The 20-year career of Andre Agassi, who's calling it quits after the Open, has been one full circle.

By Stephen Tignor
Photo by Daniel Berehul/Getty Images

Andre Agassi may not be retiring as the greatest tennis player of all time—he’s not even the most successful in his own home—but it’s hard to think of anyone in the game’s history who has given more to tennis fans during his career. More of everything: surprises, reversals, blunders, and triumphs; bad hair days and Hollywood romances, fanatical training and old-fashioned family values. Agassi began his career when George H.W. Bush was vice president; he’ll fi nish it during the second administration of Bush’s son, George W. In the 20 years between, Agassi has tasted just about all this game has to offer.

He burst onto the scene, of course. How else was a 16- year-old from Las Vegas with an alliterative, Europeansounding name and a mane of peroxide-blond hair supposed to make a debut? It came in Stratton Mountain, Vt., in the summer of 1986. Like Boris Becker the previous year at Wimbledon, the rise of Agassi and his whip-crack forehand signaled the beginning of the power era. “Nobody has ever hit the ball that hard against me,” John McEnroe said after ending Agassi’s Stratton run.

It didn’t take long for people to realize that it wasn’t just Agassi’s power that was new. At the Stratton event the following year, McEnroe’s rival, Ivan Lendl, summed up the early Andre in dry, devastating fashion: “A haircut and a forehand,” was the extent of the scouting report Lendl put together on Agassi. With his new-wave locks and neon costumes, the American was all style, little substance. “Image is Everything” was his slogan, after all, one that he would spend the second half of his career living down—and proving wrong.

What the young Agassi represented, ironically, was the triumph of professionalism in tennis. He was one of the fi rst full-blown products of a tennis factory, the Bollettieri Academy, where kids devoted their lives to becoming pros. While McEnroe had studied the classic all-court game with Australian coaching legend Harry Hopman 10 years earlier, Agassi had gone to Bradenton, Fla., to learn a new, brutally one-dimensional style taught by Nick Bollettieri. Like Agassi, Bollettieri was a rough-edged tennis outsider, who had kicked around the sport’s boondocks for years before discovering a minimalist, one-size-fi ts-all way to win: Get a killer forehand. In Agassi, he found a kindred spirit and a perfect vehicle for his philosophy. By the time Andre got to Nick’s, his father, Mike Agassi, had laid the groundwork for his son’s famous fast hands and unparalleled timing by fi ring balls at him at top speed, and then fi ring them even faster.

Agassi, who would leave both of those father fi gures behind, acted out against the game. He refused to play its most prestigious event, Wimbledon. He called French Tennis Federation offi cials “bozos” for questioning his pink-and-black Nike ensemble. He ate his training meals at McDonald’s. Worse, he squandered his talent, losing Roland Garros fi nals to Andres Gomez and Jim Courier, players he was favored to beat. His career at its bleakest, Agassi entered Wimbledon in 1992 for just the second time in six years. Without playing any warm-up events, he won the tournament. In one fell swoop, the game’s rebel had joined its inner sanctum and established a new identity as tennis’ premier surprise artist. One by one, he would cement that reputation at each Slam. In 1994, he became the fi rst unseeded player to win the U.S. Open; the next year he won the Australian Open in his fi rst trip Down Under; and in 1999, after failing to reach the semifi nals for six years, he won the French Open. The latter made him the only man since Rod Laver to own all four majors, a fi tting signature achievement for someone whose career has been so vast and varied.

That fi nal weekend of the ’99 French Open was where Agassi’s life came full circle. A man of extremes, he had long before shaved his famous locks to the bone, gone from Taco Bell runs to wind sprints, and remade his highrisk power game into a grinding ground-stroke machine. In Paris, Agassi conquered his fi nal demon, winning the event that he had twice thrown away. At the same time, he put his personal life in order by starting a relationship with the women’s Roland Garros champion, Steffi Graf. After years of fi ghting the game that made him famous, in the end Agassi made it his life.

Through all his transformations, one thing has remained constant: Agassi has been a fan favorite everywhere he has gone. We know what New Yorkers think of their fellow American, but the French have always cheered him, too, and the Aussies practically adopted him. What’s the Andre appeal? It’s his expressiveness. While Agassi’s hair and body have changed— he’s been getting balder, grayer, and leaner for years—his eyes still betray joy and frustration as easily as ever. They bulge out when he returns serve, light up after he wins, and go frighteningly vacant when he’s losing. And what U.S. tennis fan can forget the overwhelming emotion that came from them when he beat Michael Stich for his fi rst Open title, in ’94? Callow punk or wise veteran, in tough losses and rousing victories, Agassi has never been able to hide a thing.