Re: 看看這篇文章~ - 網球

※ 引述《pistil (台灣才是人住的地方)》之銘言：
: 我看到快飆淚了~~
: 唉呀~~~
: 阿格西,
: 你是神啊!
: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/phil_taylor/09/02/hot_button/?cnn=yes


把文章貼上來好了...

Andre the giant
Agassi has matured into an all-time great and is still going strong


He is hardly the one you would expect to be his sport's grand old man,
not if you remember his younger, wilder days when he had that crazy
lion's mane and appeared to be nothing but "a haircut and a forehand,"
as Ivan Lendl once described him. Now there's a blast from the past --
Ivan Lendl. It seems like you'd have to go back a thousand years on the
tennis timeline to find Lendl, but Andre Agassi played against him.
That's how long Agassi has been prowling the court.


Agassi is 33 now, and he's watched all of his contemporaries slowly fade
away. Remember Jim Courier? Long gone. Pete Sampras and Michael Chang?
They announced their retirements recently at the U.S. Open, the same
U.S. Open in which Agassi is the No. 1 seed. You might have expected
them all to outlast Agassi -- Sampras for certain, because his powers
of concentration and single-minded pursuit of greatness seemed to set
him apart from Agassi. Sometimes Agassi had that kind of passion for
tennis and sometimes he didn't, which is why you thought he'd be history
by now instead of making history. But here he is, the oldest player ever
to be ranked No. 1 in the world. Andre "Image is Everything" Agassi.
Imagine that.


Maybe the reason you thought he would leave early is actually the reason
he has stayed late. Agassi has always been honest enough to admit that
sometimes tennis dropped down from the top of his list of priorities.
Sometimes he was mooning over Brooke Shields, other times he was letting
his mind wander to family crises like his mother's and sister's battles
with breast cancer. The intensity of his interest in tennis rose and
fell, which is why he has gone through lulls in his career, but maybe
that was the healthiest, most normal thing about Agassi. Maybe that's
why he's still beating players not much more than half his age. He's not
burned out or used up.


Men's tennis needs Agassi now more than ever. People want to see the
kids with the big futures, but they like the players with a past even
more. Every sport needs the LeBrons and the Dontrelles, the Roddicks
and the Hewitts, but those guys won't really take off until they have
something approaching the history with the public that an athlete like
Agassi has.


We've seen him grow from teenager to husband. We've watched him go
through a marriage and divorce to Shields. And now we're witnessing his
transition to fatherhood, as he and wife Steffi Graf raise one child and
await the birth of their second. He has gone from those "Image is
Everything" camera commercials to his current advertisement for a credit
card, in which he uses his tennis ball hopper to pick up his son's
squeaky toys. Whenever he plays, whether he wins or loses, it means
something more to us because we know him, or at least we feel that we do.


Then there's the physical part. Thirty-three isn't ancient by today's
athletic standards, but in tennis, where teenagers and early
20-somethings rule, it's getting up there. Agassi's ability to maintain
his speed, reflexes and stamina at his age is nothing short of remarkable.
We marvel at Barry Bonds' amazing play at the age of 39, but Bonds "only"
has to retain his talent as a hitter. He doesn't have to be as fast on
the bases or as nimble in the field as he once was. For a tennis player,
it's a different story. If any part of Agassi's game fails, he's gone.


And he will be gone someday, just like his old rivals. He just might
have enough left to win this year's U.S. Open, but you can still see the
end drawing closer. Agassi won the Australian Open in January, but he
lost in the quarterfinals of the French and in the fourth round at
Wimbledon. He seems all right with that, which is understandable because
he has nothing left to prove. For a guy who once appeared to be all
style, Andre Agassi has surprised us with his substance.


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