Andre AgassiAndre Agassi celebrated yesterday his 37th birthday. In a 20-year career, the gold medallist at the 1996 Atlanta Games strongly marked the public and the history of tennis. Let's look a little closer at the career of the man considered today as one of the darlings of tennis.
The son of an Olympic boxer from Iran, Andre Agassi began playing tennis at the age of three, with a racket taped to his hand. He turned professional when he was sixteen years old. His breakthrough came when he won the 1992 Wimbledon tournament.
At three, Andre Agassi held his first racket! At 16, he turned professional. At 22, he won Wimbledon, his first major victory.
In 1996, aged 26, he represented the USA at the Atlanta Olympic Games. In the final, he faced Spain's Sergi Bruguera. Despite a difficult tournament start and a delay of three hours due to rain, he took the title in record time: 77 minutes, with an irrefutable score of 6-2, 6-3, 6-1. He thus became Olympic champion, a title he considered the most important of his career. Indeed, he took over from his father, a former boxer who represented Iran at the London 1948 and Helsinki 1952 Games, thus introducing his son to the Olympic spirit.
At 36, after a defeat in the final of the US Open against Germany's Benjamin Becker, the American put an end to his professional career.
Twenty years professional career, 60 victories in singles, one in doubles, three in the Davis Cup and an Olympic title make Andre Agassi a reference in the world of tennis like Australia's Rod Laver and Sweden's Björn Borg. What's more, he is the only player to have won the four Grand Slam titles (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open) on four different surfaces.
Source: IOC
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