At Peace

Back where it all began, Andre Agassi stretches out at his hotel, thinking about the magic of the past year, trying to find the right words to capture the ways it’s thrown his life into a new and wonderful realm.

From the ruins of a marriage and with his career in jeopardy, Agassi found love again in Paris with Steffi Graf and started a historic run through four Grand Slam tournaments.

“It’s been a crazy, over-the-top, incredible, overwhelming year for me,” he says, no hyperbole seeming quite adequate. “I hope I never have another year like this. Anything this dramatic, that changes my life in so many ways, could only be a drastic change in a bad way. I’ll take everything just the way it is right now.”

Who wouldn’t?

He won his first French Open, completing a career Grand Slam, amid a cascade of cheers and tears the day after Graf captured the women’s title in a similarly emotional scene.

Ranked as low as No. 141 late in 1997, he reached the Wimbledon final, won the U.S. Open, snatched the top ranking from Pete Sampras’ six-year stranglehold, and won once more at the Australian Open in January--the first man to reach four straight Grand Slam finals since Rod Laver won them all in 1969.

Agassi’s three majors in a span of eight months equaled the total he accumulated in his first 13 years on tour.

And all of it happened against the backdrop of a round-the-world courtship of Graf, who retired after Wimbledon last year.

“I’m no different than anybody who has experienced the same thing,” Agassi says of falling in love again after breaking up with actress Brooke Shields. “It’s a very important part of one’s life.”

Yet, unlike Andrei Medvedev, who waxed poetic in Paris last year about his love for fellow player Anke Huber and the effects it had on his game as he surged to the final, Agassi is a bit more circumspect.

“I don’t credit any one person for what I’ve done in tennis, and I don’t blame anybody for what I haven’t done,” Agassi says. “I’m the one out there on the court.”

Now, as the French Open begins Monday, exactly one month after the top-seeded Agassi turned 30, he has neither a fear that the bubble might burst nor a sense that he is impervious to defeat.

He has put in too many hours running hills, lifting weights and getting his legs in shape back home in Las Vegas to prepare for the special rigors of the thick red clay at Roland Garros not to think he can win it again.

And he has too much respect for the challenges presented by the likes of Gustavo Kuerten, Marat Safin, Lleyton Hewitt, Magnus Norman, Alex Corretja -- the players he considers the toughest threats--to imagine he will simply stroll to another title.

“Winning here helps you believe you can do it again, which I’m not sure I did believe when I came in here last year,” Agassi says. “I’m going to enjoy the role of champion, but this is the most difficult tournament in the world, physically and mentally. You have to be ready to grind out every point. You have to be disciplined, focused, every shot in every point.”

Agassi knows his game is familiar to every player, that it’s too late for him to come up with new strokes or strategies, that he just has to wear his opponents down and overpower them from the baseline.

“I’ve got more wrinkles around my eyes than in my game at 30 years old,” he jokes.

Graf will be watching him this year, rather than playing, and the women’s title is up for grabs.

Martina Hingis, who threw a tantrum and wasted a lead against Graf in the final last year, is seeded No. 1, but a foot injury caused her to withdraw from last week’s Italian Open.

No. 2 Lindsay Davenport is bothered by a lower back problem, No. 4 Venus Williams is coming back from a wrist injury, and No. 8 Serena Williams is questionable after missing more than a month with a knee injury.

Agassi, despite his age, feels just fine.

“You can be your best in your 30s, if you’re healthy,” says Agassi, shrugging off the hamstring injury that hit him briefly about six weeks ago. “As you get older, you get more focused and experienced. Fitness and strength are huge factors. I spent a lot of time in training, working hard on my legs. The points are long here. The need to break down an opponent is crucial.”

Agassi angered promoters of the Hamburg Master Series tournament last week when he withdrew a couple of days before the start.

“I was looking at the long term, and I wanted to give myself as much of a chance at doing well in the majors and the Davis Cup as I could,” he said. “This is a tough stretch: the French Open, Wimbledon two weeks later, Davis Cup, the U.S. Open, the Olympics. You want to win the slams, all the slams you can, the more you play this game, and you realize you won’t be around forever.

“What’s the long-term effect of playing a lot? That’s the million-dollar question. How much should you play? How much should you rest?”

The answers won’t come until the summer is over, when the grind has taken its toll and Agassi can see how he fared. However it turns out, and whenever he decides to retire, he knows he’s already been blessed so much in the past year that he can live with anything that comes.

“I’m not worried that everything will fall apart,” he says. “At this stage of my career, my life, I don’t think like that anymore. I can lose a match, lose a tournament, but it’s not going to change my life.

“It’s been a life-changing year, the things I’ve been able to accomplish, the things that have happened to me. What happened here last year, as far as I’m concerned, that’s as good as it gets.”