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看板Agassi作者youtwo (youtwo)時間22年前 (2003/09/04 05:36)推噓0(0推 0噓 0→)

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※ 引述《pistil (台灣才是人住的地方)》之銘言： : 我看到快飆淚了~~ : 唉呀~~~ : 阿格西, : 你是神啊! : http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/phil_taylor/09/02/hot_button/?cnn=yes 把文章貼上來好了... Andre the giant Agassi has matured into an all-time great and is still going strong He is hardly the one you would expect to be his sport's grand old man, not if you remember his younger, wilder days when he had that crazy lion's mane and appeared to be nothing but "a haircut and a forehand," as Ivan Lendl once described him. Now there's a blast from the past -- Ivan Lendl. It seems like you'd have to go back a thousand years on the tennis timeline to find Lendl, but Andre Agassi played against him. That's how long Agassi has been prowling the court. Agassi is 33 now, and he's watched all of his contemporaries slowly fade away. Remember Jim Courier? Long gone. Pete Sampras and Michael Chang? They announced their retirements recently at the U.S. Open, the same U.S. Open in which Agassi is the No. 1 seed. You might have expected them all to outlast Agassi -- Sampras for certain, because his powers of concentration and single-minded pursuit of greatness seemed to set him apart from Agassi. Sometimes Agassi had that kind of passion for tennis and sometimes he didn't, which is why you thought he'd be history by now instead of making history. But here he is, the oldest player ever to be ranked No. 1 in the world. Andre "Image is Everything" Agassi. Imagine that. Maybe the reason you thought he would leave early is actually the reason he has stayed late. Agassi has always been honest enough to admit that sometimes tennis dropped down from the top of his list of priorities. Sometimes he was mooning over Brooke Shields, other times he was letting his mind wander to family crises like his mother's and sister's battles with breast cancer. The intensity of his interest in tennis rose and fell, which is why he has gone through lulls in his career, but maybe that was the healthiest, most normal thing about Agassi. Maybe that's why he's still beating players not much more than half his age. He's not burned out or used up. Men's tennis needs Agassi now more than ever. People want to see the kids with the big futures, but they like the players with a past even more. Every sport needs the LeBrons and the Dontrelles, the Roddicks and the Hewitts, but those guys won't really take off until they have something approaching the history with the public that an athlete like Agassi has. We've seen him grow from teenager to husband. We've watched him go through a marriage and divorce to Shields. And now we're witnessing his transition to fatherhood, as he and wife Steffi Graf raise one child and await the birth of their second. He has gone from those "Image is Everything" camera commercials to his current advertisement for a credit card, in which he uses his tennis ball hopper to pick up his son's squeaky toys. Whenever he plays, whether he wins or loses, it means something more to us because we know him, or at least we feel that we do. Then there's the physical part. Thirty-three isn't ancient by today's athletic standards, but in tennis, where teenagers and early 20-somethings rule, it's getting up there. Agassi's ability to maintain his speed, reflexes and stamina at his age is nothing short of remarkable. We marvel at Barry Bonds' amazing play at the age of 39, but Bonds "only" has to retain his talent as a hitter. He doesn't have to be as fast on the bases or as nimble in the field as he once was. For a tennis player, it's a different story. If any part of Agassi's game fails, he's gone. And he will be gone someday, just like his old rivals. He just might have enough left to win this year's U.S. Open, but you can still see the end drawing closer. Agassi won the Australian Open in January, but he lost in the quarterfinals of the French and in the fourth round at Wimbledon. He seems all right with that, which is understandable because he has nothing left to prove. For a guy who once appeared to be all style, Andre Agassi has surprised us with his substance. -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.csie.ntu.edu.tw) ◆ From: 140.112.216.120