Circa 1988. “He’s the tonic that America needs!” screamed a billboard in the US. Well, he sure was. At the French Open that year, the wily Mats Wilander got a taste of Agassi’s talent – rare and precocious to the core. Andre Agassi, with his streaked long hair, bright tees and denim shorts, was an anomaly in the tennis pantheon. A prodigious talent and a phenomenal entertainer, Agassi was a sort of psychedelic adrenaline that a jaded tennis world needed.
While he rode the crest of a wave, winning the major Slams in the early 90s, his career slumped to the shore between the mid to late 90s. And who would have thought he would come back so powerfully once again. Between ’99 and ’03, he was back in business, winning a slew of Slams.
Watching him play was like watching the mercurial Jimi Hendrix at work. Each of those shots seemed effortlessly pure, polished for hours and delivered with raw precision. A magical offspring of faultless timing and pitch-perfect technique. And like Hendrix’s Voodoo Child, Agassi was a wild one - a man with a rocker soul who struck an intimate chord with the fans of his generation.
