He never liked playing it. He for most of his career, hated the very game he was the best in the world at. In his autobiography, Open Up, Agassi explained his disdain and hatred for tennis which stemmed from his relationship with his father. Harder, he says, harder. Hit earlier. Damn it Andre, hit earlier, Crowd the ball, crowd the ball. He wants me to beat the dragon. I want to ask: How much longer, Pops?
I hit as hard as I can, then slightly harder. In his tennis career, he was one of the hardest players to hit the ball. Sometimes he would hit so hard that shots would knock the fluff of the ball and take all the pressure out of it.
There are certain qualities to his game that remains unique till and helped him to reach world no. How early he would take the ball. He would always hit the ball on its apex and on the rise. By taking the ball on the rise, he could manipulate the angles on the ball whilst sending it back with interest.
He is regarded as one of the best returns of the game, if not the best. What made his returns so lethal were his early preparation and his powerful two-handed backhand. His early grand slam success came at French Open and US open, where he reached the final and semi-final respectively.
Early in his career, he refused to play Wimbledon and Australian Open. He thought Wimbledon was too traditional for him. Ironically, he won his first grand slam title at SW19 in He defeated Goran Ivanisevic in a 5 set final.
No other baseliner would triumph at Wimbledon until Lleyton Hewitt ten years later. But soon after that he was unable to replicate his success and injuries started to creep. Also Read Greatest tennis coaches of all time.
With new coach Brad Gilbert on board, Agassi began to employ more of a tactical, consistent approach, which fuelled his resurgence. He started slowly in , losing in the first week at the French Open and Wimbledon. Nevertheless, he emerged during the hard-court season, winning the Canadian Open.
He then became the first man to capture the US Open as an unseeded player, beating Michael Stich in the final. Along the way, he beat 5 seeded players. In , Agassi shaved his balding head, breaking with his old "image is everything" style. He competed in the Australian Open his first appearance at the event and won, beating Sampras in a four-set final. Agassi and Sampras met in five tournament finals in , all on hardcourt, with Agassi winning three.
Sampras holds a number of records in the game. He was No. Sampras was also year-end No. Sampras won Wimbledon seven times, which is an Open Era record. Sampras also won the Australian Open twice, in and Sampras won the year-end championships five times, which is a record tied with Ivan Lendl and Roger Federer. In , Sampras won tournaments on all surfaces—clay, hardcourt, grass and indoor carpet—which is always a rare record even in the modern game today.
Andre Agassi went through real peaks and troughs in his career. Agassi was a talented player who initially lacked direction, but under the guidance of Brad Gilbert in the mids, Agassi really played tennis with more strategy and purpose in mind of what he could do to his opponent. Agassi did make a remarkable rise all the way back to No. But that is more stuff of legend than referring to a great player who was consistently at the top for long periods of time.
It usually comes down to one thing for Pete Sampras: his failure to win the French Open. Sampras has said he wished he tried a more modern frame for the slow red clay. And then it became a mental issue as he seemed to accept his fate and talked himself out of giving more effort at Roland Garros.
Agassi is an interesting player because he virtually played the same way regardless of the surface. That was the case in an era s and early s when mainly the women played their own game regardless of surface. The other interesting thing is that Agassi played on clay in a quite typical hardcourt manner—virtually on the baseline, hitting through the ball trying to control the middle of the court and not much sliding at all.
Agassi, along with Monica Seles, revolutionised the return of serve. If you look at total ATP events won, Agassi is likewise overshadowed by a number of other legendary tennis players. Jimmy Connors is the all-time leader with singles titles in the Open Era, and Federer is at Others who outrank Agassi in that category include John McEnroe with 77, and Sampras again as he won 64 titles on the tour.
The question is if another man will join Agassi with a career super slam. The only male players with the career grand slam are Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, making them the candidates to next achieve that feat. Nadal, meanwhile, won singles gold in but has yet to win the ATP Finals. Home Tennis.
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