End of an Era
Last night, I stayed up too late doing something frivilous. I watch the Agassi-Baghdatis match until midnight. I couldn’t look away. If this was going to be Agassi’s last match I wanted to see it. Why? Well, I have been watching him his whole career.
Back in high school I didn’t swim, bike or run, I did something else. I played tennis. About a year after I started playing, this young kid (who is actually about my age) was hitting the pro scene. Andre was all over. You couldn’t miss him. His hair, his commercials, his defiance for tennis tradition and most of all his stunning defeats of those more mature than himself. For someone that like the machine like performances of Ivan Lendl, Agassi leaved little to be desired.
As the years went by, I actually liked the fact that 3 other Americans won grand slams before Agassi (Chang, Courier and Sampras). Every time Agassi lost a big match, it was funny to me. After all, the brash, punky kid choked again.
Andre then fell off the face of the earth. He dropped out of the rankings. He came back to play at Wimbledon in 1992. At this time I was going into my senior year of college and the young kid from Las Vegas has suffered six years of defeats in the big matches. This tournament he did not. Somehow he crisp, compact ground strokes, were enough to overcome the games best server-and-volley players. He won Wimbledon as an unseeded player. Only the second player to do so. I watched that tournament intensely. I remembered there being something different about him. He was more focused than before. When I saw him win that tournament, I thought to myself, “He might be the first player to win all four grand slams since Rod Laver.” After all, grass was supposed to be his weakest surface.
I still didn’t buy into Agassi at that point. Still a little too loud for my taste. But, over the years he has changed and so has my attitude towards him. I cannot help but root for him in all of his matches. His subdued manner is a far cry from the teenager that hit the scene in 1986. He is now a mature 36-year-old man that appreciates the talent he has been given.
Agassi probably suffered from the same syndrome that any of us would fall victim to at a young age. He achieved too much, too soon and was having too much fun doing it. Can I blame an 18-year-old millionaire with women throwing themselves at him for not being focused? I couldn’t focus in college on just making it to three hours of class a day.
Agassi could have been the greatest of all time (okay maybe not better than Laver). I have no doubt about that now. He could have easily racked up 6 more grand slams if he took tennis more seriously. He wouldn’t have had to rely on a single tournament like Sampras to define his greatness (seven of Sampras’ 14 grand slams are at Wimbledon). But, he probably learned a lot more achieving greatness this way. He learned to appreciate what he was given.
I hope as I watch Agassi play out his last match, that I can learn from Agassi to appreciate what I have been given.