“It’s time to dance, baby!” Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah bring new blood to Laver Cup

“When you’re Andre Agassi, you can say anything.”

That was the assessment of Tennis Channel commentator Sam Querrey as he watched a Laver Cup match on Friday. At that moment, Agassi, the first-time captain of Team World, was doing a pretty good job of proving his point.

“It’s time to dance, baby!” Agassi told his player, the much, much taller Alex Michelsen, as he hopped off the bench after a changeover. “We wanna do the salsa!”

What did that mean, exactly? I’m not sure anybody knew, but it sounded good, and fun, and upbeat, and a little wild. Kind of like Andre himself. He came armed with plenty of Agassi-isms for his first day on the job.

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“It only takes you 11 minutes to win this match,” he told Reilly Opelka at one point, perhaps a tad optimistically.

Later, Agassi was even bolder, assuring the American that “it only takes 11 seconds to turn this match around.”

What does Andre know about the number 11 that the rest of us don’t? Better not to ask. Better, like John Belushi in Animal House, to let him roll, and get caught up in his excitement.

Agassi’s presence for the eighth edition of Laver Cup, in San Francisco, is part of changing of the guard at the event. Since its start in 2017, only two men have sat in the captain’s chairs, Bjorn Borg for Team Europe, and John McEnroe for Team World. The spot needed some new blood: Borg had hardly said an audible word in all that time, and McEnroe is a couple—or more—generations past his playing days. So this year Agassi replaced McEnroe, and Yannick Noah replaced Borg.

To say the 55-year-old American and the 65-year-old Noah offered a contrast in styles would be an understatement. Agassi sat hunched forward, hand nervously over his mouth, his feet twitching below him. His various reactions— from rah-rah fist pumps to self-protective fear at almost getting hit by a 100-mph forehand—were shown on the big screen and made the audience in the arena laugh. He was out of his seat and ready to cheer for anything remotely positive for Team World. He also brought a scorched-earth competitiveness that would have made his old coach Nick Bollettieri proud.

“Bend the s—- out of that serve,” he advised Opelka.

“Stick a knife in him right now,” he instructed Alex Michelsen.

“We want every f—-in’ point,” he told anyone who was listening.

“We can be a little loco sometimes,” he confessed to Joao Fonseca.

Read more: Joao Fonseca draws experience from “legend” Andre Agassi, scores debut Laver Cup win

“God, I wish I knew something about doubles,” he admitted, with a laugh, to Michelsen and Taylor Fritz.

Noah, meanwhile, was the picture of calm and reassurance. He sat back with his legs crossed, a placidly thoughtful look on his face. He talked softly to his players on changeovers and never raised his voice.

“You’ll do it,” Noah reassured Flavio Cobolli. “You’re doing great.”

He also left the ultimate decisions up to them.

“You can use the drop shot, if you feel like it.”

Noah doesn’t need to shout, or say a whole lot, for a couple of reasons. First, he has the better team; starting with world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, each member of Team Europe is ranked higher than his counterpart on Team World. Second, Noah may be the best team captain of his generation. He has led France’s Davis Cup squad to three titles, and its Fed Cup team to its first-ever win, in 1997.

We want every f—-in’ point. Andre Agassi on the Team World bench

Based on the scoreline after one day, you can’t argue with Noah’s low-key, let-them-do-their-thing method. Europe won three of the four matches, and leads 3-1. In all three of its wins, Europe had to manage its way through a tiebreaker, and it succeeded every time.

Despite the score, though, Agassi’s more high-octane approach also produced results. After nervous starts, Opelka and Michelsen improved as their matches went on. Opelka pushed Casper Ruud to a second-set tiebreaker, while Michelsen won a second-set breaker before losing the deciding one, 10-8, to Jakub Mensik. Fonseca also improved as he went, and put Team World on the board with a straight-set win over Flavio Cobolli.

Opelka, Michelsen, and Fonseca seemed to get swept up into Agassi’s energy field. None of them are Laver Cup veterans, and all three were a little tight and unsure of themselves at first. Agassi, a Golden Slammer and Davis Cup winner, brought an aggressive, doubt-free conviction to the table that rubbed off on all of them. Michelsen especially took confidence from Agassi’s attitude, and swung with more brio and swag as his matches progressed.

Read more: John McEnroe on Carlos Alcaraz: “I’ve never seen a player this good at this age”

“Keep sending your message,” Agassi told a frustrated Opelka, urging him to forget the past and pull the trigger every time he had a chance. “Treat yourself like you’re big out there.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Agassi shouted when Opelka won a game with a big ground stroke. “How good are those groundies?!”

“Dude, I don’t know what’s going on,” a smiling Opelka said as he sat down.

It was enough to make me wonder if Opelka should hire Agassi as his coach. Or if he has a future as a U.S. Davis Cup captain.

After one day, the new captains have made their mark, in a good way. Noah may sound the right note of calm for a European team that’s favored. Agassi brings a necessary urgency to the underdog Worlders. With both guys, their track records speak for themselves.

As Sam Querrey said, when you’re Andre Agassi—or Yannick Noah—you can say pretty much anything and your players will get the message.