TENNIS.com - Features - Viewpoint: Time for ATP To Own Up, Too

Andre Agassi’s revelation, in his forthcoming autobiography, that he abused crystal meth in the late ’90s isn’t shocking. It’s not scandalous. It’s not even surprising. We’re talking about Andre Agassi here, not Pete Sampras or Lindsay Davenport. The rebel, the teenager who was all flash and little substance, the kid who feared his father and hated tennis with a “dark and secret passion.” In 1997, when Agassi used the drug, his career and personal life were in shambles: His tennis was terrible, his ranking was falling, and he had doubts about his upcoming marriage to Brooke Shields. When a friend named Slim first promised Agassi a few minutes of bliss in the form of crystal meth, he gave in to the temptation.

Clive Brunskill/Allsport/Getty Images
The ease with which Agassi escaped drug charges raises questions about the ATP's anti-doping policies during the 1990s.

I don’t think any less of Agassi for having used a recreational, non-performance-enhancing drug, or for getting hooked on it for the better part of a year, or for making this admission, at least in part, for the sake of book sales. It doesn’t make him less of role model to his fans or the children whose education he supports through his school and charities. If anything, he’s more of a role model: He did something stupid and destructive (he used meth dozens of times, according to excerpts of his book) and recovered from it. At the end of 1997, Andre Agassi made a choice, and he chose to become the man most people now admire, the married man with two kids and a passion for his charitable work. He might not have become that man without first reaching the depths he reached in the late ’90s.

There is one disturbing element of Agassi’s drug use, though: the ease with which he got away with it. In the fall of 1997, after he failed a drug test, Agassi wrote a letter to the ATP claiming that his personal assistant, identified only as “Slim,” regularly spiked his soda with crystal meth (true, Agassi says). Agassi said in the letter he accidentally drank Slim’s drink (not true). The ATP’s independent tribunal chose to buy the excuse and let Agassi go unpunished. In a statement this week, the ATP said that none of its executives had ever interfered with a decision regarding a drug suspension, but the organization has declined to get into the specifics of Agassi's case.

It's highly unlikely that a positive test would be kept quiet today, now that the World Anti-Doping Organization (WADA), rather than the professional tours, governs drug testing in tennis. Anti-doping tribunals still accept dubious excuses, as one did recently in the case of Richard Gasquet, who argued that he tested positive for cocaine because he kissed a woman who had used the drug (The International Tennis Federation and WADA are appealing the decision). But at least that decision was made in public, with attorneys present, evidence presented, and reports written. The Agassi decision was made in secret, for reasons which remain unclear. Until the ATP elaborates, we’re all going to have doubts about what went on in tennis in the ’90s, and not just concerning Agassi.

The ’90s were a pivotal period in tennis training during which most players realized that strength, once seen as an enemy of loose, powerful strokes, became important in the professional game. Agassi said as much in 1992, after he lost to Jim Courier, then ranked No. 1 in the world, in the U.S. Open quarterfinals.

“I need to get stronger,” Agassi told reporters at the time. “I need to be able to hit that ball as hard as I do a little easier because I feel over the long haul, that paid off for Jim. You know, somewhere along the line he got stronger than me.”

Agassi did get stronger, and so did a lot of other players. If any of them took drugs to help them do so, they might well have hidden it as easily as Agassi hid his meth use. Agassi’s admission doesn’t just affect his reputation; it casts doubt on the reputations of his fellow players, too. How much could they have gotten away with through simple I-sipped-the-wrong-drink lies? How much were the tour’s supposedly independent panels willing to overlook to spare the game an unwanted scandal? Is there anyone else who tested positive for drugs, recreational or otherwise, who convinced a panel to look the other way?

“I’d like to know what the specifics of the program were that this could happen,” Dr. Gary I. Wadler, the Chairman of the WADA’s Prohibited List and Methods Sub-Committee, told me Wednesday. “You’re talking about transparency, you’re talking about accountability. This is why the creation of WADA was so significant, to have an independent body to watch what’s going on.”

Before Dr. Wadler became involved with WADA, he sat on ATP tribunals. (He did not serve on ATP tribunals in 1997, and when he served in later years, he never heard cases involving American players.) Given his experience serving on those panels, Dr. Wadler is surprised Agassi’s case could have been so easily dismissed.

“I was quite impressed by the seriousness of purpose when I was there,” Dr. Wadler said. “I often said that I wish the critics of anti-doping had been a fly on the wall. We had a doctor, we had a lawyer, we had a laboratory scientist. It was very, very good.”

No doubt the ATP has done a lot of good in drug testing over the years. Now that Agassi has made his admission, though, the ATP needs to make a few of its own. Keeping quiet can only hurt the credibility of the tour and make fans skeptical of the past.

Tom Perrotta is a senior editor at TENNIS magazine. Follow him on Twitter.