Andre Agassi was one particular of the most well-known players on tour at his peak and his flowing, extensive locks helped cultivate that heartthrob picture.
But the seven-time Grand Slam champion was hiding a secret… he was dropping his hair. It even charge him the French Open up in 1990.
Agassi was just 19 when he started off heading bald and wore a wig for a number of a long time to test and cover that truth.
“Every early morning I would get up and locate another piece of my identity on the pillow, in the clean basin, down the plughole,” he wrote in his extremely acclaimed autobiography Open.
“I asked myself: you want to wear a toupee? On the tennis courtroom? I answered myself what else could I do?”
Agassi turned expert at 16 and was tipped as a long term Grand Slam champion possessing created the semi-finals at Roland Garros in 1988 and the US Open in 1988 and 1989.
It looked as although he would quickly be fulfilling that assure when he produced his initially final on the Parisian pink clay.
He confronted Andres Gomez, from Ecuador, and it was a issue with his hairpiece that preoccupied his brain ahead of, and in the course of, the come across.
“Then a fiasco happened,” he stated. “The evening just before the match, I stood beneath the shower and felt my wig all of a sudden drop aside.
“Probably I utilized the incorrect hair rinse. I panicked and termed my brother Philly into the room.
“‘It’s a full catastrophe!’ I mentioned to him. He seemed at it and mentioned he could clamp it with hair clips.
“It took 20 clips. ‘Do you imagine it will maintain?’ I requested. ‘Just never transfer so substantially,’ he reported.
“Of course I could have played without my hairpiece, but what would all the journalists have written if they knew that all the time I was truly donning a wig?
“During the warming-up teaching right before participate in I prayed. Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not tumble off.
“With just about every leap, I visualize it slipping into the sand.
“I consider thousands and thousands of spectators transfer closer to their Television set sets, their eyes widening and, in dozens of dialects and languages, inquire how Andre Agassi’s hair has fallen from his head.”
Agassi did finally experience snug plenty of to shave off his hair in 1995 and phase out on to the tennis courtroom bald.
By 1995, he had won Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open up. The American sooner or later accomplished the occupation Grand Slam, turning into the initially male player to do so due to the fact Rod Laver, when he ultimately won the French Open in 1999.
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