August 29, 2006
Agassi's maturity is lasting image
By Ian O'Connor
NEW YORK ― Andre Agassi entered the U.S. Open as a silly little boy, a teenage punk, and will leave very much a man. This is the changeover Pete Sampras admires the most, the ability of his defining rival to grow up before it was too late.
Agassi wasted so many majors, so much of his prime, and there was a day when Sampras couldn't have cared less. He was racking up Grand Slam titles at an alarming rate, and he wasn't worried about needing a Palmer for his Nicklaus, a Frazier for his Ali.
"I just wanted to hold up the trophy in the end," Sampras said by phone Monday, before Agassi survived a frightful late-night challenge from someone named Andrei Pavel to carry his final Open into the second round.
As he grew older and wiser, Sampras needed more than trophies. He needed what Tiger Woods will need in a year or two, when all this mind-numbing winning starts boring him to tears.
Sampras needed an opponent who could stretch the boundaries of his greatness. He needed Andre Agassi at the top of his game.
"I wanted to be a part of a great rivalry," Sampras said. "I didn't want to face it, but at the same time I wanted to embrace it. Andre was the one player who could push my game to the edge and create a Super Bowl-like rivalry with me. He was the one who could elevate my legacy to a higher place."
In elevating Sampras' legacy, Agassi elevated his own. Out of a past littered with tanked sets and cheeseburger diets and free-falls in the rankings that landed him in Challenger events, Agassi matured into a responsible statesman, an accountable champion and a generous philanthropist who built a school for children in need.
"I respect Andre for turning his career around," Sampras said. "There was a point where Andre went out there to entertain, and now he walks out there with only one thing on his mind: to win."
"Andre went from a guy with his own 727 to someone who flew commercial. He matured in front of our eyes, and I think his relationship with Steffi (Graf), and how single-minded her focus was, had a major impact on him."
Would Graf have convinced Agassi that refusing to play three Wimbledons in his youth was a horrible idea? Would she have advised him that skipping the Arthur Ashe Stadium dedication ceremony to catch a movie was bad form? Would she have told him that his "image is everything" mantra wasn't one he'd want within a million miles of his obituary?
Graf didn't wed Agassi until he'd made three lifetimes' worth of mistakes, some while serving as Zen master in Barbra Streisand's world. He would be fired by his teacher, Nick Bollettieri. He would be described by Ivan Lendl as "a haircut and a forehand."
Yes, but Agassi was something else with those denim shorts and that rock-star hair. He'd already reinvented himself once or twice by the time he faced Sampras in the '95 Open final, this at a time when Agassi looked like the immovable force. He was the defending champ, No. 1 in the world, and a man who had ripped off 26 consecutive hardcourt victories.
Then Agassi and Sampras played the point that forever separated them. In the first set, Sampras receiving on set point, the two 20-somethings chased each other all over Queens with cross-court backhands and forehands from the baseline, driving the fans mad. When Sampras finally blasted the winning backhand, he shot his arms toward the sky as if he'd just seized a calendar Grand Slam.
"Andre never really recovered from that point, or that Open loss," Sampras said. "After that point, I went in one direction and he went in the other."
Sampras went to No. 1; Agassi fell to No. 141 before crawling all the way back. They staged an epic four-tiebreaker quarterfinal here in 2001, with neither managing a single service break in 48 games before Agassi went down.
The next year, Sampras beat Agassi again in the Open final for his own career punctuation mark. "Andre brought out the best in me," Sampras said.
Agassi brought out the best in himself long before he escaped a 4-0 third-set hole to beat Pavel in four. From Bollettieri to Brad Gilbert, Streisand to Brooke Shields, Agassi emerged from his professional and personal relationships as a fully developed adult.
Now he's 36, a father with a bad back, a minivan driver who's traded in most of his expensive childhood toys. "People will now remember Andre for the eight majors he's won and how he grew into a champion," Sampras said, "rather than all the extracurricular things."
So Agassi had already won before winning the first match of his final Open. His most enduring victory was one of reality over image, substance over style.