Hail and Farewell: Agassi Makes His Last Stand

Aug. 28, 2006 — -- He was the oldest and the first of them to turn pro, 20 years ago, at the precocious age of 16. He's the one many tennis fans initially would have tabbed Most Likely to Spontaneously Combust.

Fooled you. Instead of going up in flames, Andre Agassi burned his athletic candle at both ends. He is the last of his fabled generation still playing, and when he shoulders his racket bag after his final match at the U.S. Open, he'll formally end an era in American men's tennis that may be impossible to replicate.

"It's a sad day for me to see him retire," Jim Courier said, harkening back to the competitive fraternity formed by the five premier U.S. players of his day. "It's like seeing your last friend graduate from college. It really means you're a grown-up now, and it's fully in the next generation's hands. I live a little bit vicariously through him, loudly when I'm not broadcasting and very quietly when I am."

Agassi, Todd Martin, Courier, Pete Sampras and Michael Chang were born in that order in a statistically improbable cluster between April 1970 and February 1972. They grew up in the Nevada desert, on both coasts and in the Midwest. They represented a potpourri of ethnic backgrounds, and their fathers included a former boxer, a research chemist and a civil engineer.

None of them would be confused in a police lineup. Scrappy baseliner Chang was an eternally boyish 5-foot-9, while the 6-foot-6 Martin had an elder statesman's aura long before he retired. Agassi morphed from a Rapunzel-tressed teen trendsetter in denim shorts to a streamlined fitness freak, retaining only his steady, soulful gaze. Sampras was a darkly clean-cut assassin on his serve and at the net; the ruddy, big-swinging Courier was seldom without his regular-guy ballcap.

Together, they would win 27 Grand Slam championships, 189 tournament titles in all. (A sixth American, MaliVai Washington, reached his only Grand Slam final at Wimbledon in 1996.) They led the U.S. team to Davis Cup trophies in 1990, 1992 and 1995.