Andre Agassi and the wig (and the drugs)

Unlike many tennis fans of my generation, I never managed to idolise Andre Agassi. In the ‘90s, in fact, most of my friends loved the guy to bits, partly because of his tennis skills, but also because he came across as a kind of “rebel of tennis” because of his heavy metal hair style, bad-boy behaviour and coolish (at the time) outfits.

I always considered Agassi a great tennis player (although too stuck on the baseline for my liking) and a charismatic entertainer. However, I couldn’t see any rebellion in him, because there was none. To me he was more like a clever businessman who managed to fill a gap in the bad-boy-tennis-player market after McEnroe had retired.
What Agassi did was to take SuperBrat’s nutty behaviour and adding to it the funky clothes and the long hair. What I didn’t know at the time was that, just as much the rebellion was fake, the long hair was a trick too.

In fact, as per Agassi recent admission, he had been wearing a wig from 1990 to 1994 (making him the only player to have won Wimbledon wearing a wig) and I wonder how his teenager supporters of the time would have felt if they had found that out… By the way, thinking about it, in 1994 Agassi shaved his hair and dumped the wig. Did anybody ever wonder how he went from long thick hair to baldy in one go? I guess we were too busy watching Beverly Hills 90210 back then… for that matter I had a crush on Shannen Doherty, and wasn’t she hot?

Anyway, as time went by, Agassi slowly ditched the Rebel Without a Cause image and instead turned himself into a kind of Dalai Lama of tennis, throwing kisses to the crowd at the end of every match, raising money for charity, crying after victories and becoming one of those gentlemen that in the early years he despised.

However, as much as Agassi was not a rebel at the beginning of his career, he was not a gentleman at the end. By his own admission, he took illegal hard drugs in 1997 but was not banned by the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) because he had written them a letter asking for forgiveness! The reason why Agassi was not sentenced is simple: he was too popular with the tennis fans and too “marketing valuable” to receive a ban.

What I find irritating, but not surprising, in Agassi’s behaviour is that he has decided to come clear about his tricks only now, three years after having retired from tennis and just before publishing his autobiography… but will the extra bucks do him any good?

Ultimately, the Agassi’s saga can also be read in a political way. Agassi has, in fact, shown us the true colours of the Liberal he has always been: a rebel not really rebelling in his youth, a publicised do-gooder in his older days and all along, while pretending to be equal to others, cunningly not paying for his errors by abusing his popularity.

I must say that I am quite glad that Pete Sampras beat him most of the time. Nobody in my circle of friends liked Sampras back then. “Too boring”, they were saying. Still, he won 7 Wimbledon titles, never pretended to be anything more than a great tennis player and, I can pretty much say, never dared to wear a wig on Central Court!