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Agassi: Inaction Figure

Hey, tennis fans, if you can get through this afternoon without passing out from the heat, there’s a treat for you tonight: Sadly, it’s not rehydration. You get to see Andre "What’s My Line?" Agassi.

You remember Andre, don’t you?

Just two years ago today he was the No. 1 player in the world. He held that ranking for 30 straight weeks in 1995. Everybody thought his rivalry with Pete Sampras was going to be the heir to Borg-McEnroe.

Now Agassi is a part-time player. He dabbles in tennis the way rich, bored women dabble in pottery, building a studio on the back of the house.

Here’s Agassi’s complete record this year: 6-6.

We’re in July now. Hell-o. Twelve tennis matches in seven months is ludicrous. Greta Von Sustren has played more tennis than Agassi this year. He skipped the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. What happened, did he forget to renew his passport? The official word is that a bad wrist has sidelined him since April. But he lost his first match in four straight tournaments in February and March.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what the heck is the deal with this guy?

He’s 27. He should be in his prime. Instead, he’s been sitting out every dance. Tonight the world gets to see Agassi perform for the first time in months. It’s like a concert. He ought to dress for the occasion in a tuxedo. Except the satin piping would melt.

You wanna know why Agassi’s playing at night? Whaddya nuts? Because he’s rich and he’s got a lawyer! They wouldn’t dare run him out in the afternoon in this kind of heat at the Legg Mason D.C. Bank Sovran Bank NationsBank Jos. A. Bank Classic. It’s 100 degrees out there. The words "Ozone Alert" are flashing from the scoreboards. Along with the dead banks that sponsored this thing, they run the risk of dead fans and dead players. I blame myself. Three weeks ago I wrote a column declaring that tennis was dead — but I didn’t mean it literally.

By the way, who’s the marketing genius who came up with the idea of advertising the big stars of this sweat bath on the back of a bus, so the hot blast of exhaust can really get you in the mood to go watch. Next year why not rent out space on a furnace?

Agassi has had his puss on the bus every year since 1990. And over the course of time the change in him has been stunning. Agassi has done a 180. He has gone from getting hair weaves and saying Image Is Everything, to being unblinkingly bald and acting as if Tennis Is Nothing. He used to be disingenuous. Now he’s disappeared.

You remember in the pre-Brooke days, when Andre was playing footsie with La Streisand, and she was purring that he was a "Zen Master"? Well, this must be some kind of time-release Streisand influence finally kicking in. Look at the parallel: Here’s Streisand with the best pipes on the planet, and all she wants to do is direct. And here’s Agassi with the best groundstrokes on the planet, and he’s not playing tennis. What does he want to be, an auto mechanic?

The word is that Agassi intends to play hard this summer, all the way up to the U.S. Open, hoping to make a big run there. Maybe we’ll be able to say we saw Agassi in the first stage of his great comeback. He seems to be the kind of player who does best when he picks out a specific target. Last year he told people that the tournament he wanted to win most was the Olympics in Atlanta—and he did. He’d had a lackluster summer prior to Atlanta, losing in the second round in Paris, and the first round at Wimbledon.

"Andre was never a day-in, day-out guy," Mary Carillo, the brilliant tennis analyst, said last week. "He doesn’t seem to be able to commit himself to tennis like Pete Sampras."

Carillo said that she heard from Agassi’s coach, Brad Gilbert, that Agassi was setting his sights on next year’s French Open. If Agassi wins that, it would give him victories in all of the Grand Slam tournaments; he won Wimbledon in 1992, the U.S. Open, 1994, and the Australian Open, 1995. By winning the French (where he was runner-up in 1990 and 1991) Agassi would become the first male player to win all four Grand Slam championships since Rod Laver.

That would give Agassi an impressive chunk of history. But Agassi’s foothold would be analogous to Roger Maris’s. Nobody thinks of Maris as a great player; they think he had one surpassing year. The way for Agassi to earn lasting fame is to get back in the game full time and take on Sampras. Sampras has hung in there through the years, never acting flighty, never becoming a glamourpuss, never choosing style over substance. Sampras is the most honorable man in tennis. If the sport is dying it’s in spite of Sampras, not because of him. The character with the tragic flaw in this play is Agassi, who has turned his back on his talent and lapped at the bowl of celebrity. It’s not like everybody caught up to Agassi like they caught up to Jim Courier. Agassi has simply let go of the rope.

Agassi was caught in the prop wash of the churning money in tennis. Like Jennifer Capriati, he got huge money for endorsements before he won anything. He was a teen idol before he ever got into the top 10. Agassi’s curse was that he never had to win. Whatever hunger he had was easily satiated. It’s a testament to his character that he has won as many Grand Slam events as he has. But it’s an indictment on his resolve that he hasn’t won more. Agassi is a great talent. Sampras should be afraid of seeing this guy across the net. But how can he be when Agassi doesn’t enter tournaments anymore? Agassi is someone who could save tennis from its death spiral. But he doesn’t seem to have the stomach—or the wrist—for it. Baseliners, particularly American baseliners, seem to flame out the quickest. Capriati, Austin, Courier. Maybe Agassi is all ash now. He’s been playing pro tennis since he was 16. Baseliners have to concentrate more and give more than serve-and-volleyers; they have to throw themselves into every point, and grind it out. It gets to them after a while. They lose their sense of purpose, they lose their desire to battle until the last dog dies. Will history say that’s what happened to Andre Agassi? That and celebrity? It would be great if this Hot Box Classic could jump-start him one more time before he becomes an eternal circle on "The New Hollywood Squares."