Closer to the end than the beginning
August 31, 2003

Jim Litke
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The best of the rest of his generation is gone.

Almost alone now, Andre Agassi soldiers on.

Sunday at the U.S. Open, it was against Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the resumption of a match postponed a day earlier by showers. From the way Agassi began dissecting the match afterward, you half-expected an audible "creak" when he drew one elbow close in to support his chin.

"Well," he began, "it makes for a long day, there's no question about that."

This came from a man who needed less than an hour to wrap up a straight-set win, who over the years transformed himself from a brash kid with a loud, pastel wardrobe and Vegas showgirl-styled hair to a model of decorum, monochromes and aerodynamic efficiency.

One look at Agassi now with his shaved head and basic outfits -- white for the heat of the day, black during the cooler evening sessions -- lets you know the man is about business and nothing else. At age 33, with the realization that he is much closer to the end of his career than the beginning, Agassi can't afford to be any other way.

A decade ago, he was a kid more interested in hawking sneakers, cameras and the like and the Open draw matched him against Jimmy Connors, then an aging star himself. At one point during the match, a fan yelled to Connors, "He's nothing, you're a legend."

However that slight might have affected Agassi then, when he was all words and no deeds, it cannot touch him now. He has eight major championships, another 50 tournament wins, is married to Steffi Graf and has a second child on the way.

Asked what that fan might yell if he'd been in attendance Sunday, Agassi broke into a wide grin.

"He's probably in the 55-and-olders watching Jimmy play still," he said. "I have no idea."

The truth is, Agassi knows exactly what that fan would say. While Agassi is loath even to utter the word "legacy," there's no denying it's on his mind.

Pete Sampras, the rival whose unsurpassed career will one day help define Agassi's as well, said goodbye in an emotional farewell to the sport last Monday. On Tuesday, Michael Chang followed Sampras to the sideline, the procession closely observed and commented upon by Jim Courier, the final member of a Fab Four that made up arguably the most productive generation of American tennis players ever.

Beginning with Sampras' breakthrough win here as a 19-year-old in 1990 (he beat Agassi in the final), Andre and those three amigos won an incredible 27 of the 55 Grand Slam tournaments leading up to this one. Sampras won 14 -- more than half the total -- but the bigger surprise may be that Agassi ascended alongside him into the sport's stratosphere.

Most of the reasons why were on display in his dismantling of Kafelnikov, most notably the way Agassi broke back early in the third set to steal the momentum, then took the Russian's heart with two service games at love and another break to earn himself the chance to serve for the match.

The final winner was a well-disguised, two-fisted, inside-out backhand that Kafelnikov had neither the chance nor the inclination to run down. His opponents know that not only does Agassi have the best baseline game in tennis, he's also the most experienced, the coolest under pressure and despite the old man act, the best-conditioned athlete out there.

"I think he played just as good as he did here four years ago," Kafelnikov said, marking Agassi's last Open title, "or maybe even better."

The price Agassi pays for that, though, becomes dearer by the day. He has a son, Jaden, who turns 2 next month and when asked to describe his off-day preparation routine from morning to night, Agassi said: "Start by changing some diapers, followed by, you know, cooking some breakfast for a 2-year-old ... and then we move to the tennis part, which is just basically about 45 minutes or an hour on the court."

For some reason, Agassi refuses to discuss the grueling work he does in the gym. But anybody who's watched him grind down one opponent after another on the red clay of Paris, the lawns of Wimbledon, or the hard courts of Sydney and New York that bookend the Grand Slam season, understands how much time he puts in.

"I tried to be like him since I was a little kid," said Vahid Mirzadeh, who was still just 16 as of Sunday and competing in the junior tournament here. "I've tried to copy his baseline game, his work ethic ... well, everything except the hair."

Anand Amritraj, half of a famed brother-doubles team from the 1970s and '80s, remembers Agassi's hair at the other extreme. Now 51, he first saw the flashy kid 15 years ago at a tournament upstate in Schenectady and wondered whether the "image-is-everything" boy would amount to much -- even with all that talent.

"At first I doubted he'd figure it out. But at some point, that changed," Amritraj said, "probably when he first realized that time runs out on all of us."

Whenever that epiphany washed over Agassi the first time is less important than the fact he needs reminding no more.

"I've thought that going on for three years now, every time on the court, 'This could be the last.' I'm very well aware of it."

Pause.

"I don't know how it's going to end," he added. "I just know that it's not now."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.

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