by Ian O'Connor, USA Today
September 3, 2003
NEW YORK � The rains kept coming in biblical waves and so did the nagging memories of what might have been. Pete Sampras was beating Andre Agassi on the U.S. Open monitors in the locker room, the lounge, the empty stadium and the full press room, making it a tough day to hide for a man who didn't need to pull an ad campaign from the shelves of his six former lives to understand that these images were everything.
Agassi coulda been a contenda. It was right there in the black Andre was wearing and the white Pete was wearing in the classic 2001 quarterfinal that made for Tuesday's rain-delay theater, a match including four tiebreakers, no service breaks and one winner who wished his opponent hadn't waited so long to hit him with his best punch.
"From a legacy question, sure, it would've been better for me if I had more big matches with Andre," Sampras had said at his locker. "When I played Andre in the '95 final here, there was so much buzz. We were 1 and 2 in the world. That was the most unique Grand Slam final I've ever been a part of, but we haven't had many moments like that. Andre had won 26 straight matches ... and I think that popped his balloon for quite a while."
Deflated, inflated, ready to burst � they're all temporary states of being for Andre. Tuesday night, after an endless odyssey of waiting, Agassi seized his 200th victory in a Grand Slam event and escaped a potential nightmare when Taylor Dent, the first-set winner, quit with a bum leg after Agassi won the second and third sets. The surreal, suspension-filled day made for a fitting time to recall that 33-year-old Agassi waited too long on himself, wasting valuable stretches of his prime reinventing himself while the relentlessly stable Sampras blazed a singular trail to greatness.
Agassi lost in last year's final, the 14th and final major triumph of Sampras' career, and so it's been easy to cast him as a lifelong antagonist. Agassi won his eighth major this year. He is a year older than Sampras and still going strong. Today's Agassi also smacks of sincerity. He comes across as hopelessly devoted to his pregnant wife, Steffi Graf, and their son, Jaden. The work he's done in Las Vegas for needy children, clothing them and building them a school, represents a genuine model for the empty-shell celebrities who babble about "giving something back."
So when Agassi doesn't show for Sampras' retirement ceremony, he earns the benefit of the doubt. A benefit he didn't deserve when skipping the 1997 Arthur Ashe dedication to see a movie. That Agassi would plunge to 141st in the rankings and into a Challenger event.
For the world's second-best talent, it was an inexcusable fall from Grand Slam grace. In the six consecutive seasons Sampras finished at No. 1, Agassi finished at No. 24, No. 2, No. 2, No. 8, No. 122 and No. 6. His rankings wandered like his fit-one-day, fat-the-next commitments. Women and coaches were part of the changeover from frosted-hair rock star to Zen Master to bald and grounded family man. Barbra Streisand, Brooke Shields and Graf. Nick Bollettieri, Brad Gilbert and Darren Cahill.
"After Andre separated from Brooke," Bollettieri said Tuesday, "he made a promise that he was going to become stingy with his career. He said, 'I'm going to become what I'm capable of becoming.' Once Andre accepted responsibility and started to play for Andre and not other people's expectations, I knew he'd get back to winning big."
Bollettieri began teaching Andre when the kid was 14. Nine years later the coach fired him by letter. "One of the biggest mistakes I ever made, not facing him in person," Bollettieri said. "I wrote Andre this year to tell him that. He's a really caring person. Were there opportunities Andre missed in making more of a rivalry with Pete? Yes. But Andre's work with those children is more important than that rivalry. He's become exactly what this industry needs, a hero on the court and off."
On the court, the industry could've used a few more heroic strokes in the 20-something years. The prime Agassi and the prime Sampras shared their moments at Wimbledon, the Australian and the Open, just not enough of them. Their most memorable point unfolded in the 1995 Open, with Sampras receiving on set point in the first and engaging Agassi in a breathless exchange of cross-court forehands and backhands before nailing the decisive blow.
"That point symbolized a lot about our careers," Sampras said recently by phone. "Andre had an unbelievable run going, but then he went one way and I went the other."
So tennis' Ali couldn't keep his Frazier within arm's reach. "It's sad for me," Agassi said of Sampras' retirement. "I've been with him a long time."
Agassi should've done more with that time. He should've thrown his best hooks before Sampras was gone from the ring.
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News