thousands of balls at his boy, yelling at him – this will become Andre's counter-punching trademark – to hit the ball hard and on the rise. But he is not the only crazy parent – and Andre is not the only precocious talent – on the circuit. As Agassi makes the rounds, there are intriguing early glimpses of his rivals: cheating Jeff Tarango (later to achieve fame by storming off court at Wimbledon) and, at the Bollettieri Academy ("a glorified prison camp"), future world number one Jim Courier.

Waiting in the wings is Agassi's nemesis, Pete Sampras. In tennis terms, theirs was a great rivalry, undermined, in spite of Nike's best efforts – remember the ad in which the pair of them sling up a net and start duking it out in the street? – by the fact that a gibbon with a racket would have brought more to the part than "Pistol" Pete. Unlike Agassi, Sampras is content to be magnificent at tennis and totally uninterested in everything else. The perpetually tormented Agassi envies him his "dullness" and "spectacular lack of inspiration".
Eventually turning his life around, Agassi launched an impressive comeback in 1999. He won two Grand Slam titles that year—the French Open and the U.S. Open. Agassi also made changes in his personal life, divorcing his wife after nearly two years. He remained focused on his game, allowing him to continue his winning ways. Agassi emerged victorious at the Australian Open in 2000, 2001, and 2003.

By 2006, Agassi's health issues had begun to limit his ability to play. He had been born with spinal abnormality and had to withdraw from several competitions that year because of back problems. Agassi fought for one more Grand Slam title, but it was not to be. On September 4, 2006, Agassi lost his last professional match to Benjamin Becker. At the end of the match, Agassi said an emotional good-bye to the game and to the roughly 23,000 people who had packed the stadium to see him play for the last time.

A dedicated philanthropist, Agassi spends much of his time these days on working educational programs and initiatives. He created the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation in 1994, which provides at-risk children in southern Nevada with educational opportunities and recreational activities. The foundation raised the money needed to start the Andre Agassi College Preparatory School, which opened its doors in West Las Vegas in 2001.

Married to fellow tennis great Steffi Graf since 2001, Agassi is devoted to his family. He and Graf have two children together. The couple has also teamed up the U.S. Tennis Association's 10 and Under Tennis Program. Agassi was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2011.