Why tennis needs Andre Agassi in the broadcast booth

There was a moment during Andre Agassi’s broadcast debut for TNT earlier this year when he unwittingly made tennis television magic.

He had been asked to break down the Carlos Alcaraz backhand, identifying a small tweak in technique that had previously gone unmentioned among commentators.

“Here’s last year; he’s taking the ball up higher, his right arm is a little bent so the racket head is going up long before it comes down,” Agassi began, launching into a two-minute dissection of why Alcaraz’s new straight-arm takeback was more effective.

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“When you watch the ball here, because of what he’s doing, that ball can travel deeper in the strike zone and they don’t know if he’s going to hold and pull it cross or hold if he’s going inside offline, and he can leave his opponent with their jock strap on the ground,” Agassi said. “Because in tennis, power and control comes from time spent on racket with the ball. I don’t care how you swing, if you can keep that ball on the racket a split second longer — we’re talking about nuances — you’ve got more power, more control and more deception.”

That moment became one of the most viral videos to come out of TNT’s French Open coverage for two reasons.

The first, of course, is Agassi: An eight-time major winner and true 1990s cultural icon who is just beginning to reemerge as a public presence in the sport.. After so many years of living a life more centered around his family and charity work in Las Vegas, seeing him pop up at all is like a dopamine hit of sports nostalgia.

But the second reason that moment resonated is because it was so markedly different from the kind of television coverage tennis gets in the United States, where ESPN’s lack of imagination has left the sport ossified as a broadcast property. During the Grand Slam tournaments, which is really tennis’ only opportunity to create new fans at a large scale, the viewer usually comes away without much more insight into what’s happening on the court than John McEnroe conjecturing about which player is feeling more pressure.

It was a stark reminder that tennis could really benefit from Agassi becoming the face of the sport on television. And yet, from Agassi’s perspective, his nascent experience as a broadcaster was a reminder of why that’s never likely to happen.

“You know, I did something for BBC, the semis of Wimbledon with Tim Henman and Andrew Castle,” Agassi told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview Sunday as the U.S. Open was kicking off. “I really enjoyed that because there were no commercials, right? You could actually discuss tennis. I’m not a fan of reducing what’s happening out there down to little insightful clips. It’s not how I process, it’s not how I see the game and it’s not a format that allows for much serious conversation around what’s actually going on.”

Even at age 55, almost 19 years to the day since he played his final professional match at the U.S. Open, Agassi’s relationship with tennis remains a fascination. For much of his youth, it tormented him to the point of drug abuse and constant regret over a life he didn’t feel like he chose. Then as he crashed out of the rankings, Agassi found his purpose to play and get back to No. 1 after taking out a $40 million loan to open a charter school for underserved communities. That effort became both a passion and a business, and it’s a significant reason why the U.S. Tennis Association honored him with the Serving Up Dreams Award at this year’s Opening Night Gala.

“When I played, you’re affecting people for a few hours, right? You’re giving them a memory maybe,” Agassi said. “But the foundation has kind of been my life’s work and changing the trajectory of a child’s life is way more gratifying. It’s nice, but I could live without an award.”

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Still, it was another tiptoe back into the mix for Agassi, which has included a lengthy interview on Andy Roddick’s popular “Served” podcast in June and a three-day training stint in Washington D.C., last month with No. 11-ranked Holger Rune. At last week’s Stars of the Open event, he even got on the court to play a little exhibition doubles with Coco Gauff and even flashed a couple fist pumps.

“I still watch tennis quite often, and it’s kind of nice to attach a personality to the game and understand how they process, so I enjoy that part of it,” he said. “It’s a different generation so we don’t really mingle over anything too much in common, but it’s kind of cool when you meet a good person and it makes you root for them.”

In some ways, Agassi is preserving the mystique by staying a little bit on the edges, by not oversaturating himself in the same way that McEnroe has parlayed his 1980s fame into a franchise that goes well beyond his role as the sport’s preeminent broadcaster.

And yet at the same time, Agassi's presence is so badly needed. In an era where television executives seem to have little interest in presenting tennis beyond personality and conflict, Agassi has a natural Yoda-like ability to make the complex seem both relatable and simple.

“It was Pete (Sampras) who said that he felt like Andre looked at tennis with a different set of eyes,” said Craig Shapiro, who was Agassi’s traveling racket technician for a couple years in the 1990s and then later directed the 2007 documentary “Agassi: Between the Lines.”

“He’s always provided a very unique and elevated perspective. He remains this unicorn, and the fact we see him back is like a real draw. People really, really gravitate towards him. He’s always made people that way when he speaks, and I think it comes across TV. He’s box office. He’s just one of these special celebrity superstar athletes where you felt his pain, you watched him grow up and now when he gets on the mic it’s something special every time.”

The question is how often the rest of us will get those moments and unique insights from one of the best tennis minds we’ve ever seen. Full-time broadcasting is a grind. Even just the four Grand Slams is more than a two-month commitment every year. And the more free-flowing format Agassi enjoyed with the BBC isn’t available in the U.S., where 90-second commercial breaks have to get wedged in every second game.

“I see tennis a certain way, and I wanted to see if there’s something interesting that I could contribute,” he said. “It was really a data experiment for me to see if there’s a way I can contribute to people’s experiences watching tennis.”

There’s little doubt that more Agassi on television would not only improve fans’ experiences, but make them smarter as well. It doesn’t seem like he wants to give too much of himself back to the public yet, but after so many years where he wasn’t very visible at events like the US Open, having even a little more access to his tennis genius feels like a big win for the sport.