|
|
 |
 |
 |
What a treat!
For 25 years, I've been able to sit down and interview
virtually all of the compelling characters in our
sport, and over the years, I've come to realize one
thing. No matter how well orchestrated an interview
is, there's always a twist. Still, my interview this
summer with Andre Agassi seemed straightforward enough.
Sure, there were the usual kabillion preparatory
calls and plenty of airline ticket changes. But everything
seemed quite orderly, thank you very much.
As arranged, I waited in the player lounge
at the Countrywide Classic the day before the tournament
was to begin. The scene was benign enough. There was
Sam Querrey in an L.A. Clippers jersey, tall n' lanky
with a touch of Huck Finn, trying not to show any rookie
nerves. There was the very cool, very laid-back Dmitry
Tursunov, disappearing into a vast chair. The rising
Russian joined Andre and all the other coaches and
hangers- on in the room in watching TV as James Blake
and Andy Roddick played their Indy final. Like millions
of others, Agassi was captivated by tennis's new instant
replay system and yelled out like a kid to Blake: "Challenge,
challenge, challenge!"
But despite the prevailing just-another-day-in-the-park
vibe, I was filled with a sense of doom. I knew too
much for my own good. After all, we were watching Indy,
and one of tennis's dirty little secrets is that the
now semi-saintly Andre was actually kicked out of twice
as many tournaments as super brat John McEnroe--and
Indy was one of the sites where he got the boot. Worse
yet, Andre was now chatting with Dominik Hrbaty, the
likeable Slovakian who, despite being a tour vet, knew
little about American tennis history. "Please, dear
tennis gods," I prayed, "don't let Hrbaty bring up
Indy." But the tennis gods could not have cared less.
"Hey, Andre," Hrbaty asked innocently enough. "You
ever play Indy?"
"Yeah," Andre responded. "In fact, I got kicked out
of the place." "Disaster," I thought.
Without taking a breath, Andre's encyclopedic recall
kicked in. "I won the first set easily enough 6-2,
and then got a crappy call early in the second. I bashed
the ball high in the stands and was given a point penalty.
Before I knew it, I was booted out. The fans were going
nuts, but the kicker was that the tournament mascot
they have there, this little dog, ran down onto the
court, lifted up his hind leg and..." |
The whole room began
to laugh. "Phew—no meltdon," I sighed. Now I only
hoped that no one would mention the San Jose debacle.
Wrong! Andre himself jumped right in: "Of course, that
was nothing compared to San Jose."
"God no," I thought.
"It was a tight match [against Cecil Mamitt in '99], and I got this lousy
call at the baseline. I turned to the linesman [Al Klassen] and said, 'You're
an [expletive deleted],' at which point he got up and went to the umpire and
said, 'Andre just called me an [expletive deleted].' So I got a point penalty,
but I didn't care. I walked up to the guy again and said, 'I may have gotten
a point penalty, but you're still an [expletive deleted].' Sure enough, the guy
got up AGAIN and told the ump I called him an [expletive deleted]. Then Barnsie
[supervisor Tom Barnes] called me over and said, 'Andre, tell me you didn't call
him an [expletive deleted].'
"Barnsie, you're asking me to lie. I can't do that. I did call him an [expletive
deleted]."
"'Now you leave me no alternative," said Barnsie. "I gotta kick
you out."
And so the evening's festivities in San Jose came to a grinding halt. Never mind
that Andre had supposedly gotten a $250,000 guarantee and in his absence, the
tournament's revenues would plummet. Not surprisingly, the fans that night went
crazy and hooted their discontent. My little daughter, confused and disappointed,
asked blankly, "Daddy, what happened?" Agassi's designated celebrity
de jour—the NFL's Ronnie Lott—couldn't believe the plug had been pulled.
"What
a wimpy sport," he told me. "They kick out their main man just for
saying [expletive deleted]. Geez, in the NFL, something's wrong if you don't
hear [expletive deleted] on every play."
Of course, from the get-go, Agassi's longtime confidante Gil Reyes, who was sitting
courtside, saw it all coming. "I knew," he told me. "I just knew
it. I know those eyes. I've seen those eyes."
And I too know those eyes. Eyes that, when they first gazed up from a crib, spotted
a dangling tennis ball and a racket that had been hung there by a tennis-obsessed,
brilliantly willful and relentless father. Restless eyes that for years tirelessly
sought outlets to act on a mindset fueled by an ample dose of adolescent angst
n' rage together with a generous portion of celebrity, vanity and sense of entitlement.
Ah, the not-so-pretty pleasures of self-indulgence.
So before us was a curious, somewhat harmless continuum of "rebel without
a cause" excesses. From lipstick and black nail polish, to florescent spandex
shorts, court rants and "I won't be a cog in nobody's machine" snit
fits. This was hardly your grandfather's tennis star. A narcissistic plane, fleets
of ("look at me") cars, insufferable commercials—we got it, we got
it: "image IS everything!"
Or was it?
After all, there was always a redeeming twinkle, a sparkle of innocence. Plus,
on court, between the implosions and no-shows, there were just too many sublime
moments of astounding play. After all, those eyes powered a genius apart. Those
eyes, as Jim Murray noted, "darted all over the place like a gambler with
low pairs," and they brought an intensity and focus that would counter the
most fearsome of serves with explosive blasts that no one could match; eyes that
allowed him to unleash inspired on-the-rise groundies with a twitch-fiber ferocity
that imposed pain on four generations of wannabes. Yet too, those eyes in mid-career
came to seem like "limpid, spaniel eyes." Glazed over with sorrow,
they revealed a debilitating sense of loss. No, it wasn't that he was too often
pounded by Pete Sampras in some crushing final (although that didn't help). Rather,
this was more about the unraveling of a seemingly idyllic Hollywood marriage
and a life that had skidded into a no-end-in-site freefall.
Never mind the numbing reality of a hefty triple-digit ranking. More gripping
was a different descent, the fall of a very public man with very private demons,
a man whose eyes called out, "I'm falling."
| |
Never mind the numbing reality of a hefty triple digit ranking. More gripping was a different descent, the fall of
a very public man with very private demons, a man whose eyes called out—"I'm falling." |
So a journey of the soul and psyche unfolded until those increasingly knowing
eyes spotted a gracious baseliner—his beloved—who he soon realized was his soul's
fulfillment. And those eyes—now somehow softer and more reflective—danced with
paternal glee as he delighted in the giddy wonders of childbirth. But more than
that, those eyes deepened to know wisdom and express compassion. Those eyes saw
the plight of children—innocence without hope—and had a vision. Embrace and educate.
Yes, we know, with sorrow, that Andre will offer a last bittersweet glance at
an adoring crowd at the New York arena. And we will offer a heartfelt salute,
not just to the athlete, but to the man. The man who grasped the power of seeing
through the lens of others; the man who in his marrow knows that it is ultimately
all about giving. After all, those eyes, once so blind, now do see.© 2006
INSIDE TENNIS All rights reserved.
All photographs, text and graphics, appearing on the Inside Tennis web site are protected by copyright.
Any republication, retransmission or reproduction or other use is prohibited without express written permission of Inside Tennis.
 |
|
|
|
