Andre Agassi: Image Isn't Everything
Belying his wild younger days, Andre Agassi has grown into one of the giants of world tennis—and one of the gentlemen of the professional tour. He’s a perennial crowd favourite wherever tennis is played around the world.
“You’re from Vegas; you understand show business,” explains retired former player Jim Courier. “You know what the people want, and you know how to give it to them. And Andre came from the school of giving the people what they want. He understands that innately. He just knew something we didn’t know about pleasing crowds.”
But Agassi seems to have a special affinity with the Australian Open and its crowds. His four Australian Open titles to date have given local fans much opportunity to accept Agassi as one of their own and gain a renewed appreciation of the Agassi phenomenon.
a tennis star is born
Andre Agassi was born in Las Vegas to Iranian parents. Agassi’s father represented Iran as a boxer in the Olympic Games of 1948 and 1952. But upon settling in Las Vegas, he set up a tennis school in which youngest-son Andre was included from the time he could walk. By four years of age, Agassi was being hailed as a tennis prodigy. Tennis was the focus of his growing up and by his recollection Agassi made about 3000 shots per day, seven days each week through his childhood.
“Dad raised me to play,” Agassi comments. “I never considered doing anything else.”
At 13, Agassi joined an elite tennis training program in Florida, turning professional just after his 16th birthday in 1986. By the end of that year, he was ranked 91 in the world. By 1989, Agassi had collected $US1 million prize money from 43 tournaments, at a rate faster than any other player.
He continued winning, collecting a string of major tournament titles, along the way helping the United States to Davis Cup victories in 1990, 1992 and 1995. And it was in 1995 that Agassi won his first Australian Open and a few weeks later was invested with the world number-one ranking. He reinforced his claim to the title with a 26-match winning streak, which was capped in 1996, winning the gold medal for tennis at the Atlanta Olympic Games.
But Agassi was also attracting attention for his rebel image, a flamboyant on-court character, long hair and brightly coloured clothes. In a sport governed by tradition, such an obvious persona drew the world’s biggest sponsors. Perhaps most notable among them was Canon cameras, which ran an advertising campaign in which Agassi insisted, “Image is everything!”
“I think that phrase itself wasn’t reflective of who I was, even then,” Agassi reflects. “It’s sad to say, even in saying the line and filming the campaign, it never quite occurred to me what was being said or expressed. Some lessons you just have to learn a tough way. That certainly was one of them.”
crossroads
So if image wasn’t everything, what was?
In 1997, battling a succession of injuries and distractions such as his troubled marriage with Brooke Shields, Agassi suddenly seemed unable to produce a tournament win, and he slipped to 141 in the world.
Agassi was at a turning point in his career—or, as some ruminated, perhaps even its end.
“It came in a hotel in Stuttgart, where I’d gone to play a tournament as a wildcard,” he recalls. “A wildcard is what you get when a tournament wants you, but you’re not ranked high enough to get in [on merit]. And I had no business being there. I associate a lot of embarrassment with that. I had a simple choice: stop, or continue. But if I continued, I couldn’t do it the same way. The choice was clear.”
Agassi stepped up his training regimen, getting himself into the best shape of his life. Almost starting his career over again, he worked his way back through lower-level tournaments. By the end of 1998, Agassi was back, ranked number six.
Reflecting on these challenges, Agassi has reassessed his image. “I don’t find it to be directed outward,” he says. “It’s directed inward. My goal has always been to make sure I represent myself in a way that gives me confidence.”
This more-humble confidence has served Agassi well in the past five years. In March 2002, Agassi won his 50th career title and a year later he won his 700th match. Both milestones have only been achieved by eight other players. His victory in last year’s Australian Open was his eighth Grand Slam title. He has now surpassed a total of $US27 million in prize money. But perhaps more significantly, under his new Australian coach Darren Cahill, in May last year, Agassi became the oldest person to hold the number-one ranking in professional tennis history, at the age of 33.
Having achieved so much, Agassi’s continuing challenge is to maintain his performance. “I don’t know how long I can do it for, or how long I choose to do it for, but I want to do this for a number of years,” he says.
His philosophy is straightforward: “Focus on getting better. If I’m better than I was yesterday, I’m lifting the bar. If you’re looking at someone else, even if you’re number one in the world, all you’re doing is looking back. That’s why I love sports. You can’t politic your way into the job. You have to earn it and if someone is good enough to take my job title, they’re not going to get a complaint from me.”
the Agassi family
Away from the court, Agassi’s apparent contentment has not been without obstacles either. In 1999, both his mother and sister were diagnosed with breast cancer.
“It was a pretty difficult time,” Agassi remembers. “It was also pretty eye-opening, in many ways, personally.”
So Agassi took a couple of months away from tennis. It was evidence of a maturing athlete, one who recognised that tennis was not all there is to life. His mother and sister recovered and about that same time Agassi began spending time with retired women’s tennis champion Steffi Graf. They were married in October 2001 and now have two children.
It seems these possible distractions are a part of Agassi’s current sporting success. “I’ve had these years where tennis hasn’t been the top priority,” Agassi commented after winning the 2001 Australian Open. “There can be some regrets there, but that has saved me for the long run. My best tennis can still be ahead of me.”
most caring athlete
Agassi’s other passion is almost a cliché of athletic altruism—helping underprivileged kids. “Giving back is something I always had an intention of doing, if life gave me those opportunities,” says Agassi. “The question was, How and when?”
To this end, he set up the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation in 1994, “to provide recreational and educational opportunities for at-risk boys and girls.” Since that time, the Foundation has raised more than $US25 million and distributed most of this to a variety of children’s charities in his Las Vegas hometown.
But in giving back, Agassi is not a distant benefactor. “He’s personally vested in this,” says Adrienne Cox of the Department of Family & Youth Services, in Clark County, Nevada. “It’s not just writing the cheque. He interacts with the kids and staff. He goes into the toddler cottage, and there are six kids crawling all over him while he’s reading stories.”
With a focus on education, Agassi has set up a school as a model for giving opportunities to underprivileged children and young people. And of course, Agassi has also established a large tennis training school.
“He’s really given these kids an opportunity, and they realise that,” reports Ki Kroll, director of Agassi’s tennis program. “A lot of these kids are now setting goals. They’re thinking about college scholarships. They’re thinking about education even more. I’ve seen improvement in every kid here.”
Agassi’s charity work has been recognised with a number of awards. In both 1995 and 2001, he was presented with the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award. In 2001 he received USA Weekend’s Most Caring Athlete Award.
Compared to a celebrated and successful sporting career, these awards may pale, but Agassi suggests they are both significant parts of his much-scrutinised personality.
“They’re all spokes of a wheel,” he reflects. “They’re all parts of who it is that I am in one facet or another. You’re talking about somebody’s work and somebody’s passion. You want both to be successful. I have exceeded my own expectations in regards to my career, and I never thought the foundation would be as successful as it is.
“If I had to give up the foundation or give up my career, I couldn’t choose to give up the foundation, because I couldn’t make that decision; it affects too many people. So one has more importance, but the tennis is a priority. Tennis has given me the platform to make the foundation happen.
“I care about my community, because it’s my community,” Agassi adds. “I hope that in everything I do, people find inspiration. That’s an incredible way to live.”
Sources: www.agassiopen.com; www.agassifoundation.org; www.ATPtennis.com; www.menstennisforums.com; espn.go.com; www.enquirer.com; www.hellomagazine.com; www.cnn.com
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