COMMENTARY / MIKE LUPICA : Agassi Win Leaves Brooke Unbeaten

Barbra Streisand was not going around with Andre Agassi when he won Wimbledon, which means Brooke Shields has one more major tennis title than Streisand right off the bat.

Streisand was at Wimbledon when Agassi was the defending champ in 1993. If you looked up at the Friends Box, there was Streisand in some kind of sailor suit jumping up and down for Agassi. It didn’t help, and he finally lost in the quarterfinals to Pete Sampras.

Brooke Shields, who has the same initials as Streisand, which may or may not figure here, doesn’t just sit there in a sailor suit, she helps her guy walk away with the trophy.

Now Streisand--who also showed up at an Open that Agassi lost, and so is 0-2 in Grand Slam events--is long gone from Agassi’s life. Brooke Shields has taken her place in the Friends Box. And that is why you can’t even think about Arantxa Sanchez Vicario as the women’s champion at the ’94 Open. The woman who really won the Open is Brooke Shields.

Agassi was the big winner in New York, of course, just because of the way he played the game and won the crowd and stole the show, moving himself right into the role of No. 1 contender to Sampras. If this is the way he is going to play the game the rest of the way, if he is finally going to put tennis first and it really is important to him to be remembered as a champion, then that can only be good for tennis.

After he won Wimbledon in 1992, he immediately got lazy. He also got fat, in the head and in the belly, and seemed to be squandering a wonderful talent.

Both Agassi and Brad Gilbert, his new coach, say that has changed, and that Agassi will even play the Australian Open, the first major of the tennis year, for the first time. So there is a chance, if Agassi is looking for more than one major every three or four years, that the best part of his career could be beginning.

But you have to say Brooke did pretty well the last couple of weeks. Don’t get me wrong: She seems pleasant enough. A month ago, she and Agassi came up to New Haven and played softball with Doc Rivers’ team against Tom Brokaw’s team to benefit Connecticut Special Olympics, and she was terrific all day, especially with the fans.

It turned out she could swing the bat, even if she does need a little work around second base. There was one hot smash to second. She fielded it cleanly and came up throwing. The problem was, she came up throwing to Agassi, who was pitching for Rivers’ team, and happened to be standing on the mound at the time.

Agassi shrugged. “She always throws it to me,” he said. “You think I’m going to complain?”

They seem to be quite an item. There they were kissing on some front pages after Agassi won the Open, and if Agassi is very much in play all of a sudden, you have to say Brooke Shields is, too. Sometime soon, she will be joining the cast of “Grease” on Broadway, as Rizzo. It is the best part she has had for a while. In the stands at the Open final last Sunday, while Brooke’s guy Andre was hitting Michael Stich all over Louis Armstrong Stadium the way Joe Louis once hit Max Schmeling, I heard this conversation:

“What movies has she been in?”

“I think she was in something with DeNiro once, but I can’t remember the title.”

“No, the other one. About the island.”

“ ‘Blue Lagoon’!”

“That’s it.”

“Wasn’t that a while ago?”

It was 1980. It seems Brooke Shields could use the kind of big start to the second act of her career that her boyfriend got at this U.S. Open. Maybe she gets it with two shows, one after another: The tennis version of “Andre,” in which the star is a tennis player from Vegas and not a seal from Maine, followed by “Grease.”

There were times over the weekend when Brooke Shields, whose grandfather Frank was once an unseeded finalist in the U.S. championship, same as Agassi, seemed to get more air time on CBS than Agassi’s opponents. In order of importance for CBS’ broadcasts--and I have absolutely no quarrel with this, by the way--the stars seemed to be:

1) Agassi.

2) Brooke.

3) The real tall guy on the other side of the net from Agassi.

When Agassi finally beat Stich --Sunday’s tall guy--and ran to give Brooke a kiss, there was a stampede of photographers that you were afraid might trample innocent lines-people. And when Agassi had finished in the interview room, the next person in there was Brooke Shields.

“This is so strange,” she said, “a press conference at the U.S. Open.”

She said, “People have been coming up to me and congratulating me. I have nothing to do with the way he plays tennis. I find that a bit odd.”

She said they had corresponded by letter for a while, and then things just developed after that. A couple of years ago, Agassi met Streisand over the telephone; he said he called her because he was so moved by her movie “The Prince of Tides” that he wanted to tell her himself, and they ended up talking for hours. One thing led to another and before you knew it, there was Streisand in the sailor suit at Wimbledon.

One night at the 1992 U.S. Open, Streisand, sitting in the stands watching Agassi play, was interviewed by Michael Barkann of the USA network. That was the night she told all of the country watching on cable that Agassi was a “Zen master” and “more evolved than his linear years.” She said there was a purity about his game, and that he was “very in the moment.” There was some other stuff from her about Agassi that I just summed up this way at the time:

Yum yum.

Now Streisand is out, Brooke Shields is in. She does not even begin rehearsals for “Grease” until next month. But when Barry Weissler, who produces the show along with his wife, Fran, saw the front pages of some of the New York tabloids last Monday, Weissler did say, “When does Andre play in New York again?”

Weissler was asked if he thinks it is true love between Agassi and Shields, or just some press agent’s setup. “Oh, no,” Weissler said, “they adore each other. And, I would like to point out to you, I adore them.”

Andre Agassi may turn out to be more important in show business than a drugstore seat at Schwab’s.

“I’m actually sitting here,” Barry Weissler said, “wondering if Andre can sing.”

(c) 1994, Newsday Inc. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.