Before he plays Pete Sampras tonight in the BNP Paribas Showdown at Madison Square Garden, Andre Agassi sat down with our Steve Tignor to discuss the match, today's men's game and his most memorable shot.
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TENNIS.com: So you must be excited to be back at the Garden?
Andre Agassi: Very excited. I haven’t played in the Garden since 1989. The Garden for me was bigger than life when I was a teenager, and to go back there now just means the world because I have much more of an ability to take it all in.
TENNIS.com: So not since the Masters in 1989?
Agassi: Yeah, not since the Masters. And plus too, you know, this is a place that both Pete [Sampras] and I both said our goodbyes to, New York. So to play at the Garden seems really fitting.
TENNIS.com: When’s the last time you played a singles match against Pete?
Agassi: So we played over the summer, we played in Puerto Rico and Bogota.
TENNIS.com: Anything different about the matches?
Agassi: No; one of them he beat me pretty good. But the other one was very competitive and it was fun. Listen, we’ve straightened out our own personal history and we’re fine together.
TENNIS.com: Is his serve the toughest shot you ever faced?
Agassi: It was, because of the way he defended it. You know, it’s one thing to say somebody has a great serve and a good hold game, or a good serve and a great hold game; Pete had a great serve and a great hold game. So he defended his serve well. I have played people with bigger serves and better serves, but they’re a different cat when you get that ball back. Pete had a way of just snuffing out so many points even if his serve wasn’t the exact way the point ended. So he had one of the best, if not the best, hold game I ever competed against.
TENNIS.com: You retired five years ago. When you watch the game now, is there anything you notice that’s different from when you stopped playing?
Agassi: It’s better. Considerably better. The thing that’s really changed the game most dramatically has been the strings. Because now you get rewarded for really swinging out at every ball. Then you combine that with just the athletes getting better, you combine that with what [Rafael] Nadal and [Roger] Federer have done to the game, I just think it’s a different class now, without question.
TENNIS.com: What about this season so far, any thoughts on Federer, [Novak] Djokovic, where they are; Federer’s future, maybe?
Agassi: Listen, I’m out of the business now of predicting when Federer’s on a decline because he’s—
TENNIS.com: Well, not on a decline, but what have you thought so far this year, just any thoughts watching?
Agassi: Well, he looked sharp as heck all the way through the Australian Open until he ran into the buzzsaw. But I mean Djokovic, the way he was playing and moving—that guy has gotten it together; he looks to me like, if he can keep it straight between the ears, he’s going to be hard to stop this year.
It’s nice to have del Potro back; I think he left at a real disappointing time, he was starting to impose himself. I think he would have changed last year for Nadal and Federer, considerably; more specifically Nadal. Del Potro just was a man amongst boys at the [2009] U.S. Open, then he just got taken out with his injury and that’s unfortunate. So it’s nice to have him back.
I think you’re going to see more winners of Slams this year. I think the door’s starting to open. For a while Nadal and Federer left nothing for anybody else, and now we have a few that are sneaking in, one or two; let’s see if it can continue.
The game is at an incredible state. We’re watching two of the best ever, if not the greatest two players ever, playing in their prime, against each other, on the biggest stages. Two completely opposite kinds of players. So from a tennis enthusiast’s standpoint, I’ve loved the state of it.
TENNIS.com: One more question: Is there a shot in your career that you remember more than any other, if you had to think of one? A single shot in a match.
Agassi: I remember it because they show it a lot, so it sticks in your mind: That shot when I was playing [Alex] Corretja at the U.S. Open, where the guy hits a lob over my shoulder and Corretja comes to the net, and he thought I was going to let it drop and play something else, and I just literally took it over my left shoulder and I hit it like a bullet. He just didn’t have time to react for it.