...............ANDRE AGGASI...............
Professional tennis player. Born April 29, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Agassi’s Iranian-born father, Immanuel (Mike) Agassi—an Olympic boxer in 1948 and 1952—was determined that one of his four children (two sons and two daughters) would grow up to be a tennis champion. Andre, his youngest child, was his last and best hope, and Mike Agassi reportedly introduced his infant son to the sport by dangling a tennis ball over his crib. By the age of three, Agassi was considered a tennis prodigy. Tennis great Jimmy Connors even rallied for a short time with the four-year-old future champion in 1974 in Las Vegas.
When Agassi was 13, his father sent him to the notoriously tough Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where the country’s top young tennis players attended classes and practiced tennis for five hours a day. Future champions Jim Courier and Monica Seles also trained with Bollettieri during their early careers, but Agassi was the flamboyant coach’s prize pupil. Agassi spent three years at the academy and won a total of five United States Tennis Association (USTA) national junior titles before turning pro on May 1, 1986, just two days after his 16th birthday.
With his fierce two-handed backhand and volatile backcourt game, Agassi was one of the most highly touted newcomers on the professional tennis scene. He won his first tournament in 1987 and rose from No. 41 to No. 24 in the world rankings. In 1988, he won six tournaments, reached the semifinals of two Grand Slam events—the French Open and the U.S. Open—and rose to No. 3 in the world at the age of 18. He also passed the $1 million mark in career prize money, becoming the second youngest player (after Boris Becker) to do so.
Beyond his powerful tennis, Agassi earned even more publicity for his outlandish personal style—long, blond-streaked hair, unshaven face, pierced ear, and garishly colored clothing—that stood out against the background of the traditionally conservative sport. His playful on-court style also endeared him to fans, especially his trademark habit of applauding an opponent’s winning shot by clapping his hand against his racket. With high-profile (and lucrative) endorsement contracts with Nike (sportswear), Dunlop (tennis rackets), and Canon (cameras), Agassi was probably the most visible tennis player in the world, even without a major title.
In 1989, Agassi won only one tournament and again lost in the semifinals of the U.S. Open. His critics claimed he was overrated and chided him for his controversial decision not to play Wimbledon (a Grand Slam event and the sport’s most coveted championship) from 1988 to 1990 because of the tournament’s policy requiring players to wear only white. He earned a certain measure of respect in 1990 by winning the first-ever Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Championship in Frankfurt, Germany, and leading the U.S. to its first Davis Cup international team title in eight years. In 1990 and 1991, Agassi also made it to the finals of three Grand Slam tournaments (two French Opens and the 1990 U.S. Open), only to lose in all three championship matches. Frustrated, he saw his compatriots Pete Sampras and Courier (his final-round opponents at the 1990 U.S. Open and the 1991 French Open respectively) pass him in the rankings and battle it out for the top ranking in the men’s game.
After complaining at his first Wimbledon in 1991 that he couldn’t play well on grass, Agassi returned to the All-England Club with a vengeance in 1992. He beat former champions Becker and John McEnroe en route to the finals, where he defeated the hard-serving Goran Ivanisevic in five tough sets to win his first Grand Slam title and a much-needed dose of legitimacy.
Plagued by a wrist injury, Agassi limited his tournaments in 1993, skipping several Grand Slam events. Late in 1993, his coach and friend Bollettieri announced he was dropping Agassi, reportedly because of a feud over money and over Agassi’s habit of turning to others for expertise and advice. Hurt by Bollettieri’s rejection, Agassi continued to struggle with his wrist injury and his game in general. During the summer of 1994, he made the decision to turn the situation around, hiring former tour professional Brad Gilbert as his coach and turning his focus completely onto tennis.
The attitude shift worked, and in the late summer of 1994, Agassi became the first unseeded player (a player not ranked among the tournament’s top 16 players) ever to win the U.S. Open. With his girlfriend, the actress Brooke Shields, in the stands, the newly shorthaired Agassi beat five seeded players, including a straight-set victory in the finals over Michael Stich. His performance at the Open made Agassi the No. 2 player in the world. Not content with second place, Agassi beat his longtime rival Sampras at the 1995 Australian Open to claim the No. 1 world ranking. He did well in the year’s other Grand Slams as well, reaching the semifinals at Wimbledon and the finals at the U.S. Open.
Though he lost in the early rounds of the first three Grand Slam events of 1996, Agassi won a gold medal for the U.S. at the Atlanta Olympics and made the semifinals of the U.S. Open. In May 1997, he married Shields (whom he had been dating since 1993) and made a new commitment to balance his life between family and tennis. As part of that effort (and also because of a nagging wrist injury), Agassi cut down on his tennis schedule in 1997, and saw his ranking sink from its 1995 high of No. 1 all the way to No. 141 by the end of the year. He played in only one Grand Slam event—the U.S. Open—and lost in the fourth round.
Over the course of 1998, Agassi increased his tournament appearances in an effort to revive his tennis career yet again. He traveled to events in at least nine countries and began an ambitious new fitness and strength-building regime. By April 2000, his world ranking had climbed to No. 11.
As he and Shields struggled with the competing rigors of their careers and spent increasingly less time together, their marriage faltered. Agassi filed for divorce in late April 1999. The couple remained good friends, however, and Shields was reportedly one of the first to hear from Agassi after his rejuvenating win at the French Open on June 6, 1999. With his victory over Andrei Medvedev at Roland Garros, Agassi became only the fifth player to win all four Grand Slam events in his career. He reached the finals of Wimbledon, where he lost to Sampras (the undisputed king of grass court tennis, with seven Wimbledon titles by 2000). In September, Agassi won his second U.S. Open in a thrilling five-set win over Todd Martin. The win made 1999 undoubtedly Agassi’s best year to date and brought him to a No. 1 ranking and a total of five major titles.
He won his sixth just a few months later at the 2000 Australian Open, defeating Sampras in the semis and Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the finals. After winning 14 of his first 17 matches of the year, Agassi endured a series of early-round exits from tournaments (including the French Open) before making it to the semifinals at Wimbledon, where he lost in a grueling five-set match against Patrick Rafter.
In early July, Agassi sprained his back when a car he was traveling in was rear-ended, forcing him to pull out of a Davis Cup semifinal match between the U.S. and Spain. Personal struggles continued throughout late summer, as Agassi learned that his mother, Elizabeth, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. His sister Tami had previously been diagnosed with the disease, and both underwent mastectomies. A distracted Agassi lost to the unseeded Arnaud Clement in the second round of the U.S. Open in late August, then announced that he was withdrawing from the U.S. team that will compete at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, for personal reasons.
Fortunately, both Tami and Elizabeth Agassi were given optimistic prognoses in December 2000. True to form, Agassi blazed back to life on the court in early 2000, winning the Australian Open for a second straight year by defeating Rafter in the semifinals en route to a straight-set defeat of Clement in the finals.
Agassi is married to Steffi Graf, the formidable women’s tennis champion who won a total of 22 Grand Slam titles during her 17-year career. The romance began in the summer of 1999 and went public during the 1999 U.S. Open, less than a month after Graf announced her retirement from tennis at the age of 30. In July 2001, the couple confirmed media reports that they were expecting a baby. In October 2001, Agassi and Graf were married in a private ceremony in Las Vegas. Their son, Jaden Gil Agassi, was born the following week. The couple is expecting their second child in November 2003.
..taken from an article at
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