NEWPORT, R.I.—To Andre Agassi, a perfect day would include sleeping late while still hearing the distant murmur of his kids, nine-year-old Jaden and seven-year- old Jaz, playing in the background. It would allow for a workout of some sort and would end with a backyard barbecue with family and friends jumping in and out of the swimming pool. In might even include an oversized proclamation trumpeting his long-awaited induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The splash of the swimming pool was replaced by multi-million-dollar yachts lounging on nearby Narragansett Bay and, instead of hotdogs and hamburgers, the bill of fare included champagne and wide-brimmed straw hats. But the mood was both buoyant and poignant as the 41-year-old Agassi joined 66-year-old Fern “Peachy” Kellmeyer as the 219th and 220th members of the Hall of Fame, the highest honor bestowed in the game of tennis. The ceremony, under an azure sky dotted with sporadic marshmallow clouds, took place Saturday afternoon on the Hall of Fame’s long-sold-out Bill Talbert Stadium Court before 3,710 fans.
Kellmeyer, the first employee under founders Gladys Heldman and Billie Jean King of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973, is credited with helping the WTA grow from 23 domestic tournaments to more than 50 worldwide and expanding prize money in women’s professional tennis from an early $300,000 to nearly $89 million today. But perhaps her greatest accomplishment, often overlooked in women’s sports history, is her early push for Title IX of the education amendment which guarantees equal funding for men and women in high school and college sports. While a college coach in Florida, Kellmeyer sued for the right to offer athletic scholarships to her women tennis players and, in winning the suit, paved the way for all women athletes to received scholarships. She also fought for women professionals to receive equal prize money at the major championships, a dream realized when Wimbledon and the French Open offered equal purses to the men’s and women’s champions in 2007.
"This is the happiest day of my life,” said Kellmeyer, whose award was presented by WTA Chairman and CEO Stacy Allaster and celebrated by family, friends, colleagues and former players from her 38 years with the tour, where she continues to serve as a consultant. “For me, being here today doesn’t get any better."
Then, as a nod to her co-inductee, Kellmeyer, humble as ever, sheepishly admitted, “I know I’m not the main attraction but, Andre, I’ll be your opening act anytime.”
Agassi, dressed in a fitted charcoal suit and coordinating tie, hardly resembled the brash, long-haired, denim-clad teen who stormed into the game in 1986, ultimately claiming eight major championships (four Australian Opens, two U.S. Opens, one Wimbledon and one French Open), an Olympic gold medal in Atlanta in 1996, two Davis Cup championships, 60 ATP Tour titles, an 870-274 match record and the No. 1 world ranking. Somewhere along the way he went from a kid characterized by the “Image is Everything” moniker to a adult who, despite dropping out of school in ninth grade, now says that “Education is Everything” would more appropriately describe his current vision of the world.
“My goal has always been to leave the sport better off for having had me,” said Agassi just before his induction. “Tennis has given me the gift to change the life experience of others. That’s just flat out a real fun thing to do and more rewarding than anything that can happen on a tennis court. But it’s because of tennis that I have my life’s work.”
Despite his on-court accomplishments, Agassi may well be remembered more for his education reform than his reform-school behavior that, early on, included mocking opponents, tanking matches, spitting at umpires and using illicit drugs. After hitting what he called “rock bottom [in 1997 when he plummeted to No. 141 in the world], a place that really isn’t so bad because it gives you a chance to look up,” Agassi said he finally stopped playing for others and decided to enjoy the game for himself, ultimately going from Challenger matches where he had to shag his own balls and turn his own scorecard to regaining the No. 1 world ranking and winning the 1999 French Open to become, at the time, only the fifth man in history to capture a career Grand Slam. (He has since been joined in the feat by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.) But, more importantly, his athletic transformation worked in sync with her personal development which had become increasingly philanthropic.
In 1994, Agassi founded the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education. Together with his wife, fellow Hall of Famer Stefanie Graf, he has raised $150 million to help at-risk youth in his hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, which opened its doors in 2001 and now educates kindergarten through 12th graders, has proven to be model of how students can excel even in a city’s most distressed areas.
In a nod to the success of the Academy, Agassi students took center stage at the Induction ceremony. A.J. Green, an 18-year-old Agassi Prep grad, delighted the crowd with his rendition of the National Anthem. The honoree was then introduced by 18-year-old Simone Ruffin, the 2009 class salutatorian, current student at Concordia University in Irvine, California and budding clinical psychiatrist, who excitedly and eloquently gushed over her “hometown hero,” who she said gave her and her fellow students, “the tools to build our own lives” and the incentive to “never forget to look back and help others.” Ruffin ended her remarks by telling Agassi, “I am the voice of so many children whose lives have been changed by one.”
After giving Ruffin one of his trademark bear hugs, Agassi took to the podium and wrote virtual love letters to everyone from his parents, Betty and Mike, to his big brother Phil (sisters Rita and Tami weren’t present), his trainer/mentor/ friend Gil Reyes, his coaches Nick Bollettieri, Darren Cahill and Brad Gilbert and to “the woman who still takes my breath away,” wife Stefanie (whom he emotionally introduced when she was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004) and kids Jaden and Jaz. He also gave nods to influential heroes Arthur Ashe (who was inducted in the Hall of Fame 25 years ago) and former South African leader Nelson Mandela whom, he said of their one meeting, taught him to “be careful in his decisions.”.
Agassi told a particularly charming story about his father, a task-master and former Olympic boxer for Iran who fought in two Olympics but never won a medal. Despite the sometimes contentious relationship between the two that Agassi wrote about in his book, Open, it is clear that the bond between them is ever-strong. “From the day I was born my dad described to me the feeling I would have when I stood up here so it’s kind of déjà vu right now,” said Agassi, smiling at his father nearby. “I was always here in my father’s imagination.
“Last year, I was giving a speech in Las Vegas and a man in the first row put up his hand to ask a question,” Agassi continued, bringing many in the crowd to tears. “He said, ‘How do you know when to stop telling your kids what to do?’ I looked down and realized the question was coming from my father. Dad, when I was five, you told me to win Wimbledon and when I was about seven you told me to win all the Grand Slams and get into the Hall of Fame. Then, when I was 29 you told me to marry Steffi Graf and that was the best order you ever gave me. So Dad, please don’t ever stop telling me what to do.”
Rarely has an athlete so dramatically and so completely reinvented himself, but Andre Agassi has clearly done that. He has made amends with himself, his foes and the game that he at one point loathed. He says that, at age 27, he gave himself permission to quit and that, only then, did he begin his love affair with the game. That respect and admiration is now mutual between Agassi and his fans and Agassi and his protégées. His membership into the game’s most prestigious club only accentuates that.
"I fell in love with tennis later in life but it gave me everything that I ever had,” said the newest Hall of Famer. “You always hope to be perfect and you want to be perfect. But when you’re out on the court you realize that you can be far less than perfect. You just have to be better than one person that day.
"I didn’t always show tennis the respect it deserves but I now realized that it’s our responsibility to find our limits and push through them,” added Agassi. “It’s not too late to change. We are here to do good quietly and shine in secret.”
Then, in a nod to both Dr. Seuss and the children’s book, Goodnight Moon, Agassi concluded by telling all of those assembled, “Thank you tennis for my life, thank you tennis for my wife. And thank you tennis for enabling me to find my life’s work.”