Agassi takes last bow on big stage
Yet there was one sporting farewell in 2006 that stands out in this correspondent’s experience these last 12 months as a totally uplifting experience, an emotional adios that was poignant but not tragic, stylish yet not superficial and sentimental but never mawkish.
It came in New York, on the first Sunday in September as the US Open championships were just edging towards the business end of the final grand slam of the year.
Many of the 30,000-plus spectators who travel out to Flushing Meadows in Queens do so by subway. They disembark from the 7 train in the shadow of baseball’s Shea Stadium and walk expectantly in the direction of another great arena, the Arthur Ashe Stadium at the National Tennis Center.
The stroll along the elevated wooden boardwalk towards the Open on these late summer mornings affords a great opportunity to contemplate the coming day’s play, to weigh up the matches and pick the contests that deserve one’s attention. The five-minute walk became a 10-minute shuffle towards the great venue that Sunday morning, and there was only one match on the heaving crowds’ minds. It really wasn’t even a match that they were all thinking of but a player, one man, by the name of Andre Agassi.
Always the showman, the American from Las Vegas had ensured he would be centre stage at this year’s US Open by announcing during Wimbledon that his national tournament would be the last of an illustrious career that had garnered 60 career titles, eight grand slams and even Olympic gold.
That meant every match the 36-year-old played was potentially his last in his 21st consecutive appearance at an event he had won in 1994 and 1999.
Coming into the tournament unseeded thanks to patchy preparation caused by a debilitating back injury, Agassi had somehow managed to reach the third round having summoned Herculean efforts in defeating Andrei Pavel and Marcos Baghdatis in the first two rounds.
Both matches had been lapped up by American sports fans, scheduled as they were by the United States Tennis Association for the evening session and thus reaching a national audience on prime time television.
There had been drama all the way, with Agassi producing a four-set win against tough opponent Andrei Pavel and then seeing off eighth seed Marcos Baghdatis in epic fashion, 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5 as the Cypriot, 15 years Agassi’s junior, was hampered by muscle cramps in the final set.
Victory had come at a cost to the veteran too, however, and Agassi had needed anti-inflammatory cortisone injections following both games to get him through the intense pain and stiffness he was experiencing.
So debilitated had he become that his father, Mike Agassi, had publicly suggested his son should quit there and then following the Baghdatis match, that lasted nearly five hours.
“If I wanted to quit I would have done it a long time ago,” Agassi would say later. “I didn’t come here to quit.”
The epic career came to an end at the hands of one B Becker from Germany but rather than go out to a fellow golden oldie, Agassi’s physical frailties were unravelled by a young upstart named Benjamin Becker, who ignored the script to overcome the old man 7-5, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-5.
In front of nearly 24,000 adoring fans at the world’s largest tennis arena, Agassi gave it his all but his injured back could not carry him, the game’s greatest returner of serve, through the barrage of serving delivered by the 25-year-old qualifier Becker.
Another German present that day was Agassi’s wife, Steffi Graf, who had received almost as much airtime from the TV director’s booth, sitting in a private box with their two young children as her husband was on court.
His last minutes on a tennis court were mostly spent in tears and he said the first thing he would have to explain to his children was why their daddy was crying.
The eight-minute standing ovation he received on Ashe was matched in intensity only by the words he offered in return.
“The scoreboard said I lost today,” Agassi began to tell the crowd, “but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I’ve found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I’ve found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams, dreams I could have never reached without you. Over the last 21 years, I have found you. And I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.”
Of his goodbye to the fans, Agassi later told an equally adoring media: “I was sitting there realising that I was saying goodbye to everybody out there, and they were saying goodbye to me. It’s saying goodbye, it’s a necessary evil, but we were getting through it together. That felt amazing.”
Equally exciting for the great man was the promise of what was to come.
“I’m going to wake up tomorrow and start with not caring how I feel,” said Andre Kirk Agassi. “That’s going to feel great.”
Happy retirement, Andre.
Declan Colley’s selection.
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