More Than Commercial Success

Andre Agassi might sometimes look like Tennis the Menace, but the guy can play.

Besides, he is:

Calmer than McEnroe.

Happier than Lendl.

Quieter than Connors.

Nicer than Nastase.

No hairier than Borg.

And easier to pronounce than Ivanisevic or Ivanitrump or Ivaniwhite or whoever that was he defeated Sunday at Wimbledon.

Oh, and another point in his favor:

Andre is not a fat, lazy pig who grunts.

He is the new king of England and prince of rackets.

He is lord of the lawn, a champion on grass, even though his hometown, Las Vegas, doesn’t have any.

(Vegas golf courses usually use artificial turf.)

Now that he has his won first Grand Slam tournament, Agassi might as well stick around to play golf in next week’s British Open.

He won’t have to wear white, and he can still let his Spandex show beneath his knickers.

Agassi finally hit the jackpot, the payoff for the normal childhood he sacrificed by spending his formative years at one of those grow-a-pro tennis farms in Florida.

After Andre was 16 and won $5,000 at his first tournament, he said: “I thought that made me the richest kid in the world.�

By his 21st birthday, he had a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and two Porsches, but was still sleeping on his parents’ couch.

He also had an ad campaign, the pitch of which was: “Image is everything.� To some people, alas, Andre’s image was that of Bozo the tennis player.

In his own defense, he said:

“Hey, I’m still growing up. I did things at 16 and 18 that I regret. Didn’t you?�

In Esquire magazine recently, the cover trumpeted the latest “Andre awards,� given annually to the “most irritating people in sports.� They are named after Agassi.

Perhaps future issues will give the devil his dubious achievement.

No one ever can deny Andre what he did over the fortnight past. The great Jack Kramer won singles at Wimbledon exactly once. Ellsworth Vines, once. Stan Smith, once. Tony Trabert, once. Arthur Ashe, once. Ken Rosewall, Pancho Gonzalez, Fred Stolle, Cliff Drysdale, Ilie Nastase, Vitas Gerulaitis, Guillermo Vilas, Roscoe Tanner--never.

Andre is 22.

Image doesn’t have to be everything any more.

Many serious journalists in this, the Year of the Woman, eventually will get around to assessing our political candidates, or perhaps the recent high-court ruling on Roe vs. Wade, or perhaps the sexual-harassment allegations of Professor Anita Hill, or equally noteworthy topics. Not me. Me, I get to ask:

Why can’t women grunt?

Poor little Monica Seles, who got so much attention at Wimbledon last summer by not showing up, left the place this time wondering:

“Why is everybody picking on me?�

Her reason for singing the song of Charlie Brown: No matter how fast she ran and how high she jumped, Seles could not dodge the subject of why she emitted noises that sounded like feeding time at the zoo.

On particularly tough points, she lashed out at the fuzzy little tennis ball with an accompanying: “Aaarrrrrgh!� Sometimes she would use five r’s per aaarrrrrgh, other times six or seven.

Anyway, screams such as these haven’t been heard in England since Jack was out there, ripping.

As a result, this became the first time the game of tennis has ever had complaints about the racket.

By the time Seles reached the championship match against Steffi Graf, she had become totally self-conscious. She turned into Little Bo Peepless. You couldn’t get one out of her.

And she lost in 58 minutes flat.

Leading me to this:

Monica, you got be the best banshee you can be. You hear? That’s why we let you play outdoors, pumpkin. Nobody will arrest you for creating a disturbance. Give out a primal scream. Do that James Brown impression of yours. OK, then do the one that makes the window pane shatter.

Look:

I am not going to be witness to baseball players spitting like Roman fountains, basketball players talking trash, football players mouthing obscenities overheard on the referee’s microphone, hockey players clawing at somebody’s throat, jockeys whipping horses, boxers drooling plasma and shotputters and discus throwers grunting considerably louder than Seles and tell this young lady that her behavior is offending me.

If I wanted my athletes quiet, I’d go watch chess.