Ok, this one’s no surprise either. In fact, many Worst Hair readers have been waiting breathlessly for this very installment. Another subscriber suggested we do an entire series just on Andre’s hair. Anyway, to mark the 4th round of one of Andre’s fave tourneys, the U.S. Open, here he is in all his late-80s glory:
the secret love child of Mel Gibson, Farrah Fawcett, and an unspecified rodent
At Best Player, we’re big Agassi fans. We think his 2009 autobiography Open is a fabulous sports memoir, and we’ve always loved his talent and grit and character on the court. And in fact, Andre himself is pretty funny and forthcoming about his hair and his early obsession with it: there’s a story in Open about his being way more concerned about his hair implants (which he’d accidentally washed down a hotel shower drain) than about his match at the French Open.
Andre started losing his hair early and went to great lengths (sorry) to hide the fact. But he looked a lot better when he came to terms with his male-pattern baldness and shaved his head. Otherwise, he could have ended up in the same sad boat as another 80s hair god, onetime Van Halen singer David Lee Roth:
Not pleasant.
Now, Andre is happily chrome-domed, raising a family with Steffi Graf, running his charitable school and foundation, and playing exhibition matches against old rivals like John McEnroe and Jim Courier. But when sports stylists look at the historical record, nobody embodies the Bad Hair Decade quite like the young Agassi.
We’ve always believed Andre Agassi wasn’t just one of the greatest tennis players ever, but also one of the most insightful commentators on the state of his own sport – and on what it takes to be a top performer. Here’s a great clip, from the ATP site, in which others pay tribute to AA on his induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Search youtube under “tennis prodigy” and the second video in the queue is this one, of little Jan Silva.
The video mentions how Jan has been playing since he was a little over a year old, and how he’s “based” at a private tennis academy in France. Now, anyone familiar with the story of Andre Agassi‘s ambivalent relationship with his tennis education and those who provided it (or anyone who’s read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which can maybe be called the Best Tennis Novel Ever, since there really aren’t that many others laying claim to the title) will recoil just a bit at the word “academy” – which brings up a key question in grooming a “prodigy,” whether in tennis, soccer, golf, or whatever: how much do you push the young’un?
Key question notwithstanding, Little Jan looks to have the talent and the ambition. If he can keep this up for 15 years or so, he’ll be on the cusp of the big leagues and – who knows? – ready to take a crack at being the Best Player in the World. And since almost 150,000 people have already watched this video, his name will already be familiar.
Not pleasant.
