Unlike many key characters of the 1990s and 2000s, traveling the world in the shadow of the sport that he once conquered holds little allure for the Australian, who invested extensively in property during and after his career. \u201cMy life here\u2019s too good, mate,\u201d he said. But he\u2019s doing it now \u2014 at least for a few days \u2014 thanks to a call from one of his biggest rivals at the start of the year.<\/p>\n
Rafter ran into Andre Agassi<\/a> in three straight Wimbledon semifinals around the turn of the century, winning two of them before losing in the final on both occasions. Nine months ago, Agassi called his old rival in his role as captain of Team World at the Laver Cup<\/a>, the annual three-day competition between a team composed of the best players in Europe, and one composed of the best of the rest of the world. Agassi invited Rafter to be his vice captain.<\/p>\n Pat Rafter with Andre Agassi in San Francisco at the Laver Cup. (Ezra Shaw \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Rafter and Agassi have remained friends since hanging up their rackets, and Rafter was pretty blunt in response. \u201cIt sort of depends, I guess, mate. It depends on how much work you need me to do,\u201d he remembers saying. But the nature of their partnership appealed to him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important if you\u2019re going to go into this type of job, whether it\u2019s Davis Cup or Laver Cup, having that sort of yin and yang a little bit, and me and Andre we have that,\u201d Rafter said \u2014 alluding not only to their different personalities, but to their opposite game-styles: Agassi the baseliner, Rafter the serve-and-volleyer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes it fun. I\u2019m looking forward to the challenge.\u201d They are even opposites in their chosen sport after tennis \u2014 Agassi made his pro pickleball<\/a> debut this year, while Rafter is an international padel<\/a> player.<\/p>\n \u201cI find pickleball a really s\u2014 game of tennis to be honest,\u201d Rafter said.<\/p>\n Rafter said he will take the lead from Team World\u2019s players on the kind of guidance that they want. After U.S. Open and Davis Cup commitments for Taylor Fritz and Alex de Minaur, he thinks \u201cit\u2019s probably more about getting them in the right headspace and then freshening them up more than anything.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the players and everything want to try their ass off again and go hard, then we\u2019re there for that as well, but we\u2019ve got to really gauge them and try not pushing too hard as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the role of a Laver Cup captain is to act as a bridge between different eras. Rafter stopped playing just as men\u2019s tennis underwent a major transformation. His final singles match was in 2001, when serve-and-volley was still a genuine strategy but rapidly becoming extinct. At that year\u2019s Wimbledon, where Rafter lost an epic final to Goran Ivani\u0161evi\u0107, three of the four semifinalists were serve-and-volleyers.<\/p>\n The following year, there was just one, Tim Henman \u2014 Rafter\u2019s counterpart on Team Europe at the Laver Cup \u2014 and even he was tending to stay back behind his second serves. A slowing down of the grass, heavier balls, and more powerful rackets meant that rushing to the net was rapidly becoming a fool\u2019s errand, in London and on the rest of the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cI just couldn\u2019t believe some of the shots that were being made,\u201d Rafter said.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the returns, that far back, hitting winners. If someone was standing that far back in the court, you do a kick serve, get to the net, and I just started getting passed everywhere. I was just thinking, \u2018This guy is playing off his face.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know what was going on, but I couldn\u2019t match these guys on a fast, hard court.<\/p>\n \u201cI hit a big kicker, and then they\u2019re just hitting winners from five metres behind the baseline. I remember even coming to volley and the ball was having a whole different ball flight. Just, wow, it\u2019s different. No one had really spoken much about it, but the Europeans and South Americans were definitely onto it.\u201d<\/p>\n Rafter was one of the last dedicated serve-and-volleyers to succeed at the highest level, and he\u2019s sceptical about whether tennis will see another one. \u201cThere\u2019s room for someone to mix it up to find a way to break rhythms,\u201d Rafter said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut to actually play the real game, you need to do it at a pretty young age. There are subtleties and nuances hard to teach someone who\u2019s 22 years old or on the tour. You\u2019re not going to turn them into a full serve-and-volleyer like myself, (Stefan) Edberg, Cashy (Pat Cash), those types of players.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the generation of people now, they all seem to be six foot six (198cm) at a minimum. And everyone serves absolute cannons and that\u2019s not the way you serve-volley, where the idea is you hit the big kick serve to get to the net to get court position, so you can make your first volley. Serving massive serves and coming in is not really the way traditional serve-volleyers play because you\u2019ve got less time to get to the net, the ball\u2019s on you a lot quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n Pat Rafter reached the Wimbledon final in 2000, then again in 2001. (Simon Bruty \/ Anychance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Rafter maximised his understanding of these subtleties. He was a relatively late bloomer, having only won one ATP title anywhere before he won the U.S. Open in 1997, aged 24. McEnroe labelled him a \u201cone-Slam wonder,\u201d but Rafter defended the title the following year. As his profile grew after becoming a Grand Slam champion, Rafter was named People Magazine\u2019s \u201cSexiest Athlete Alive\u201d in 1997. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed you get better looking the more U.S. Opens you win and money you make,\u201d Rafter said to GQ in 1999.<\/p>\n That was the year he became the world No. 1 \u2014 for a single week. In 2000 and 2001, he reached the Wimbledon final, losing to Pete Sampras and then Ivani\u0161evi\u0107, but his last singles match was at the Davis Cup final in November 2001. Rafter officially retired in January 2003.<\/p>\n \u201cI was done \u2014 mentally, emotionally,\u201d he said, having also managed arm, shoulder and knee injuries.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I\u2019d achieved pretty well everything, but more than that was the fact that I felt I needed something different in my life, and tennis had consumed so much of the first 28 years. The first year or two is a little bit tricky, because you have to come to terms with not being in the big situations and being in Wimbledon and those other places and vying for a position. But then you understand how much work\u2019s required to actually be in there.\u201d<\/p>\n The players Rafter will mentor at the Laver Cup have very different games from his era. Their lifestyles and approaches to the sport are different, too.<\/p>\n As Rafter puts it, in his day, \u201cWe had an absolute bloody ball.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was 100 percent different. Everyone\u2019s got a camera now too, bloody hell, we would have been in trouble. That\u2019s just a fact. I was a bit of a punk as well, I had fun. I am not gonna sit here and say I was a goody-goody two-shoes the whole time, everyone was there just having fun and drinking and doing stupid bloody things.\u201d<\/p>\n Rafter mainly partied with his fellow Aussies, and said that \u201cwe just drank for four weeks\u201d during the final weeks of the calendar because he \u201ccouldn\u2019t deal with how miserable it was being indoors at the end of the year.\u201d During a Davis Cup tie in 1997, he admitted to still being drunk for the dead rubber he had just won.<\/p>\n After his four Grand Slam finals, whether winning or losing, Rafter would put on a big party. In New York, following his U.S. Open wins, he would take over a back room at the Park Avenue Country Club in Manhattan and open it up for all the Australians and anyone who was around to join in the celebrations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just drank until the sun came up, and I think I had one hour of sleep and went straight to do the trophy ceremony the next day in the park,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After his heartbreaking Wimbledon finals, Rafter would open the bar at the Dog and Fox in Wimbledon Village, where a few hundred people, mainly his compatriots, helped him commiserate. Rafter\u2019s famous loss to Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 in 2001 came by the time he was truly adored at home in Australia, unironically nicknamed Saint Pat, partly for donating around half of his U.S. Open winner\u2019s prize money to children\u2019s charities. So too was Rafter\u2019s opponent, whose win as a Wimbledon wild card in his fourth final remains one of the sport\u2019s ultimate feel-good stories.<\/p>\n There had to be a loser, and in a final held over to Monday because of rain and opened up to the public, Rafter lost a thriller in front of a frenzied, very un-Wimbledon crowd.<\/p>\n \u201cChaos. Total. Bloody. Chaos,\u201d is Rafter\u2019s summary of the day. And while he\u2019ll be able to talk to his Laver Cup players about his successes and the fun he had on tour, he\u2019ll also be able to explain what it\u2019s like to suffer one of tennis\u2019s biggest disappointments. Rafter was two points from winning the Wimbledon title he craved above all others, and though he doesn\u2019t regret those specific points, it was a loss that took a while to get over.<\/p>\n His laid-back demeanor, and the fact that it was Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 who won, made it appear that Rafter would be able to process the defeat as well as anyone. He did, but for five years after the final, Rafter would wake in a cold sweat thinking about what he might have done differently.<\/p>\n Does it still gnaw away at him? \u201cOh, not now,\u201d he said. Adding with a smile: \u201cIt took about 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, he put on a brave face in the Dog and Fox: \u201cI was dancing and cheering with everyone and singing songs and they carried you on your shoulders and all the Aussies and everyone\u2019s s\u2014faced drunk and laughing. Then you finish up there and you make your way home. I mean, what are you gonna do? I don\u2019t know what else to do. I\u2019m not gonna sit and cry in a corner.<\/p>\n \u201cI was close. There\u2019s only one winner out of 128, so I wasn\u2019t good enough. That\u2019s all it is.\u201d Despite the relaxed personality, Rafter was known for giving absolutely everything on the court. \u201cHe\u2019s just so dogged,\u201d longtime commentator and broadcaster Mary Carillo told GQ in 1999.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot assume you\u2019ve got him beat. You have to step on his neck and jump up and down on it. Then you\u2019d better hold a mirror under his nostrils to be sure he\u2019s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n This fierce competitor has a very different focus at the Laver Cup: enjoyment. If his players have a good time, he will be confident that results will take care of themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully they buy into it as much as myself and Andre are going to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n (Top photo: Ezra Shaw \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy local beach is a few minutes\u2019 drive away, so I surf there, come back to do a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,3276,747],"class_list":["post-154152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pat-Rafter-Tennis-Laver-Cup-scaled.jpg\")
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