When Judging Agassi, Don’t Put the Bart Before the Horse

He dresses like a rodeo clown and has been known to have the subtlety of a steer. The other day he gritted his teeth and spat in the direction of a U.S. Open tennis official, catching him with the spray, and also demonstrated his sympathy for a fallen opponent, writhing in pain while his bare ankle was being taped, by peeling off his own shoes and hurling them into the crowd.

Could Andre Agassi really be as awful as all this?

Could he be the guy who brings “tennis bum” back into the vernacular?

Is Andre Agassi actually more like Andre the Ghastly?

Not necessarily.

Certainly not if you judge this book by more than its shabby, slobby cover, keeping in mind that Agassi’s work clothes are also ornamented by charms and medals conveying his devotion to God, or that the very player whose behavior sometimes seems so piggish and selfish also happens to be the player who volunteered for Davis Cup duty and speaks with what sounds to be sincerity about “doing something for my country.”

True, the guy goes his own way.

“That’s what America’s about,” Agassi says in his defense.

Those exposed to his profanity of last Thursday might argue the concept of free speech. On the other hand, a negative word would not be heard from any of the bulging-eyed children who mobbed Agassi at courtside here Saturday, after his straight-set, no-sweat disposal of the far more dignified but far less colorful Franco Davin.

To them, Andre is a giant, a forecourt jester, a heavy-metal tennis player with blond scalp hair, black facial hair, a two-inch earring, a seriously baggy jersey and long shorts under short shorts, who, given half a chance, would probably play Wimbledon in a Bart Simpson T-shirt and high-top shoes with the laces undone.

We followed a few steps behind him down a Flushing Meadow hallway to see what a typical few minutes with the off-stage Agassi might be like.

Nobody spat at him, that’s for sure.

A little girl howled for his shirt as a souvenir, but was too far away. He gave her a wave. A not-as-little girl called down: “How about your towel?” Agassi obligingly flung it up to her.

“So, you a big Andre fan?” we asked Erin Gallagher D’Eletto of Long Island, as she squeezed and inspected the towel like a woman in a detergent commercial.

She said: “I am now.”

Such admirers could be his for the taking. He could be bigger than big, this ground-stroking floor show from Las Vegas. Andre Agassi could be the superstar American tennis player many have been hungering for since John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors put their best smashes behind them. He could be the endorsement darling of men’s tennis that Madison Avenue has been needing, what with Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg being demographically or geographically undesirable.

Except . . .

He won’t play Wimbledon, which lowers his profile, and he won’t conform, which alters his image, and he won’t behave, which makes him out to be some sort of snot-nosed McEnroe wanna-be who hasn’t much else in common with Mac except an occupation.

The $3,000 fine Agassi was slapped with Friday for trying to become the spitting image of McEnroe did little more than cause Andre to insist that his tantrum only happened because official Wayne McKewen of Australia had it in for him--as if such paranoia, real or imagined, would excuse spitting and swearing and other public behavior so vile.

“No, I don’t feel I have to be on my best behavior from now on,” Agassi said. “Yes, I said a lot of things I regret. Yet the more I thought about it, the thing that made everything snowball was that official giving me a warning when I didn’t deserve it. That’s what escalated the whole thing.

“When they overruled his warning, I saw him roll his eyes. He was looking to give me a warning. Maybe I went too far, sure. But I just don’t need somebody in the chair who has something personal toward me. If we’d had somebody else in the chair, the whole incident never had to happen,” Agassi said.

What seems to elude him, naturally, is that Andre Agassi is an incident waiting to happen.

At least he is easy to pick out of a crowd. Maybe this is why Agassi travels with an entourage the size of Saddam Hussein’s. As tennis players go, he sticks out like a sore elbow. His fashion statement is sort of surfer-terrorist.

The clothes, well, while Andre doesn’t exactly wear tennis whites, he hasn’t ruled out wearing them for Davis Cup or even for next year’s Wimbledon, which he claims to be considering playing.

“I never said I’d enjoy wearing white,” Agassi said. “I never said I wouldn’t, though.”

As for his beard, well, that’s new. “I might just wake up one morning and it’ll be gone,” he said.

Magically?

“Nah. In the middle of the night, I might shave it off. Depends how I feel. I just do things to have fun.

“Not for people’s sake. For my sake.”

That’s Andre Agassi in a nutshell. You never know if he should go to the net or if somebody ought to be chasing him with one.