High Life Issue #5

HIGH LIFE #5 February 2017 15 I t is during a rare break from his busy schedule that Andre Agassi finds himself telling High Life about his rapidly growing collection of frequent flyer miles. “They’re building up,” he chuckles in reference to the many hours he spends in the air these days. “But it’s a different kind of busy for me than it was when I was playing. Now, I’m never really gone for more than three days, quite frankly. “My travel involves less time away but being on more aeroplanes because one week I might go to two different cities for a day each. That’s very different from being at a Grand Slam for two or three weeks at a time.” On the surface at least, little has changed for Agassi. Be it flying across the United States to check progress on one of the many schools he is building or across the Pacific Ocean to Hong Kong on behalf of long-time sponsor Longines, the eight-time Grand Slam champion is as in demand as ever. Yet the truth is, almost everything about the flamboyant, long-haired and colorful character that first burst onto the tennis scene in the mid 1980s has changed in the 30 years since. Far from the isolated and egocentric bubble in which he, like most highly successful athletes, once lived, these days Agassi spends his time giving to others through the multiple charities he has established – helping under-privileged kids gain access to education now his greatest passion. “The truth, is I’ve always seen tennis as a platform to hopefully impact people generationally as opposed to for a few hours,” the 46-year-old explains. “So I feel very driven to do what I can to help people and the reasons behind that drive are the lifelong series of experiences in my life, starting with the fact that I never chose to play tennis – my father chose it for me – and so I felt myself disconnected with it for many years. That disconnect made me really think of kids that didn’t have choice in their lives either – but for most of them it doesn’t result in being number one in the world at something. It results in gangs and drugs.