“Assembly Your Match,” by Dodie Kazanjian, was initially revealed within the August 2004 problem of Vogue.
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From their hilltop property in Tiburon, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf can look throughout the bay and see San Francisco preening itself within the solar, whereas one tower of the Golden Gate Bridge rises magically above a puffy cloud financial institution. The tennis world’s royal couple—essentially the most spectacular instance of a marital merger between two number-one athletes—have spent the entire morning being photographed for Vogue. Of their mid-30s, tanned and match, they each undertaking the silky, contained power of nice athletes, athletes who, although blissfully younger by unusual requirements, are already thought of outdated of their chosen career.
Probably the most dominant lady participant of her time, Steffi gained 22 Grand Slam titles earlier than she retired in 1999, on the age of 30. This July, she was inducted into the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. Andre has gained eight Grand Slams thus far, however on the astonishingly superior age (for tennis) of 34, he may but win one other. Tennis is more and more a younger man’s recreation lately, and the percentages towards Agassi are daunting, but it surely’s nonetheless too early to depend him out. His phenomenal comeback is already a tennis legend. In 1997, having slipped to 141 within the rankings, he remade himself by an all-out routine of rigorous bodily coaching; by 1999, he was primary on the planet, and he is been at or close to the highest ever since, successful the Australian Open final 12 months and greater than holding his personal towards the most recent technology of energy hitters. “I’ve an insane quantity of respect for him,” Andy Roddick stated not too long ago. “The way in which he competes—he treats each match prefer it’s Armageddon.”
Andre, his coach Darren Cahill, his lawyer and shut buddy Todd Wilson, and Gene Marshall, a Las Vegas buddy who can also be serving to him prepare, are barreling over the Golden Gate Bridge in Andre’s Lincoln Navigator, with me following anxiously in my rented Pontiac, making an attempt to maintain them in sight. Andre, who drives with the identical velocity and confidence he brings to the court docket, is headed for the Olympic Membership in San Francisco. He is preparing for the French Open, which begins in two weeks, and he must follow on a clay floor like those at Roland Garros. His personal court docket in Tiburon has a tough floor, and there are not any clay courts in Las Vegas, his actual house, in adequate form. We park on the street above the tennis courts at this well-known membership, whose golf course has typically been host to the U.S. Open. For the subsequent hour and a half, Darren feeds him backhands and forehands, and Andre rockets them again, clipping the strains within the corners, grunting vigorously on each shot. “That is nice tennis,” Darren says greater than as soon as. (Not nice sufficient, apparently; within the weeks after my go to, Agassi obtained knocked out within the first spherical on the French Open and two different European tournaments—the primary time since August 1997 he is misplaced three straight opening-round matches—after which withdrew from Wimbledon, citing a hip harm.) However Andre is just not solely pleased together with his recreation in the present day. His rhythm is a little bit off, he says, and the floor is simply too powdery.
