\u201cWhen you watch the ball here, because of what he\u2019s doing, that ball can travel deeper in the strike zone and they don\u2019t know if he\u2019s going to hold and pull it cross or hold if he\u2019s going inside offline, and he can leave his opponent with their jock strap on the ground,\u201d Agassi said. \u201cBecause in tennis, power and control comes from time spent on racket with the ball. I don\u2019t care how you swing, if you can keep that ball on the racket a split second longer \u2014 we\u2019re talking about nuances \u2014 you\u2019ve got more power, more control and more deception.\u201d<\/p>\n
That moment became one of the most viral videos to come out of TNT\u2019s French Open coverage for two reasons.<\/p>\n
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The first, of course, is Agassi: An eight-time major winner and true 1990s cultural icon who is just beginning to reemerge as a public presence in the sport. After so many years of living a life more centered around his family and charity work in Las Vegas, seeing him pop up at all is like a dopamine hit of sports nostalgia.<\/p>\n
But the second reason that moment resonated is because it was so markedly different from the kind of television coverage tennis gets in the United States, where ESPN\u2019s lack of imagination has left the sport ossified as a broadcast property. During the Grand Slam tournaments, which is really tennis\u2019 only opportunity to create new fans at a large scale, the viewer usually comes away without much more insight into what\u2019s happening on the court than John McEnroe conjecturing about which player is feeling more pressure.<\/p>\n
It was a stark reminder that tennis could really benefit from Agassi becoming the face of the sport on television. And yet, from Agassi\u2019s perspective, his nascent experience as a broadcaster was a reminder of why that\u2019s never likely to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I did something for BBC, the semis of Wimbledon with Tim Henman and Andrew Castle,\u201d Agassi told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview Sunday as the U.S. Open was kicking off. \u201cI really enjoyed that because there were no commercials, right? You could actually discuss tennis. I\u2019m not a fan of reducing what\u2019s happening out there down to little insightful clips. It\u2019s not how I process, it\u2019s not how I see the game and it\u2019s not a format that allows for much serious conversation around what\u2019s actually going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Even at age 55, almost 19 years to the day since he played his final professional match at the U.S. Open, Agassi\u2019s relationship with tennis remains a fascination. For much of his youth, it tormented him to the point of drug abuse and constant regret over a life he didn\u2019t feel like he chose. Then as he crashed out of the rankings, Agassi found his purpose to play and get back to No. 1 after taking out a $40 million loan to open a charter school for underserved communities. That effort became both a passion and a business, and it\u2019s a significant reason why the U.S. Tennis Association Foundation honored him with the Serving Up Dreams Award at this year\u2019s Opening Night Gala.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I played, you\u2019re affecting people for a few hours, right? You\u2019re giving them a memory maybe,\u201d Agassi said. \u201cBut the foundation has kind of been my life\u2019s work and changing the trajectory of a child\u2019s life is way more gratifying. It\u2019s nice, but I could live without an award.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Coco Gauff and Andre Agassi high-five each other during The Stars Of The Open exhibition match on Arthur Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on August 21, 2025 in Flushing Queens. (Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(mpi04\/MediaPunch\/IPx)<\/p>\n
Still, it was another tiptoe back into the mix for Agassi, which has included a lengthy interview on Andy Roddick\u2019s popular \u201cServed\u201d podcast in June and a three-day training stint in Washington D.C., last month with No. 11-ranked Holger Rune. At last week\u2019s Stars of the Open event, he even got on the court to play a little exhibition doubles with Coco Gauff and even flashed a couple fist pumps.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI still watch tennis quite often, and it\u2019s kind of nice to attach a personality to the game and understand how they process, so I enjoy that part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a different generation so we don\u2019t really mingle over anything too much in common, but it\u2019s kind of cool when you meet a good person and it makes you root for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In some ways, Agassi is preserving the mystique by staying a little bit on the edges, by not oversaturating himself in the same way that McEnroe has parlayed his 1980s fame into a franchise that goes well beyond his role as the sport\u2019s preeminent broadcaster.<\/p>\n
And yet at the same time, Agassi’s presence is so badly needed. In an era where television executives seem to have little interest in presenting tennis beyond personality and conflict, Agassi has a natural Yoda-like ability to make the complex seem both relatable and simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was Pete (Sampras) who said that he felt like Andre looked at tennis with a different set of eyes,\u201d said Craig Shapiro, who was Agassi\u2019s traveling racket technician for a couple years in the 1990s and then later directed the 2007 documentary \u201cAgassi: Between the Lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s always provided a very unique and elevated perspective. He remains this unicorn, and the fact we see him back is like a real draw. People really, really gravitate towards him. He\u2019s always made people that way when he speaks, and I think it comes across TV. He\u2019s box office. He\u2019s just one of these special celebrity superstar athletes where you felt his pain, you watched him grow up and now when he gets on the mic it\u2019s something special every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question is how often the rest of us will get those moments and unique insights from one of the best tennis minds we\u2019ve ever seen. Full-time broadcasting is a grind. Even just the four Grand Slams is more than a two-month commitment every year. And the more free-flowing format Agassi enjoyed with the BBC isn\u2019t available in the U.S., where 90-second commercial breaks have to get wedged in every second game.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI see tennis a certain way, and I wanted to see if there\u2019s something interesting that I could contribute,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was really a data experiment for me to see if there\u2019s a way I can contribute to people\u2019s experiences watching tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s little doubt that more Agassi on television would not only improve fans\u2019 experiences, but make them smarter as well. It doesn\u2019t seem like he wants to give too much of himself back to the public yet, but after so many years where he wasn\u2019t very visible at events like the US Open, having even a little more access to his tennis genius feels like a big win for the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a moment during Andre Agassi\u2019s broadcast debut for TNT earlier this year when he unwittingly made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[23136,73202,2073,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-111941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andre-agassi","9":"tag-andrew-castle","10":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}