From Top, Agassi Eyes a Climb

Andre Agassi kept yawning Tuesday when he telephoned an old sportswriter acquaintance in California (where we are so much nicer than those wackos in New York). He sounded like someone who had been up all night, or maybe had not come down yet from jumping over the U.S. Open’s net.

The night of the final, the winner and new champ had dinner with his brother and his manager and his inspiration, Brooke Shields, and his benefactor, Nike grand master Phil Knight, and together they lifted a glass to Agassi’s success. Around 2 o’clock in the morning, Andre, still tossing and turning, got out of bed, made himself a sandwich and sat up thinking for the next few hours.

“New York was a zoo,” said Agassi, who will play Michael Chang in an exhibition Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Forum. “It was a wild experience and I had trouble coming down. Between thinking and feeling the pain in my legs from two weeks of pounding, I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Thinking about . . . ?

“Thinking about life and how weird it can be. Here I am, I’ve never felt better about my tennis or my life. This is the best I’ve ever played, the best I’ve ever trained, the most focused I’ve ever been and the happiest I’ve ever been.

“And to think that it wasn’t so long ago that my wrist injury hurt so much, it was definitely a possibility that I might never play tennis again. I had to deal with that reality. I had to totally recommit myself to the game, or else find something else to do with my life.”

Such as . . . ?

“Oh, don’t ask!” Andre said. “It’s way, way too premature for that.”

Andre Agassi, sports announcer? Andre Agassi, tennis instructor? Andre Agassi, uh, mayor of Palm Springs?

Andre Agassi, actor, perhaps.

A Broadway producer recently wondered aloud if Agassi could sing or dance. The gentleman happens to be producing “Grease” on the New York stage, where Andre’s girlfriend Brooke is in the process of joining the cast. How about Agassi in the Travolta role, black leather jacket, duck-tail hairdo . . . ?

“Unfortunately, not only can I not sing or dance, I can’t even hold a note,” Agassi said. “You could put a piece of sheet music in front of me and I wouldn’t know which side was upside down.”

No Hollywood ambitions, then . . . ?

“Oh, well, that’s something else. I wouldn’t use the word ambition, exactly, but eventually that’s something I wouldn’t mind looking into. I did a ‘Mad About You’ for TV, but so far that’s about it.”

Helen Hunt was mad about him, in a dream sequence about a fantasy romance. Nice work, having Helen Hunt fantasize about you.

“True,” Agassi agreed.

Well, maybe do a movie now where you get to be an action hero and carry a weapon and team up Andre with Arnold and Sylvester and . . . ?

“No, I don’t think so,” Andre said, yawning. “This is not how I see me.”

Last time he and an L.A. guy got together, they sat in a Las Vegas coffee shop and Andre was about the sweetest kid he had ever met, not including the astounding number of Equal packs that the tennis player dumped into his coffee. That breakfast with Andre was before his Wimbledon success and before he had matured into the man he is today. At that time, Andre was still sleeping on his parents’ couch.

Up and down and out and back he has been ever since. Wimbledon put him on top of the world. The wrist thing pushed him off. In the rankings, Agassi sank. Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Chang became the American tennis men of the hour. It could have been the end of Andre, had he let it.

Ten days ago, though, two hours of precision tennis took care of Germany’s Michael Stich in straight sets, Agassi became champion of the U.S. Open for the first time and even Howard J. (Bumpy) Frazier, the unctuous president of the U.S. Tennis Assn., was currying favor by proclaiming Agassi to be “the most popular tennis player in the world.”

To which Andre responds . . . ?

“I don’t listen to Bumpy too often. And you be sure to quote me on the record.”

Assorted tennis big shots are trying to persuade Agassi to change his mind about ducking Davis Cup play, about representing our country along with Sampras.

“Look, I’ve given Davis Cup five years of my career. I’ve given it plenty of time and effort. Now my priorities have definitely changed. All I want to do right now is prepare myself for the fall, for Vienna and Stockholm and Paris. I didn’t play at all last fall and look what happened to me. Now I could wind up back among the top five, if everything goes the way I hope.

“All I know is, you look at what happened to Vitas Gerulaitis and you realize how precious life is. You better enjoy it while you’re still here, before something crazy happens.”

Such as . . . ?

“Such as who knows?” Andre said.