Athletes - Andre Agassi

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	Athletes - Andre Agassi

Andre Kirk Agassi, (born April 29 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada) is a professional male former World No. 1 tennis player from the United States. He has won eight Grand Slam singles titles, and is one of only five players to have won all four Grand Slam events. He is considered among the all-time great tennis players.

Agassi was married to the actress Brooke Shields from 1997 to 1999. Since 2001, he has been married to the former World No. 1 woman tennis player Steffi Graf and had two children.

Early life

Agassi's father, (from Iran) Emmanuel "Mike" Agassian (who represented Iran in boxing at the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games before emigrating to the United States), was intent on having a child win all four tennis Grand Slams. He called Agassi's two older siblings "guinea pigs" in the development of his coaching techniques. He honed Andre's eye-coordination when he was an infant by hanging tennis balls above his crib. He gave Agassi paddles and balloons when he was still in a high chair. When Agassi started playing tennis, his ball collection filled 60 garbage cans with 300 balls per can, and Agassi would hit 3,000-5,000 balls every day. When Andre was five years old, he was already practicing with pros such as Jimmy Connors and Roscoe Tanner.

Mike Agassi learned tennis by watching tapes of champions. Mike Agassi took a very systematic approach to the physics and psychology of tennis, and still remains active in the sport. (More information can be found in Mike Agassi's book, The Agassi Story.)

At age of 14, Andre was shipped off to teaching guru Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy in Florida. He turned professional when he was 16.

Tennis career

1986-1997

Agassi turned professional in 1986, and won his first top-level singles title in 1987 at Itaparica. He won six further tournaments in 1988, and by December that year he had surpassed US$2 million in career prize money after playing in just 43 tournaments – the quickest player in history to do so.

As a young up-and-coming player, Agassi embraced a rebel image. He grew his hair to rock-star length, sported an ear-ring, and wore colorful shirts that pushed tennis' still-strict sartorial boundaries. He boasted of a cheeseburger-heavy diet and endorsed the Canon Rebel camera. "Image is everything" was the ad's tag line, and it became Andre's as well.

Strong performances on the tour meant that Agassi was quickly tipped as a future Grand Slam champion. But he began the 1990s with a series of near-misses. He reached his first Grand Slam final in 1990 at the French Open, where he lost in four sets to the seasoned veteran player Andrés Gómez. Later that year he lost in the final of the US Open to another up-and-coming teenaged star, Pete Sampras. The rivalry between these two American players was to become the dominant rivalry in tennis over the rest the of the decade. In 1991, Agassi reached his second consecutive French Open final where he faced his former Bollettieri Academy-mate Jim Courier. Courier emerged the victor in a dramatic rain-interrupted five-set final.

Agassi chose not to play at Wimbledon from 1988-90, and publicly stated that he did not wish to play there because of the event's traditionalism, particularly its "predominantly-white" dress code which players at the event are required to conform to. Many observers at the time speculated that Agassi's real motivation was that his strong baseline game would not be well suited to Wimbledon's grass court surface. Agassi decided to play at Wimbledon in 1991, leading to weeks of speculation in the media about what he would wear – he eventually emerged for the first round in a completely white outfit. He reached the quarter-finals on that occasion.

To the surprise of many, Agassi's Grand Slam breakthrough came at Wimbledon in 1992, when he beat Goran Ivanišević in a tight five-set final.

Following wrist surgery in 1993, an unranked Agassi came back strongly in 1994 and shocked the world by capturing the US Open, beating Michael Stich in the final after a stirring quarter-final performance against Michael Chang. He then captured his first Australian Open title in 1995, beating Sampras in a four-set final. He won a career-high seven titles that year and he reached the World No. 1 ranking for the first time that April. He held it for 30 weeks on that occasion through to November. He compiled a career-best 26-match winning streak during the summer hardcourt circuit, which ended when he lost in the US Open final to Sampras.

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Athletes - Andre Agassi

Early life

Tennis career

1986-1997

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