Andre Agassi won over 60 singles titles during a long and productive career and is a former number one player in the world. His major championships include four Australian and two U.S. Opens, the French and Wimbledon; and with these victories he joined Don Budge, Rod Laver, Fred Perry, and Roy Emerson as the fifth man to win the tennis Grand Slam.
Agassi was a gritty player who came back from near defeats and triumphed. He was down 0-2 in sets at Roland Garros and 1-2 at the U.S. Open and came back to win both matches. To reach the Wimbledon final in 1992, where he defeated Goran Ivanisevic, Agassi had to go through three-time champs Boris Becker and John McEnroe. In 1996, in another career highlight, he became the first American to win the singles gold medal at the Olympic Games.
Agassi, at age 35, lost the first two sets of the 2005 quarterfinals of the U. S. Open. Using his experiences with handicaps, and in an age-versus-youth turnabout reminiscent of the historic Connors/Krickstein Open match 14 years earlier, Agassi rebounded to defeat James Blake who was ten years younger. Blake, who had recently recovered from a broken neck, was a crowd favorite as was Agassi, and the emotions overflowed in an endurance test that went on into the late-night hours. The third and fourth sets were hard fought with many deuce games. And the fifth set was won in a tiebreaker. Agassi went on to take a tough, five-set semifinal contest over Robby Ginepri.
After playing competitively in the first three sets of the final, and winning the second, he was crushed 6-1 in the fourth set by the athleticism and shot-making virtuosity of Roger Federer who, Agassi said, was the best player he had ever faced. Despite the loss, Andre Agassi is now grouped with tennis luminaries Ken Rosewall and Jimmy Connors as an all-time venerable. A bad back forced Agassi’s retirement in 2006. He founded the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation to aid at-risk children.
THE GREATEST FEMALE TENNIS PLAYERS
German-born Steffi Graf married American tennis star Andre Agassi in 2001. She toured with Agassi, became his practice partner, and helped his game. Steffi and Andre have two beautiful children, Jaden and Jaz.
During her career, Steffi Graf won 107 career WTA singles and 11 career doubles titles. She also captured an astounding 22 Grand Slam singles titles. At the conclusion of the 1995 U.S. Open, she became the only player ¾male or female¾to win each of the four major singles titles at least four times. In 1988, Graf achieved the ‘Grand Slam’¾winning the Big Four in the same calendar year; and an Olympic singles gold medal to boot. She is in the conversation as the greatest female tennis player.
On August 13, 1999, Graf was number three in the world and the highest-ranked player ever to announce retirement from the sport. Off the court, Graf founded the Steffi Graf Youth Tennis Center in Leipzig, Germany. She is also the founder and active Chairperson of Children of Tomorrow, a non-profit foundation with the goal of implementing and developing projects to support children who have been traumatized by war or other crises.
The glories of Steffi Graf and other champions like Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova (many people argue that Martina was the best player ever, if not she was clearly the second best), and the Williams’ sisters, Serena and Venus, might never have happened without the leadership of Billie Jean King. Women’s tennis was a poorly paid stepchild of men’s tennis when King, a tenacious serve-and-volley player who won 20 Wimbledon singles and doubles championships, plus a career Grand Slam brought many women out of USTA tennis in the late 1960’s, took them on tour and gave them financial opportunities.
Billie Jean also helped originate the highly successful Virginia Slims Championship. But what really put women’s tennis on the map happened in 1973 when she crushed Bobby Riggs (a two-time U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion and flamboyant anti-feminist) in the “Battle of the Sexes” at the Houston Astrodome in front of a record 30,000 fans.
Conventional wisdom held that even the best women players (Riggs had beaten the formidable Margaret Court in straight sets a few weeks earlier) could not beat a good male player, even a middle-aged one like Riggs. King not only beat him, she destroyed him in straight sets, running Riggs all over the court until he was a sweaty wreck and then finishing him off with sharp volleys.
Billie Jean King was a superb athlete, tennis player, competitor, and coach (she coached the 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic team to three Gold Medals) who brought a single-minded focus to her game and to the promotion of women tennis players. In 1974, King was a player/coach for the Philadelphia Freedoms, a professional team that included men. Her friend Elton John wrote the hit song “Philadelphia Freedom” celebrating her success.
“You have to love to guts it out to win.” -Billie Jean King
SOURCES
Courtesy of ATP Tennis, http://www.atptennis.com/en/players/playerprofiles/default2.asp?playersearch=Agassi, available as of 10/7/05
Courtesy of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, http://www.tennisfame.com/enshrinees/graf.html, available as of 10/6/05