By Sandra Harwitt
Special to tennisreporters.net

Siggi Bucher

FROM THE ATP TENNIS MASTERS CUP IN HOUSTON – Although Andre Agassi experienced his first loss in four matches against Roger Federer here at the Tennis Masters Cup, his 6-7 (3-7), 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) defeat to the reigning Wimbledon champion was a success of sorts.

The 33-year-old Agassi came extremely close to winning that first match of his round robin draw, even having two match points in the third-set tiebreak before Federer executed an exquisite forehand passing shot at 8-7 to end the match after two hours and 25 minutes.

The remarkable thing is that Agassi, most definitely the closest candidate to AARP membership in this eight-man field of the year-end best, had not touched a ball in competition since losing to Juan Carlos Ferrero in the US Open semifinals. Since then Agassi has remained at home in Las Vegas with wife, Steffi Graf, and son, Jaden, awaiting the arrival of baby, Jaz Elle, who joined the family in early October.

While Agassi has been spending much of that time training in between changing Pampers, anyone can tell you that match play is a very different animal than practice play.

"I definitely felt good about the competitiveness of the match and the quality of the tennis and the opportunities I gave myself, but disappointed in a few very important situations on how my errors came," said Agassi after the close encounter with Federer.

Agassi might not have come away with the win, going down 0-1 in the Blue Group which also includes Ferrero (0-1) and David Nalbandian (1-0), but it was impressive to see that he hasn't gotten overly stale with three months off.

He trailed 2-0 in the first set and came back to win in a tiebreak. After dropping his serve in the eighth game of the third set to put Federer in position to serve out the match at 5-3, he jumped on top of the Swiss to recoup the service break in the ninth game and force the tiebreak.

GETS TO HOUSTON A WEEK EARLY
When Agassi arrived here in Houston – a whole week early to get used to the surrounding and put in a marathon training session – he admitted he expected that there would be good and bad ramifications to his decision to sit on the sidelines for so long.

"The disadvantage is that there's a good chance I'm going to play some shockers on some crucial times," he said. "But, hopefully, that won't last but a set or so. I think the advantages are that I actually feel pretty fresh and ready to go. I mean, my mind is excited, enthusiastic and my body feels good. I haven't won a match in two years in this tournament so I can only improve from that."

© Mark Lyons

There in lies a serious problem for Agassi; the Tennis Masters Cup has not been a friendly environment for him recently and falling behind at the outset could not have been what he was hoping for here in Houston.

Nevertheless, he is an avid fan of the round-robin format which always offers the hope that there could still be a future available for him this week.

"It's a format that I think works well for the players because it gives them a chance to really work into their game," he said. "It gives them a chance to match up against different players. It's great for the spectators to get to see how different players bring out different parts of each other's game. That's all sort of part of what makes tennis so special."

Agassi believes that coming here a week early offered his best prospects for a productive week, but it also offered him one advantage not available at home: sleep. Apparently, daughter Jaz has not had enough time to get with the program and understand that sleeping through the night is a redeeming feature in the minds of parents everywhere.

"The first night I was pretty excited to be here from a sleep standpoint," Agassi said. "And then you get your rest and you start missing your family, so it takes about a good 12 hours for that to happen."

Agassi has spent a great deal of his career, specifically since hooking up over 10 years ago with fitness trainer and good buddy, Gil Reyes, being obsessed with fitness. But he believes that a strength training regimen needs to be clearly defined to be a benefit and not a liability.

"I think there's always going to be a certain amount of sacrifice involved any time you push yourself to cross boundaries," he said. "But there's a couple of crimes in training. There's a crime of sort of having such commitment and desire and running yourself into a wall, and having it sort of come back to bite you in the backside. The other crime is that you have such desire to sort of strive and to make gains, but the program itself doesn't allow you to accomplish that. You have to know what you're doing. You have to know why you're doing it. You have to know its effect in the short term and in the long term."

Calls for a tennis commissioner
For about eons now, John McEnroe has been yelling from the rooftops that what tennis needs most is a commissioner.

This week in Houston, Andre has joined the McEnroe bandwagon and made note that a commissioner would be a beneficial addition to the game he loves.

"I think the game could stand a commissioner, there's no question about it. The question is, 'What's the requirement of the commissioner?' You need somebody that has the ability to bring the law down, to rise above all the petty indifferences and agendas and issues. I mean, you can't unite 100 players from 100 different countries with an age span of 20 years between then with agents around them. It's nonsense. You just got to take it out of the equation. You need the sport to be looked at as a whole. And the entire sport needs to move together regardless of the moving parts."

Agassi's believes the alphabet soup that exists in the game – ATP, WTA, ITF, USTA, etc. – adds up to too many cooks stirring the pot.

"If I could change tennis in sort of one go, it would be organizing all the bodies of tennis. It's sort of absurd to have so many people, so many organizations, working separately. In some cases, arguably, even against each other for sponsorship dollars, for air time, for branding. The sport of tennis is an incredible sport that if everybody literally put aside their own agendas and they came together and sold tennis as an entire package world-wide, all year, the amount of growth and progress you would see would be incredible."