JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY: REBEL TO STATESMAN – ANDRE AGASSI
By Harvey Araton

The New York Times
August 29, 2006 Tuesday
Late Edition – Final

THE veteran Andre Agassi watcher knew better than to kiss off Agassi’s
21st United States Open as a formal farewell, even if the heavy odds
and his 36-year-old legs told us last night that was all it could be.

You could say that Agassi made his contender’s last stand here last
year, when he beat James Blake in a five-set match for the ages
before losing the final, with honor, never falling to the level of
Federer fodder.

Then his chronic back staged a full-scale insurgency, and he announced
that his last professional ball would be struck in New York. Hence,
the Andre vigil began with an exhausting 6-7 (4), 7-6 (8), 7-6 (6), 6-2
victory against the Romanian journeyman Andrei Pavel in a ceremonially
charged atmosphere at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center

"I know he’s got tennis left in his hands — he made the final here
last year — but I hope he has it left in his back," Agassi’s former
opponent, Jim Courier, said earlier. But the back is brittle, the body
lacks snap, and Agassi’s second-round date with Marcos Baghdatis should
be the final bow, the dropping of the curtain on the Las Vegas showman,
after being what Courier called "the iconic figure in tennis for the
last 20 years, the leading personality, the biggest drawing card."

>>From style to substance, hair to bare, Agassi has compelled us to
take notice, made an impression, for better (now) or worse (then).

His locker-room colleagues yesterday — from the 17-year-old American
Donald Young to 53-year-old Jimmy Connors — could undoubtedly pinpoint
the first time they laid eyes on the man who, in the process of aging,
produced a most remarkable rebirth.

Connors declined to dig into his mental archives, citing the more
immediate "business responsibilities" of coaching Andy Roddick to a
first-round victory against Florent Serra. Luckily, another reliable
source happily recalled the occasion of the prime-time Jimbo pushing
the ball from the other side of the net at a 5-year-old boy whose
father was furiously grooming him for the big time.

Mike Agassi, Andre’s dad, explained that he used to string rackets for
visiting professionals at Caesars Palace, and Connors, among others,
was nice enough to humor him.

"Andre made a lob over Jimmy’s head, and Jimmy said, ‘Listen, you
want me to play with you, hit the ball right at me,’ " Mike Agassi
said in an interview outside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Eleven years later, it was John McEnroe’s turn for a rendezvous with
the budding rebel, in the quarterfinals of a tournament at Stratton
Mountain in Vermont. Agassi was in full costume, denim and all,
with a punk hairdo that McEnroe called a rat’s nest.

When McEnroe followed his second serve to the net on the first point of
the match, Agassi blasted a forehand return long — by more than a few
inches — that made McEnroe roll his eyes at his unknown opponent’s
youthful impudence. McEnroe proceeded to win in straight sets but
later admitted that no one had ever returned his serve that fast.

Told the story by a newspaper reporter (me) who covered that match,
Courier said, "I bet John would tell you that was the moment he
realized that tennis was changing, and he was going to have to adjust."

McEnroe never did fully make the conversion to power tennis, and he
never won a Grand Slam singles title after his 26th birthday. He wasn’t
the only champion to flame out young — Bjorn Borg, Boris Becker and
Mats Wilander, to name three others — and that is what made Agassi’s
career unique. We charted his highs and lows across the decades. We
watched him evolve, it seemed, in the middle of a match.

"I’ve always said that, unlike the team-sport environment, where
you are protected in a cocoon, as a tennis player you are naked,"
Courier said. "You are growing up in public, warts and all. Andre
has taken the hard road."

He was the antithesis of his generational rival, Pete Sampras, the
opposite of easy. He was, however, a convenient teenage dartboard
for critics, and, to varying degrees, we all took aim. Making harsh
judgments on developing young people is not the most enjoyable part
of this job, especially with the cameras now turned on children as
young as 12 and with a couple of my own at home.

Given the opportunity to cop that plea not long ago, Agassi refused.

"As I look back on it, I don’t think the media and the public should
have taken a different approach to it," he told me. "I should have
been accountable a lot earlier."

Such insight and admissions have made his professional and personal
achievements so much more worthy of applause. Yes, he falls six Grand
Slam titles short of Sampras and loses to him on both of their best
days. Yes, Agassi could have won more had he been focused sooner. But
he, not Sampras, accomplished a career Grand Slam. And he, as much
as any champion we’ve known, seemed to come to the enlightened
understanding that it was less about the judgment than the journey.

Mike Agassi, a short, stocky man, an Armenian who once boxed in the
Olympics for Iran, did a lot of talking outside Arthur Ashe Stadium
yesterday. He said he hadn’t seen Andre since arriving in New York,
doesn’t see him much at home. He said "the mother drops off the kids,
and Andre goes to the gym." He called Agassi’s wife, Steffi Graf,
"the best thing to happen to our family."

The father-son relationship sounded complex, as you would expect it
would be. But Mike Agassi said he felt nothing but pride and happiness
for the way it played out, for the man his boy has become.

The father made a rare trip from Vegas and an appearance at an Andre
Agassi match. He waited for nightfall, for the classic ball striker
and great showman of tennis, for the beginning of the end, however
long it lasts.