Agassi can still cut it with best

FROM hair to paternity, Andre Agassi’s long career has been a very visible process of growing up. As the rockstar locks fell out, so too he shed the flippant brattishness which marked his early years in tennis, slowly replacing it with a calm, accepting maturity.

Pretty soon now, the 33-year-old will have to come to terms with the stage of life which follows growing up - growing old. He has just regained the world No1 ranking, and won his eighth grand slam title at the start of the year in Melbourne, so there are no signs yet of imminent senescence. But he knows it is going to happen some day soon.

That vivid sense of sporting mortality which Agassi possesses is another way in which his character has undergone a sea change. In the early years of his career, this son of Las Vegas would toss away sets - and on occasion whole matches - with spendthrift abandon. Now, he engages in meticulous husbandry of every single point, just in case it is the last he plays on this Earth.

This tenacity is his biggest mental strength. In terms of the actual play, his greatest asset is his return of serve - perhaps the best in the history of the sport.

And that asset can be relied upon even in the most adverse of circumstances, as was shown at Queen’s last week. Agassi lost to his young compatriot Andy Roddick, who in the course of the semi-final clocked a serve of 149 miles per hour to equal Greg Rusedski’s world-record speed for a serve. It was a remarkable feat - but not as remarkable as the fact that Agassi got the serve back, and went on to win the point.

So the talent remains, and the application is there too. Eleven years on from his only Wimbledon victory to date, Agassi’s long career could yet come to a triumphant conclusion. Pete Sampras is out of the way at last; Lleyton Hewitt is playing below his best on grass; and Roddick and the other young pretenders have yet to show they have the stamina required.

But he knows that this could easily be his last stand. And he knows, too, that if, a fortnight tomorrow, he becomes Wimbledon champion for the second time, it could go down as the climactic achievement of his career.

"When I won Australia this year it proved all over again that every moment out there can become more special," Agassi said this week. "I approach this month as the same thing - an opportunity to do something that will possibly be the most special one of them all.

"I don’t have a lot of time left regardless of how long I can stretch it. The question to me is not how long I have, it is where I stand now and what my goals are - what I am still able to accomplish.

"I’m going to keep pushing myself until I just wake up one day and realise I can’t do it to the same standard any more. As you get older you have a stronger ability to embrace the rare moments, and you become more aware of how rare they are. To win Wimbledon again would be a quite incredible accomplishment for me."

In the years before his 1992 win, Agassi was widely regarded, at least in this country, as just another asinine American. Taking an instant dislike to him saved time, as far as the more conservative breed of tennis aficionado was concerned, and for Agassi the feeling was mutual.

After his first, losing appearance in 1987, he did not return for four years, citing the Wimbledon dress code. The stuffed shirts of the All England club demanded plain or predominantly white clothes: Andre and his team of crack couturiers favoured a hitherto unexplored region of the spectrum called hot lava.

There was a genuine clash of cultures there, but looking back, Agassi said the real reason for his boycott was a lack of self-belief. Brought up on concrete and clay, he couldn’t cut it on grass - and at the time couldn’t quite admit that failing. His debut 16 years ago, he recalled, was "a short experience, probably an hour and seven minutes on court No2 against Henri Leconte, and I swore I’d never be back.

"I didn’t have any desire to be on the grass; I didn’t feel it was tennis. I remember feeling it was inconvenient in my schedule. A lot of things that really had nothing to do with the reality of what it was.

"Ultimately the reason for me not playing was a real immature approach towards what I felt was best for me at the time. I didn’t want to make those adjustments and I wanted the time off so I joked about the colour and the white stuff.

"Really that wasn’t part of it. I just didn’t have the desire to come over and play on a surface that I was convinced I couldn’t really do well on."

He returned in 1991 and reached the quarter-finals, a harbinger of what was to come 12 months later. He wishes now that he’d never stayed away.

"As I got older then I became aware of what place Wimbledon has in the sport of tennis. To miss out on that was my loss."

He has been back every year since, with the sole exception of 1997, when a drastic dip in form and fitness saw him fall to a ranking of 141. His recovery was rapid: having tested his commitment to tennis, he learned it was very much intact.

These days, Agassi has other commitments as well, and so far at least they complement his tennis. He and Steffi Graf have one son, Jaden Gil, and expect a second child later this year. He is happy and composed, and draws strength from family life.

"Being able to come here after a disappointing loss [at the French Open] in Paris is a perfect example of what my little boy can offer me," he said. "I have greater clarity and focus and I find myself being able to get away from the game pretty easily because you go home and forget your day for better or for worse. Damn it, it doesn’t matter as long as we’re together.

"I wake up every day with a belief and hope that I’ll be better than I was the day before. I want to believe I can keep getting better. When I can’t I hope I’m the first to realise that."

He is the oldest man to have held the No1 ranking, and some might therefore infer that he is just hanging on by his withered fingertips. But the ranking is based on year-round consistency, and besides, he showed just a few months ago that he still has what it takes to win major tournaments.

"What I experienced this year in Australia, I’d stay on another five years to have one day like that," he said. "Wimbledon has its own magic and its own rightful place, and it will be incredible to win it again. It feels like it was yesterday, yet it feels like a lifetime has happened."

The way in which he experiences the passing of time may be another sign of ageing. The way in which he deals with an onrushing tennis ball, conversely, suggests this shaven-headed sage has learned how to stay forever young.