The Many Faces Of Agassi

By Robert Sullivan

Sports stars don't usually metamorphose during their careers. They may add a hook shot or throw more curves when the heater loses steam, but they don't start arriving for work in fundamentally different guises. The many faces of Michael Jordan or Mark McGwire? Not really.

And then there's Andre Agassi. "I am constantly changing," he says in what is, for him, a rare understatement.

The completely revamped, 1999-model Agassi motors into this week's U.S. Open in New York City with the top down, the engine bulked up, and the passenger seat empty, Mrs. Agassi--a.k.a. Brooke Shields--having flown the coupe. Now ranked second in the world, the newly single Agassi has singlehandedly rejuvenated both his own sputtering career and men's tennis in general. So winning the Open title in rowdy Flushing Meadows would be fitting. To do so, though, he'll have to get by the top gun, Pete Sampras, who hasn't needed to stage a made-for-television comeback, being too busy winning everything in sight. Andre and Pete. Tennis is back.

When first we glimpsed Agassi just over a decade ago, he was a skinny teenager with an omigosh attitude. He was a teen heartthrob, a proto-Leo with a roaring forehand and a leonine mane (hair, yes, Andre once had hair, streaked with fancy colors). A top-ranked player before he was 20, he won the big one, Wimbledon, at 22 in '92. A baseliner winning on a banger's surface, grass. He could do it all.

Then, in his second stage, he couldn't. Even while he was making serious hay as Nike's and Canon's poster boy--"Image Is Everything"--he was hangin' with Barbra Streisand (!), asking Las Vegas to name streets after him, scarfing doughnuts and sagging on court like a sprung net. He dropped to No. 25 in the world and looked to be one kaput wunderkind.

What we realize now is that Agassi's aren't mere comebacks; they are reinventions. In 1994 he reappeared as the Zen Master. Refreshed by the analyst's couch and the preachments of coach Brad Gilbert, Agassi drifted through the U.S. Open draw, unseeded and unheeded, until he was the only one standing--a focused player on the court, a spouter of self-improvement blather off it. Hey, it was Deepak/Oprah '90s.

Re-emboldened, he embellished his persona package, at times a bandannaed pirate, at times the Punisher, who displayed a boorish attitude along with an admirably vicious game. He won another Grand Slam event, the 1995 Australian Open, and was cruising along as a bad-boy Numero Uno until he was again knocked into Kingdom Comeback by Sampras, who had more tools than a Swiss Army knife. Sampras administered a straight-set thrashing in the U.S. Open finals that cracked Agassi's karma, causing him to question whether tennis was the be-all and end-all.

When a tennis pro is looking for something to take his mind off tennis, calling Shields every night might do it. Andre swooned, wed and swooned again, eventually bottoming out in 1997 at a world ranking of 141. "I made a distinct choice for my life, and I don't regret that at all," Agassi says. "I'm responsible for what I did--not Brooke."

One-forty-one doesn't mean you're burning out; it means you're toast. No one expected Agassi to resurface this time. But he did an extraordinary thing, entering a couple of bush-league events, tournaments filled with hopeful kids who helped him rediscover the spark that was missing. Oh, he beat the kids to a pulp too.

When he did return to the tour with his bristly head squarely atop a buffed physique, Andre introduced a new character, the Body. Put to the test in June during tough five-setters on the slow clay courts at the French Open, the Body proved strong enough to lift the trophy.

Agassi's resurrection provided a nick-of-time Rx for men's tennis too. NBC's French Open finals ratings were up 43% from 1998, and when Sampras and Agassi reached the finals at Wimbledon, interest in a men's match was at its highest since, well, since these two met in Queens four years earlier.

Sampras torched Agassi and the rest of the field on Wimbledon's grass. And he has since beaten Agassi twice on hard courts, but the matches were close enough to have rekindled new interest in the Great 1990s Tennis Rivalry (That Didn't Happen). "It's good for tennis in America to have us two going at it like we've been the past couple of months," said Sampras after their third dance. "I feel a certain buzz with the rivalry kind of kicking up."

So does Agassi. "I can't think of a better place for it all to come down to than New York. If I could have only one, I would take it at the Open," he says. "I'll forget about the three others this year if I beat him in New York." It's a great venue for Agassi. Planes from La Guardia zoom overhead, patrons are ready to rumble. In one of sport's ripe ironies, tennis fans in Polo sweatsuits, sustained by $10-a-slice quiche, scream bloody murder in support of their idea of a working-class hero--formerly John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, now Agassi. Back when Agassi had hair, he dusted Senior Citizen Connors as the crowd howled in dismay.

Now Agassi's 29, and he's the man. Moreover, he's in a position to savor the role. "It was amazing to experience so much in your life in two years," he says on the eve of the American championships. "I think it put me in a position to really appreciate things this time around." At least until next time. Welcome back, again, Andre.

--With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Washington

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Washington