by Pete Bodo
Ever since the unfortunate incident that occurred during the Hit for Haiti charity exhibition at Indian Wells last year, a legion of pundits and fans have been watching Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, looking (or is it hoping?) to find further signs of strain and enmity in their relationship. A story ran on this very website a few days ago, suggesting that the two men whose careers jointly produced one of the great rivalries in the history of the game basically couldn't stand each other, and refused to play against one another in a recent exhibition in Argentina.
Well, it appears that these guys are so full of fear and loathing for each other that they're busy organizing an exhibition tour (what better way to spend your time when you're a million miles from home, in Hong Kong, than in company of a guy you hate?); they're about to join co-Golden Generation Grand Slam champion Jim Courier (and the likes of John McEnroe and Michael Chang) on Courier's revamped, innovative Champions Series tour, and Agassi has already invited Sampras to play an exhibition against him in Agassi's home town of Las Vegas ("And nothing makes me more nervous than playing in front of my home crowd," Agassi says).
And did I mention that before the late Februrary Sampras vs. Agassi exhibition in Madison Square Garden (which Sampras won, 6-3, 7-5), Agassi called Sampras (as well as tournament officials) to advise them that the recurring nerve problem in his back might flare up and leave them all in a bind? It was just impossible to predict how Agassi's back would hold up.
"Sure I told Pete about it," Agassi told me, in an extensive conversation on a number of subjects including the state of his relationship with his career rival. "It would not have been in anyone's best interest to see me leaving the Garden on a stretcher. And looking back after the match, I felt Pete was more than generous in how he handled my situation." (Read: he didn't try to crush me.)
In a separate conversation, Sampras told me: "When I read this report about a problem between me and Andre, I was, like, 'What?' Where did this come from? The facts were all wrong. Andre and I are fine. And we'll be playing quite a lot together next year."
Courier was also on the tour with Sampras and Agassi in Argentina, and he confirmed the explanation Agassi gave for why he and Sampras were not the overarching, main event. The players were split up into two groups and they did different things (clinics) in different places. Andre never expected to play Pete, partly because nobody wants Pete and Andre to always carry the whole load, or become the whole show. "If there was a feud going on there, I probably would have had an inkling of it," Courier told me, "seeing as how I was with those guys all the time."
Oh well...but if you still really want to believe that Pete and Andre despise each other and said all this just to promote (obviously!) the Champions Series tour, or whatever else it is they'll be doing together, feel free. It's a free country and did you hear, they never really got Osama bin Laden; it's all a trick by President Obama.
"It's funny," Andre told me, "but there's this absurd desire to keep this (enemies) thing with Pete and me alive."
It will become increasingly difficult to do that, given what these men are saying, once the 12-city Champions Series tour gets underway (Agassi and Sampras are grouped together in four of them). The idea is novel: seven men will be playing one night at a time over a five-week season, with a million-dollar bonus pool ($500,000 for the first-place finisher) on the line. The players are Agassi, Sampras, McEnroe, Courier, Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Chang, and they'll all be vying for points that will determine their individual payouts at the end of the one-month-plus season.
The season will consist of a dozen one-night stands, each in a different city (many of them significant urban centers, like Chicago, that have no ATP or WTA presence. That alone makes this a great idea), featuring four of the seven players. The four men will compete in two semifinals and a final. Each semi will be a one-set battle, with the playing an eight-game pro set to determine the champion. Courier wanted the event to have a manageable, reasonably predictable elapsed time of about three hours, max.
"We had to figure out what the fans really want and what the players really want," said Courier, who found it increasingly difficult as time passed to recruite talent to his multi-day Champions Tour events of the past. "For the players, we wanted to avoid the word and concept, 'taxing.' The ATP is taxing. The WTA is taxing. It's the reason some of us leave the sport so early."
Courier also recognized that many fans were unwilling or unable to commit to attending events on weekdays, or multiple weekdays. "Everyone these days is overscheduled," he said. "So focusing on one-night events at the end of the week seemed a good way to go."
Of the format, Agassi said: "The compressed format has a lot of up-side. There's a clear start and finish, within a sensible time-frame. I'll be telling people, 'Hey, where else can you go to see six legends and me, all in one night?'"
Agassi has no concerns about what might happen if he meets Pete in one or more finals. In fact, he wryly observed that attempts to keep the Pete-Hates-Andre-and-Andre-Hates-Pete narrative alive may have certain benefits, at least in terms of drawing attention to the event and publicizing their activities and meetings (please, don't get any ideas; he was joking). Personally, though, Andre has had his fill of it, and so has Pete. They're different breeds of cat alright, and that won't ever change. But neither of them has much of a taste for or interest in continuing a cat-fight. Agassi spoke for both of them when he said, "All that stuff, it's over. It's been over. Trust me on that."
I will. But that's just me.