By Sandra Harwitt
tennisreporters.net

In the past few days, tennisreporters.net have received the latest reports on the pending marriage of tennis superstars Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi. Word from the couple is they will not marry until sometime after the birth of their son in December.

This is the latest scoop surrounding this couple – some of the scoops have been reliable and come directly from the source, while others were unsubstantiated rumors that turned out not to be true.

The question here is why do we need to know exactly when Steffi and Andre are getting married? We’re not getting an invitation to the ceremony and our presence really isn’t requested.

When Steffi and Andre became an item about the time of the U.S. Open 1999, tennisreporters.net wasn’t yet in existence so we couldn’t report the romantic rendezvous, but we would have done so. When tennisreporters.net, a thriving and brand-new website, was able to confirm Steffi’s pregnancy this past July, we were one of the first to report about the pending birth. After all, we are in the business of journalism so telling our readers about news is our job.

Despite that fact, however, the issue of whether we need to know the actual date of the pending nuptials is something that should be explored. In tr.net’s opinion, Steffi and Andre probably have no date picked to tie the knot. The last reported date we heard of was Saturday, Sept. 15th, which to the best of our knowledge came and went without a wedding. We believe the reason there has been no firm date is that Steffi and Andre desperately want to have a private, intimate wedding without the prying eyes of the public, so they keep waiting and hoping they can pull off a clandestine ceremony.

On an occasion as personal as getting married, don’t they really deserve the same privacy that other people enjoy? There’s no denying that these two sports stars are world-renowned celebrities and the interest about them and their lives is broad. But shouldn’t even famous people be able to get married without a lot of strangers trying to get a peek.

Maybe if they were a couple following old-fashioned ideals, knowing when the nuptials were taking place would seem more essential. But let’s get real – they’ve lived together for two years now and are expecting their first child in a few months – getting married is just a formality for a lifestyle they have already chosen and made us aware of.

The unfortunate outgrowth of all this attention on the twosome is that it has basically driven Steffi underground and totally out of the public eye. This is a shame since as a bright individual and a former player of such importance, she could be offering a great deal of insight into the women’s game of today. While she has always remained friendly to the tennis media she’s known well through her career, she’s done no interviews since hooking up with Andre and all of her valuable opinions are not being heard. And lately, interest in seeing whether she is showing or not, has found her hiding around corners from everyone. At the Open, Steffi snuck into different corporate boxes so that she could watch Andre’s matches and not be seen. When the cameras managed to spot her sitting in these boxes, she’d immediately run for cover inside.

In tr.net’s opinion, if we all backed off a bit and give Steffi and Andre a little space, we’d probably see Steffi come back out into the open a little more. And we have this message for Steffi and Andre – whenever you get married, we wish you a happy day and make sure to let us know when it happened after the fact.