John Roughan: True professional Agassi can quit now with class

Two weeks from now, all going well, something splendid could happen in Melbourne. All going well means that Andre Agassi will have survived the early rounds of the Australian Open tennis championship and still be there at the final weekend, with a chance to win one more major title and make it his swansong.

It's a long shot. Quite possibly he will not make it through next week. It's just a dream. But the sun has been shining, there's heat in the air at last, and since I have tickets to the final weekend, let me dream.

Agassi came to mind during the furore over Judy Bailey's pay. He is the only person of any profession I ever heard publicly say he is paid too much for what he does, though he is one professional who deserves every cent of the millions he has made.

It is hard to imagine him coming to Auckland for a warm-up tournament and departing lamely in the first round, as three of Spain's Davis Cup-winning team did this week, having pocketed, I suppose, some appearance money.

Appearance fees are the unspoken rort of professional sport. Event organisers quietly offer big names a healthy sum just to put in an appearance, using their presence to sell tickets in advance and maybe do some promotional stunts.

After that, well, I'm sure they don't deliberately lose, they just lack a sufficient desire to win, which makes all the difference. Their heads are in next week.

The organisers of preparatory tournaments don't complain when their drawcards don't play up to their promise. The tickets have been sold, the television committed and the paying customers are entertained well enough by the journeymen who want the prize money.

The sporting press plays its part, reporting the list of entries that every year organisers announce to be the best ever. When the named players disappoint there is no more than polite surprise. Nobody mentions appearance fees. I think it is time we did.

The practice spreads the rewards of the circuit a little more evenly among the members of the Association of Tennis Professionals than would be the case if the top players went for every prize, but I cannot think of what else can be said for it.

I don't know why the big guns plainly prefer practice time in Melbourne to a week of real match play on the same kind of court. But mostly I struggle to understand the minds of those who would give less than their best at anything they can do brilliantly. Sheer professional pride, you would think, would come into play every time. If there were days you really didn't feel up to it, the pride of performance would still kick in.

It is hard to imagine Agassi ever letting a crowd down. He did his preparation this week at the Kooyong Classic in Melbourne, beating the Athens Olympics gold medallist, Nicolas Massu, before retiring from his next match with a hip injury. (Oh, oh.)

A rarity in the brat culture of tennis, Agassi has always shown total respect for those who have come to watch. After every match he bows with an entertainer's flourish to the four sides of a stadium, but it is more than that. His court demeanour is impeccable and when he indulges in a little showmanship, as he usually does, it seems endearingly natural.

He has set a few trends in his time. He arrived as a cherubic runt with long blond hair and bandy legs in big shoes, wearing outfits that looked like he had raided a bigger guy's laundry.

As he lost his hair he developed into a master of his craft, forever hustling about in a strange, busy little walk. He'd be easy to underestimate on first sight but he is strong, mentally and physically.

I treasure my first sight of him live, at the Australian Open some years ago. My father and I had no seats booked until the next day but we went in hope that afternoon and chanced upon a quarter-final match between Agassi and Jim Courier.

Both were big hitters from the baseline. Television gives a false impression of the size of a tennis court. When players of the power of Agassi and Courier trade blows at that range you hear the ball flatten on every impact and you feel the force. It was a gruelling, fluctuating, exhausting five-setter and Agassi prevailed.

It turned out to be the match of the tournament. Exhaustion probably cost him the semi-final, in which Michael Chang retrieved everything Agassi could hit, and Boris Becker won the final in a walk.

That was Agassi's headscarf phase. Every kid at Melbourne Park was wearing something similar, and a few middle-aged kids, too.

Tennis will rate him with its greatest. Of his contemporaries only Pete Sampras consistently beat him and their duels were in a class of their own: Sampras with the bigger serve, better allround game and overwhelming agility; Agassi whipping back returns from a rising ball and hammering impossible passes from the baseline.

All his contemporaries have faded from the scene and he is not the force he was. His ranking has slid to seventh, behind a new crop of talent. The best of it, Roger Federer, won three of the four majors last year, as close to a grand slam as anyone has come for 40 years. Federer's game is so complete he is already being compared with Sampras.

His nearest rival, American Andy Roddick, has some of the Agassi temperament with a very different game. For the Davis Cup final Spain prepared a soft clay surface that blunted Roddick's big shots. He was reduced to scampering around in slow, dinky rallies that must have driven him wild, but never let it show.

Below them now Agassi is soldiering on, believing he has one more title in him. If so, or even if he makes the final, there is a chance he might decide it is the moment to go. It would be characteristic of his class. And if he doesn't, it was a pleasant dream.

* John Roughan is a Herald assistant editor.