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Aaron Krickstein vs. Andre Agassi…Tournament of Champions 1989 quarterfinals
Andre Agassi playing with 107 square inches of Donnay Pro1…Aaron playing with 85 square inches of Yonex.
Lots of super interesting stuff going on in this match in 1989 at the West Side Tennis Club in Queens New York. Former site of the U. S. Open. Cliff Drysdale and Arthur Ashe in the booth. Both fellows are incredibly astute tennis minds and they compliment each other seamlessly. The quality of the comments are priceless. Not the chatter that you are forced to listen to nowadays. But of course the subject was much more interesting back then.
Drysdale at one point makes a comment that ironically compared Agassi to Steffi Graff. See the twin towers in one shot of the New York skyline. Skyscrapers and everything (Stevie Wonder-Inner Visions).
Aaron gets his butt handed to him in the first set but gamely turns it a around in the second to make a match of it. Agassi prevails in the third. Neither player towels off one single time in between points…forsaking the god forsaken towel antics. No fastidious ball checking before the service points. Both players all business as they get to the service line and put the ball in play. No twitches…no feigned rituals. No nonsense. Some old school stuff was still present in the game…even from Andre who was one of the biggest, if not the biggest "hotdogs" of his generation.
Arthur makes a couple of really interesting comments about the equipment and the size of the racquets. Cliff mentions that both of these players hit so much harder than his generation of players and Ashe is quick to point out that the racquets are bigger. You can hear a bit of sardonic wit in his voice. He follows with…"if you gave Rod Laver a racquet of similar size he would be better than all of them". Something to that effect. This was a comment at the time and was completely relevant coming from an astute student of the game. If you say the same thing now you are looked at with the consternation of the politically correct thought police. At least you are thought to be somewhat impolite. See how the truth can shift with time. Beware…of the political doublespeak.
I wonder what Aaron's coach would have told him after watching this match. My advice to him when playing against Agassi would be number one…keep the ball deep and preferably to the backhand and work the point from there. By rifling balls balls hard and in the vicinity of the service line Aaron was playing right into Agassi's "wheelhouse". The concept of depth was an all important place to begin when playing Andre Agassi because as you can see and as Drysdale and Ashe discuss at length…Andre is playing inside the baseline and Aaron is at least one meter behind it and maybe two.
You maybe see some of Andre's father's boxing attitude in this tactic and some of the initial lesson Bolletieri is emphasising to a rather young Agassi in this video below. Also you can see that the current modern paradigm originated probably from this relationship…Nick Bolletieri and Andre Agassi. Image was indeed everything. The subliminal message took over the tennis world and you can see what we are left with today. The Aftermath. If you are a true student of the game…you know your tennis history. Go deep…while you can.
As for the coaches of the two players. From what the announcers have discussed Agassi is still in the Bolletieri stable but Aaron has jumped ship. He is being coached by another coach that I don't recognize. Aaron's game looks identical to the game that I saw when I used to travel with him on the junior circuit. No changes whatsoever. No adaption to the men's game from the junior game. Essentially playing the same style as he did when he was twelve. Remember what our charlesdarwin said…"it isn't necessarily the strongest or the smartest that survives, it is the one that best adapts to change".
When I knew Aaron I thought that the sky was the limit. Pancho Segura made some really positive comments about his potential. He may well have been the heir apparent to Bjorn Borg if he would have adapted a bit more to the men's game. Borg afterall came to play an exhibition at Aaron's coming out party at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan when he turned pro. Borg beat him in three sets.
Aaron rather suddenly left for the Bolletieri Academy before I was going to make some suggestions. If I would have been don_budge back then I would have volunteered a long range plan early on in our relationship but as it was this was not my role at the time. I was very happy indeed with my role and have no regrets about any of it. His family treated me like family and I will always have a place for them in my heart and I am forever thankful for the experience. Much as I am for my experience with Don Budge. I have been very lucky.
As don_budge though…I would have fast tracked a plan to incorporate more net attack as Arthur Ashe is formulating at times during the match. Also the serve was something that I really wanted to address and I did…but I was too late. I remember having a discussion with his father comparing the serving game to a Jack Morris who was a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers back then. The ability to move the ball up and down, or in and out. I don't think that Bolletieri ever got to that level of coaching with him or any of his other players for that matter.
The biggest strength of the Bolletieri deal was the stable itself. His crop of competition insight. A bit of a wolfpack…the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. His stable was able to feed off of each other and the competition drove up the level of…competitiveness. But all of the players were pretty one-dimensional. He took full advantage of the equipment change too…no worries about tennis etiquette or devotion to the game of the past. I certainly have no personal beef with Nick…although he did sort of brush me aside to hog the television interview in Louisville, Kentucky. Looking back it is pretty amusing. My differences with Nick are more philosophical and perhaps ethical. Certainly they are far removed from his reality. He doesn't know me from Adam.
An interesting thread about Aaron…tennis-warehouse style.
Interestingly enough at the premature conclusion of this video Cliff Drysdale and Arthur Ashe are discussing Mats Wilander who is the current wunderkind of the tour as he had won 3 of the 4 Slams in the previous year. Their insightful comments into the Mats Wilander personna are quite interesting indeed.
Lots of super interesting stuff going on in this match in 1989 at the West Side Tennis Club in Queens New York. Former site of the U. S. Open. Cliff Drysdale and Arthur Ashe in the booth. Both fellows are incredibly astute tennis minds and they compliment each other seamlessly. The quality of the comments are priceless. Not the chatter that you are forced to listen to nowadays. But of course the subject was much more interesting back then.
Drysdale at one point makes a comment that ironically compared Agassi to Steffi Graff. See the twin towers in one shot of the New York skyline. Skyscrapers and everything (Stevie Wonder-Inner Visions).
Aaron gets his butt handed to him in the first set but gamely turns it a around in the second to make a match of it. Agassi prevails in the third. Neither player towels off one single time in between points…forsaking the god forsaken towel antics. No fastidious ball checking before the service points. Both players all business as they get to the service line and put the ball in play. No twitches…no feigned rituals. No nonsense. Some old school stuff was still present in the game…even from Andre who was one of the biggest, if not the biggest "hotdogs" of his generation.
Arthur makes a couple of really interesting comments about the equipment and the size of the racquets. Cliff mentions that both of these players hit so much harder than his generation of players and Ashe is quick to point out that the racquets are bigger. You can hear a bit of sardonic wit in his voice. He follows with…"if you gave Rod Laver a racquet of similar size he would be better than all of them". Something to that effect. This was a comment at the time and was completely relevant coming from an astute student of the game. If you say the same thing now you are looked at with the consternation of the politically correct thought police. At least you are thought to be somewhat impolite. See how the truth can shift with time. Beware…of the political doublespeak.
I wonder what Aaron's coach would have told him after watching this match. My advice to him when playing against Agassi would be number one…keep the ball deep and preferably to the backhand and work the point from there. By rifling balls balls hard and in the vicinity of the service line Aaron was playing right into Agassi's "wheelhouse". The concept of depth was an all important place to begin when playing Andre Agassi because as you can see and as Drysdale and Ashe discuss at length…Andre is playing inside the baseline and Aaron is at least one meter behind it and maybe two.
You maybe see some of Andre's father's boxing attitude in this tactic and some of the initial lesson Bolletieri is emphasising to a rather young Agassi in this video below. Also you can see that the current modern paradigm originated probably from this relationship…Nick Bolletieri and Andre Agassi. Image was indeed everything. The subliminal message took over the tennis world and you can see what we are left with today. The Aftermath. If you are a true student of the game…you know your tennis history. Go deep…while you can.
As for the coaches of the two players. From what the announcers have discussed Agassi is still in the Bolletieri stable but Aaron has jumped ship. He is being coached by another coach that I don't recognize. Aaron's game looks identical to the game that I saw when I used to travel with him on the junior circuit. No changes whatsoever. No adaption to the men's game from the junior game. Essentially playing the same style as he did when he was twelve. Remember what our charlesdarwin said…"it isn't necessarily the strongest or the smartest that survives, it is the one that best adapts to change".
When I knew Aaron I thought that the sky was the limit. Pancho Segura made some really positive comments about his potential. He may well have been the heir apparent to Bjorn Borg if he would have adapted a bit more to the men's game. Borg afterall came to play an exhibition at Aaron's coming out party at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan when he turned pro. Borg beat him in three sets.
Aaron rather suddenly left for the Bolletieri Academy before I was going to make some suggestions. If I would have been don_budge back then I would have volunteered a long range plan early on in our relationship but as it was this was not my role at the time. I was very happy indeed with my role and have no regrets about any of it. His family treated me like family and I will always have a place for them in my heart and I am forever thankful for the experience. Much as I am for my experience with Don Budge. I have been very lucky.
As don_budge though…I would have fast tracked a plan to incorporate more net attack as Arthur Ashe is formulating at times during the match. Also the serve was something that I really wanted to address and I did…but I was too late. I remember having a discussion with his father comparing the serving game to a Jack Morris who was a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers back then. The ability to move the ball up and down, or in and out. I don't think that Bolletieri ever got to that level of coaching with him or any of his other players for that matter.
The biggest strength of the Bolletieri deal was the stable itself. His crop of competition insight. A bit of a wolfpack…the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. His stable was able to feed off of each other and the competition drove up the level of…competitiveness. But all of the players were pretty one-dimensional. He took full advantage of the equipment change too…no worries about tennis etiquette or devotion to the game of the past. I certainly have no personal beef with Nick…although he did sort of brush me aside to hog the television interview in Louisville, Kentucky. Looking back it is pretty amusing. My differences with Nick are more philosophical and perhaps ethical. Certainly they are far removed from his reality. He doesn't know me from Adam.
An interesting thread about Aaron…tennis-warehouse style.
Interestingly enough at the premature conclusion of this video Cliff Drysdale and Arthur Ashe are discussing Mats Wilander who is the current wunderkind of the tour as he had won 3 of the 4 Slams in the previous year. Their insightful comments into the Mats Wilander personna are quite interesting indeed.
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