COLLINS: Well, their careers are more and more shortened by the difficulties of the game, because with these new racquets, you're wearing out your body. But what do pro tennis players do at this stage? COLLINS: Golfers can play until after they're - five years after they're dead. INSKEEP: And just very briefly, Bud Collins, I know that golfers can go on to a senior tour, what happens… It was like a game of ping-pong, the way he played it.
Now there are a lot of baseliners, but they're waiting for the ball. He came in with a new style of the game, really. And they all wanted to see him win so much. Five players in the history of the game! So he just had a flair that attracted people, even when he was the proverbial bad boy in the early stages of his career when he did an awful lot of unseemly things. COLLINS: Well, he was the only - he's one of five players to win the four major championships. INSKEEP: What made Agassi such an appealing player, aside from his pure skill, his winning? He was like a guy who poisoned Winnie the Pooh's honey. And he was glad to have won, but he said it was also sad because it was Andre.īut he'll go down and he'll have his footnote in history. And it was tough, but he said it was also fun. Of course, he said he had goose bumps walking out there because he knew he was in the enemy camp. COLLINS: Well, you shouldn't diminish him, because he had 27 aces, and he had a tremendous forehand. It says here that he ended the match with a 133 mile an hour ace, which… INSKEEP: And I don't want to diminish his playing too much. Benjamin Becker, who is a college boy at Waco, Texas at Baylor, and he was an all-American there where he won the NCAA title in 2004, but…
But finally - it's sort of ironic - you lose to a guy nobody had ever heard of before. So he did acquit himself well yesterday, and you had 23,000 people just praying for him to win and cheering him on. But Andre said I didn't come here to quit. His father urged him to quit right there.
He had a set point in the fourth to send it into the fifth, but Andre really had used it all up when he beat Marcos Baghdatis in that match Thursday night that extended into Friday morning. He would've been, had to play Andy Roddick today, and I think it would have been a mess, because he wasn't even ready to play yesterday. INSKEEP: Seems kind of sad that Agassi didn't get to go out with a match against one of the other greats of tennis. BUD COLLINS (NBC Commentator and Boston Globe columnist): Well, good morning. To talk about yesterday's match and Agassi's career we've called Bud Collins, who is an NBC Commentator and Boston Globe columnist.
Agassi is 36 years old, and he is one of only five men to win all four grand slam titles. He lost to Germany's Benjamin Becker in four sets at the U.S. Andre Agassi said goodbye to pro tennis yesterday.
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