-Jennifer Capriati! -In the 90s,
professional tennis gets a shot of adrenaline
from a new generation of players.
Skill and style goes up while the on-court etiquette
goes down. -Oh, shut up.
-And endorsement deals go through the roof.
-Cha-ching. Cha-ching.
-That helped grow the game of tennis.
-But as their celebrity increases...
-Ladies and gentlemen, the hunkiest tennis player ever.
[ Cheers and applause ] Andre Agassi! Andre!
-...and their emotional well-being decreases...
-There's a lot of pressure.
-Jennifer Capriati's career is on a downward spiral.
-And none of them will say they're 100% stable.
-...the game will nearly cost some players everything.
[ Shouting ]
-The stabbing of Monica was one of the most
alarming episodes in tennis.
[ Theme music plays ]
♪
-For decades, tennis was a stodgy country club sport
where the color of the clothes
and the players were the same --
White.
-You can say that tennis started incredibly elitist
or exclusionary, depending on what term you want to use.
And then, the '90s gave us an explosion
in so many different realms of the sport all at the same time.
-[ Grunts ] -Prodigies like Andre Agassi,
Jennifer Capriati,
Monica Seles, and the Williams sisters
inject new life into the game,
attracting bigger audiences than ever before.
They'll emerge as the rock stars of tennis.
But just like rock stars,
some players will burn out
before they have a chance to fade away.
-It's all different.
Everyone's got a different story.
And the controversial stories, the horror stories are really
about the prodigies.
My name is Pete Bodo, and in the 1990s,
I was a tennis journalist out there
traveling the world
and getting to know a lot of professional tennis players.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] -Well, tennis in the '80s
had its rivalries and its bad boys.
-Bullshit!
That's a...load of bull crap!
-Players reach new levels of celebrity in the '90s
as TV begins focusing as much on their personalities
as they do on their matches.
-In a sport like tennis, one of the things
that is important is the way that we see them.
We can see the temper tantrums and hear them differently.
-I didn't say anything!
You son of a bitch!
-My name is Courtney Cox.
I'm a former ESPN employee
and current scholar looking at all things sport
as it relates to tech and culture.
We can understand these athletes as personalities differently.
And then, this building of superstars,
the up and coming, the Cinderellas.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-And who better to be labeled as Cinderella
than a player with long, flowing hair named Andre Agassi?
-Andre Agassi is probably the most interesting
personality study in tennis.
-Born in Las Vegas, Andre is forced into tennis
as a toddler by his father, Mike,
a one-time Iranian Olympic boxer turned
casino ambassador for the Tropicana Hotel.
-Andre. How do you like tennis? -Fine.
-Do you want to be a tennis player when you get big?
-Yes.
-According to Andre,
his dad is so determined
for his 12-year-old son
to become a star player
that he administers amphetamines to make Andre more focused
during junior matches. -[Gulping]
-Very few of the really successful players are people
who were really forced to play.
Andre Agassi is a pretty good exception to that rule.
-Yeah. Andre Agassi. He's a phenomenon, right?
Jeff Tarango here.
Top 100 in the world for 13 straight years.
Can you call the supervisor, please?
I have a big beef.
Enjoying my life in tennis, after tennis,
during tennis, tennis for a lifetime.
-Tarango recalls playing against a pre-amphetamine Agassi
on the junior circuit,
including one match that Agassi writes about
in his autobiography, "Open."
-Andre Agassi versus Tarango in the 10 and unders
in San Diego question.
-Agassi accuses Tarango of cheating
over whether a ball was in or out.
-There was a USTA umpire sitting right there
in the chair, so, there's no way
he can say I cheated him out of the match,
but his dad's in the RV banging on it,
like, getting all upset and everything,
and Andre's crying.
And so, he leaves and he thinks I cheated him out of the match,
but it actually had nothing to do with me.
-At 13, Andre's shipped off to a tennis academy in Florida
run by Nick Bollettieri.
-Nick Bollettieri came into tennis literally out of the sky.
He was a former paratrooper,
who ended up then becoming kind of a tennis teacher,
and he had a string of little camps and gigs
that he ultimately turned into a coaching profession,
because he was unrelentingly optimistic,
unrelentingly promotional, including self-promotional,
which rubbed people in the wrong way.
-Andre would not be who he was today without Nick.
-To me, Nick Bollettieri was the epitome of motivation.
-You want to hit. Then, 1, 2, 3.
And then, go. Boom.
-When he walked onto the court,
you just felt like you were a better tennis player.
You felt like you could run faster.
You felt like you could do everything better.
-Bollettieri will also coach
Grand Slam champion Boris Becker,
as well as Jim Courier and Monica Seles.
Every single player that went to Bollettieri Tennis Academy
told me, "When he's not on my court,
I don't play half as well."
Even me, who he'd never coached.
When he would come to watch the match,
I would play at a different level.
[ Rock music plays ]
-But when Agassi begins working with Bollettieri,
he's in complete rebellion against tennis,
sporting a Mohawk, experimenting with booze,
and refusing to wear tennis clothes to his matches.
Agassi pays the price for his defiance
when he's forced to clean the Academy's
communal toilets as punishment.
But according to Jeff Tarango,
Bollettieri has to go one step further
to set the prodigy straight.
-Andre showed up to a tennis tournament with Levi jeans on,
and they got into a bit of a spatter.
And he said, I need to discipline this kid.
And Nick locked him in a bus
for a whole weekend.
100-degree weather.
I guess, that was okay in -- in the early '90s.
You're not going to get away with it now.
But he had, like, an epiphany in this bus.
And when Andre came out of that bus,
he was a different human being.
He went from the rebel to be...
"I'm going to do whatever you say.
I get it now."
I think, Nick Bollettieri did it right with Andre.
I mean, he tortured the guy, and he showed him that,
you know, you're not a talent until you're actually a talent.
-In 1986, 16-year-old Agassi turned pro.
Nike quickly signs the tennis rebel
and starts changing the culture of the sport
by featuring Andre in some of their biggest ads.
-Andre Agassi was their poster child,
literally challenging the style.
-That ought to wake up the country club.
-...of the all-white country club look
that was a part of tennis for decades and decades,
with bright neon colors, whether it's on apparel or on shoes.
I'm Tim Newcomb, and I'm a freelance journalist
covering tennis gear and business.
Any time that an athlete
wants to push the envelope,
Nike's there to do it.
-Just like they did back in 1984
with Andre's precursor, John McEnroe.
-[ Screams ] -John McEnroe had
the Mac Attack shoe
that he wore in the mid '80s.
-Nike releases the Mac Attack a year
before it launches the Air Jordan.
But then, tennis players have had shoes named after them
long before Michael Jordan is even born.
-That's where it all began.
I think Jordan jumped on our bandwagon as far as,
like, how to sell things,
and then, all of a sudden, he's doing it
in basketball. -Using Agassi,
Nike transforms their business model,
selling not just sports gear,
but the players who wear it.
-It wasn't just about tennis anymore.
It was like about Nike. It was about Adidas.
It was about everybody building a brand all of a sudden.
But the players were the brand.
-Everything's for sale on a player's body.
So, I'm waiting for the day when somebody gets a tattoo,
a sponsor tattoo on his forehead
to buy a certain brand of ice cream or something.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Agassi's endorsement deals help him attract admirers
who once had little interest in professional tennis.
-Did you get what you came for?
-Definitely. -What did you come for?
-A look of Agassi. [Laughs]
-We like his tennis, but we also like to look at him.
[ Chuckles ] -So, what's the attraction?
[ Indistinct conversations ] -His hair.
I don't know. I like hair.
-What is the image of a rebel?
-But the marketing of Agassi also sparks outrage
among the tennis media and more traditional tennis fans.
-Image is everything.
-Andre Agassi had critics. Is it style over substance?
And really in sports, generally, the only way
that you're able to quiet those critics is by winning.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-And not just any tennis tournament,
but one of the four prestigious Grand Slam titles.
Until he wins one of those,
he remains an easy target.
-To me, that whole "Image is Everything" campaign
was so misinterpreted
and so misused and abused against Andre
that it really, really wasn't anywhere near fair.
[ Racket chops ball ] -He went against everything
that tennis represented, the dyeing of the hair,
the earring, like George Michael.
It made it interesting. I kind of enjoyed it.
It was something different.
People hated it, but I-I could appreciate it.
I'm Lori McNeil,
Former WTA number 8 in the world in singles
and number 3 in doubles.
I think, Agassi brought that entertainment value
that people were looking for. [ Cheering ]
He was kind of bucking the tennis establishment.
Agassi really was the only one that was really being
different in that way.
-But in the '90s, Lori's focus isn't on Agassi.
It's on Steffi Graf, the player to beat on the women's tour.
-The 1990s in women's tennis was dominated by Steffi Graf.
She was the player of the decade.
-Lori upset Steffi twice during the decade.
[ Cheers and applause ] Once in the first round
of Wimbledon.
-Unfortunately, I did -- I lost in the semis,
and I didn't win the whole tournament in Wimbledon,
but it was a good run, as they say.
-And Lori isn't the only player gunning
for Graf's number 1 spot.
-And Monica Seles,
age 16, is one point from becoming the youngest champion
in French Open history.
[ Cheering ] -In 1990,
the teenager does just that.
-[ Grunts ] [ Cheering ]
Winning her first Grand Slam event.
Well, I just want to thank my dad
who prepared me so well for this tournament.
-On the women's side, I would say it was Seles,
was the most impactful player back then.
She was changing the game. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Monica Seles was, I think,
much more of a -- of a player who threw darts, uh-huh, lasers,
just devilishly accurate.
-At the end of 1991,
after winning three of the four Grand Slam women's titles.
Seles bumps Graf from the number 1 spot.
[ Clock ticking ]
But there's one tennis fan
who's willing to bump Seles off for good.
[ Shouting ] -Her cry of pain and terror
cut through the stadium.
-Her attacker was quickly subdued
by other spectators. -[ Screams ]
-In the early '90s, Agassi begins
his decade long competition
with fellow American Pete Sampras.
-The Agassi-Sampras rivalry was a major rivalry on court.
You had two Americans going at it
with completely different styles and games,
completely different personalities.
-Sampras is cast as the boy next door
opposite Agassi's flamboyant rebel.
They confront each other in the finals of the 1990 US Open.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Agassi ranked, fourth in the world, is the favorite to win.
But number 12 Sampras beats Agassi in straight sets.
-[ Grunts ] [ Cheering ]
♪
Nike endorses both players and plays up their different styles.
-Stop right here.
This'll wrinkle someone's tennis spikes.
[ Horns honking, cars passing ]
-Putting them in this commercial
to reach fans on both sides of the net.
[ Rock music plays ]
-Nike was able to position them both how they wanted to,
to sell differing lines and styles of footwear and apparel.
-And she'll get a second serve. -Sponsors like Nike
also compete over a young prodigy
who's moving up in the women's ranks
and seems destined to become number 1.
-Return and Jennifer Capriati.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I believe someday she will be
the number 1 player in the world.
-Jennifer Capriati was perhaps
the most gifted ball striker of all time.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] -Like Agassi,
it's Capriati father who pushes her into tennis
with his dreams of her becoming a world class player.
And it works.
-At the age of 11 and 12, was just beating up on people.
She won big titles at a young age.
I think, she was only 13
when she won her first Virginia Slims title.
She became, you know, a kind of a -- a household name
overnight. -Just 6 months
after turning pro,
Jennifer Capriati is now the 13th ranked
women's tennis player, and America's sweetheart.
[ Cheering, camera shutter clicks ]
-Even before her professional debut in March of 1990,
Capriati's father has the 13 year old
signed to $5.5 million in sponsorship deals with brands,
like, Diadora, Prince rackets, and Oil of Olay,
making her the family's main breadwinner.
-Capriati was the face of brands
as an incredibly young teenager.
-She even gets a Sega Genesis video game named after her,
all while reassuring the press
she's enjoying every minute of it.
-Are you having fun? -Yeah, I'm having a lot of fun.
It was great. God, worth it all.
[ Racket chops ball, camera shutter clicking ]
-But the huge commercial success of young male
and female tennis prodigies, like Agassi and Capriati
masked the reality that not all successful young players
are treated equally.
When Zina Garrison becomes number 4 in the world,
one of her biggest challenges is securing an endorsement deal,
something she still doesn't have in 1990,
when she becomes the first black woman
to reach the Wimbledon finals in 32 years.
-Some agents were saying she wasn't marketable.
I don't know how you're not marketable.
Everybody's marketable, I think.
It was kind of unbelievable, but...
But it happened.
-On her way to that final against Martina Navratilova.
Garrison has already beaten Monica Seles and Steffi Graf,
who both have multi-million dollar sponsorships
covering all their training and travel expenses.
-And the night before you play Martina,
you're thinking of the fact that you're the one
that doesn't have an endorsement.
But there's this demoralizing feeling
you have to experience when you're dominant.
You're at the top of your game.
You've done everything you can do,
and they still say that's not enough, because you're you.
-It will take until the end of the decade
for that to change with the arrival
of Venus and Serena Williams.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Until then, the marketing stays focused
on young white tennis players,
helping boost their fame while attracting the paparazzi.
[ Camera shutters clicking ]
Who in the '90s are becoming increasingly aggressive
in their coverage of all celebrities,
including their personal lives.
[ Camera shutters clicking ]
German star Steffi Graf is hounded after her father
is accused of having an illegitimate baby with a model.
As for the player once labeled tennis's "Long-haired rebel."
Agassi is now dealing with allegations he's actually
a "No-haired rebel," which he denies.
-Well, you talked about the London tabloids being,
at times, vicious.
Did they have you, like, rooming with an alien?
How bad did it get over there? -No, they -- they --
they just -- they were funny, you know,
I mean, the whole week started, the whole week started with them
saying I wear my white cap, because I had lost all my hair.
-30 years ago, it would've been, "Oh, yeah.
He's a tennis player. He's a movie star."
Now, it's a little like, we're all stars, you know?
We're both stars. You know, I'm a star in tennis.
You're a star in Hollywood. Let's get together.
-And that's just what Agassi and Barbra Streisand do in 1992.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] Their May-December romance
with Babs being 28 years his senior,
makes headlines. [ Cheering ]
But it also overshadows Andre finally winning
his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Beyond court behavior of some players
also draws negative attention
from both the press and spectators.
-[ Grunts ] -For Monica Seles,
it's her trademark grunting with every ball she hits.
-[ Grunting ]
[ Cheers and applause ] -She's not doing it on purpose.
But, uh, she can stop it on purpose, you know?
I've been practicing next to her,
and she does not make any noises when she's practicing.
[ Grunting ]
-In some parts of the match, I was successful.
In some parts, I was not.
But I do hope that next year when I come back here,
I won't be grunting.
[ Knife scraping, ominous music plays ]
♪
-But one unhinged spectator becomes fixated on Seles
after she replaces Steffi Graf
as the number 1 player in the world.
♪
And on April 30th, 1993,
his obsession will become global news
and forever change the sport.
-What's considered the darkest day in tennis...
[ Shouting ]
-...is when Monica Seles was stabbed
during a match in Hamburg.
[ Crowd shouting ]
-She stood frozen for a moment, feeling her back,
not believing what had happened.
Then, medical personnel rushed to help her.
-A deranged fan, uh, Gunter Parche, a-a fan of Steffi Graf,
jumped out of the stands, ran up on a changeover
when -- when Monica was sitting down
and stabbed her in the back with a serrated knife.
-Her opponent, Magdalena Maleeva, watched helplessly.
Finally, officials wheeled Ms. Seles off to the hospital.
Doctors are keeping her there overnight for observation.
-When Monica Seles was stabbed, it was unbelievable.
I think, everybody felt vulnerable.
Everybody realized that,
"Oh, my God, this could happen to any of us."
-Despite making a complete physical recovery,
Seles sinks into depression
and develops an eating disorder that takes her off the circuit
for 2 years, costing her the number 1 spot.
[ Indistinct conversations ] And her attacker.
He receives a suspended sentence
and never spends a day in prison.
-It was one of the most alarming and unpleasant
and -- and kind of sad episodes in tennis,
because it really had a career-transforming effect
on Monica Seles, and therefore, on everybody else,
because, of course, everybody else is the people she played.
So, suddenly a lot of people winning tournaments
or getting far in tournaments,
because Monica Seles was not on board.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] -The assault on Monica Seles
happens just 10 days after an equally disturbing attack
on another female tennis prodigy.
-While the Seles incident
created shock waves around the world,
it wasn't really the first incident of violence
against women, just a week before Seles was stabbed,
you had Jennifer Rhodes, a young girl,
promising young tennis player, you know, not on a pro tour yet,
but, you know, I believe, she was a college player,
and she had -- she had a promising career.
-Jennifer had just finished taking private lessons
at an elite tennis academy in New York City
when her coach becomes sexually obsessed with her.
-A fellow named Gary Wilensky,
who essentially people remember,
and I frankly remember him,
because I used to play at those tennis courts.
He'd be going around on his roller skates,
and he -- he was coaching Jennifer Rhodes,
and, um, his intention was to steer her off to a cabin
he had somewhere upstate New York
that was filled with all kinds
of sex toys and bondage implements and things like that.
[ Taser buzzing ] Yeah.
So, he had planned presumably to lock her up in that cabin
and do whatever he was gonna do.
-And this pornographic video found inside
may have been the blueprint for the obsessed man's desire.
Its title bears the name of his victim --
Jennifer.
-Heroically, Jennifer manages to call for help,
forcing her former coach to flee the scene.
-And he ended up driving off in a rental car
and putting a bullet through his head.
[ Gunshot ] -The attempted abduction
of Jennifer Rhodes and the stabbing of Monica Seles
may seem like two unrelated events
chronicled by the news media, but Pete Bodo thinks they both
point to an unsettling, '90s reality.
-What it did underscore was that, you know,
in some ways, it -- it was open season on women tennis players
in that era. [ Insects chirping ]
Women athletes were much more easily manipulated at that time,
and they were much more
at the mercy of, A, either parents,
B, coaches, there were any number of stories
and still are, unfortunately,
about inappropriate relationships
between coaches and students.
-The mistreatment of female tennis players
in the '90s remains one of tennis's dirty little secrets,
one that still plagues women's tennis to this day.
But one story that doesn't go unnoticed
is the downward spiral of America's sweetheart --
Jennifer Capriati.
-Well, Jennifer Capriati's arrest on drug charges
has brought a dark side of her life to light.
The former tennis champ was arrested yesterday
at a Coral Gables motel.
-She couldn't stop
being Jennifer Capriati.
[ Cheers and applause ] -At the 1992 Olympics
in Barcelona, Jennifer Capriati upset
Steffi Graf in the finals
to win gold for the US.
[ Cheering ] -There it is.
Jennifer Capriati! -Still only 15.
She's already called one
of the hardest working players on the circuit.
-She was, uh, the epitome of someone
who could push herself farther than anybody else
could push herself.
[ Cheers and applause ] She didn't have an off switch.
She couldn't stop.
-She had parental pressure. She had contractual pressure.
If she wanted to, say, take a month off,
there was somebody to say, "Look, you can't do that.
You're committed to play here, there, and everywhere.
And you've also got your sponsor deal."
-But like Andre Agassi early in his career,
Capriati has yet to win a Grand Slam title
despite being ranked 6 in the world.
So, when she's knocked out of the first round
at the 1993 US Open by 37th-ranked Leila Meskhi,
the media starts questioning
whether she has what it takes to be a true champion.
-While Jennifer rolls over lower-ranked players,
she has yet to beat any of the top 5 women.
-You're 14, 15, you're facing media.
I mean, adults can't sometimes handle the media.
-And Jennifer came here with a teenager's mix of awe
and utter confidence. -She was getting to the semis,
but I wanted to know when she was going to win.
And I guess, in some way, she internalized that as pressure.
And maybe everyone around her not having the patience,
and everyone wanted it so soon.
So, eventually, she just took a break.
She stopped playing.
-What does it mean to play here at Wimbledon?
-It's always been in my dream to play here
-And then, unfortunately,
you know, things began to catch up with her.
She started to get into her teenage years,
and suddenly, she seemed to really get
a little bit rebellious.
-In May of 1994,
8 months after taking a break from tennis,
Capriati is arrested for drug possession
at a motel just outside of Miami.
-One-time tennis prodigy Jennifer Capriati's career
is on a downward spiral.
First, she was arrested on drug charges.
Now, she's lost a key endorsement
and has reportedly entered a drug treatment clinic.
-Despite the drug being marijuana,
the media breathlessly reports on Capriati's downfall.
[ Eerie music plays ] -At the age of 13,
Jennifer Capriati exploded onto the world stage
with her booming smile and charming ground strokes.
But somewhere, something went wrong.
-And start looking for someone to blame for what they see
as a good girl gone bad.
-And there is plenty of finger pointing over
whether she was forced into big-time tennis
too early by her father. -As, uh, any father
and, uh, any mother, they teach their children
the best -- the best that they -- they can be.
-I did not see anything abusive other than just yelling
and screaming, and like, "Move your derriere,"
and all that stuff.
She never told me about any kind of abuse,
but she was pushed harder
than almost any human being could be pushed.
That's for sure. [ Camera shutter clicks ]
-Capriati becomes a case study in burnout...
and her story will provide the backdrop for judging
how all tennis dads treat their aspiring children.
-What do you feel inside when you're on the court?
-I feel good. -I feel good.
-But Richard Williams is teaching
his daughters, Venus and Serena,
a different approach to tennis,
far from any private country club courts.
-Nice. -As Venus and Serena
are coming up in the '90s,
all the media coverage around them
starts by talking about them being from Compton.
[ Sirens wailing, alarms sounding ]
-For most of America in the '90s,
Compton conjures images of the L.A. Riots
and movies like "Boyz N The Hood."
♪
-We have Venus and Serena coming up in this space
that there aren't a lot of resources or public support...
[ Camera shutter clicks ] ...for them, and despite that,
their father, their family support them in a way
that get them to a point
where they can compete on a national
and international scale.
[ Rock music plays ]
-Their background being so anti-tennis establishment
and having come from the Compton public courts
into two of the best tennis players to ever live,
is a story that resonates with people outside of tennis.
-Initially coached by their dad,
the Williams sisters steamroll the junior circuit.
-Serena is number 1 in the under 10.
And then, we have Venus, who hadn't even lost a single match.
And she is number 1, um, as an 11 year old.
-Richard does enroll them in a Florida tennis academy,
but then forbids them from continuing
on the junior circuit.
-He pulls them out and says,
"I want them to have an education."
Before they go professional, he says,
"I don't want you to think that sports are your way out."
-Richard holds them back from turning pro
until he thinks they're mentally ready to handle the pressure.
For Venus, the older sister,
that moment comes in October of 1994
when she debuts her talent at the Bank of the West Classic.
-Returning to her native California tonight
to play her first ever professional match --
Venus Williams. [ Applause ]
-The first time I met Venus and Serena,
they were 10 and 12 years old.
I hit with Venus and Serena.
You knew they were something special.
You can see it young.
They have that from the beginning.
-As for the media,
they seem to fear that Venus and Serena
will each become the next Jennifer Capriati.
And in interviews, they start fishing
for signs of future distress.
-Did you think you could beat her?
-I know I can beat her.
-You know you can beat her. Very confident.
-But when journalist John McKenzie...
-I'm very confident.
-You say it so easily.
-...presses young Venus for being confident.
-Why?- Her father, Richard
comes to her defense. -Because I believe it.
-Alright, cut right there if you don't mind.
And let me tell you why.
What she said...
She said it with so much confidence the first time.
But you keep going on and on...
-Listen, we can't keep interrupting.
I mean, if you want -- -You got to understand
that you're dealing with an image of a 14-year-old child.
-There's this interesting way that he's seen as a tyrant.
He's interrupting. He's unprofessional.
He doesn't understand the decorum.
-She done answered it with a lot of confidence.
Leave that alone!
-His idea of protecting
his daughter in that moment
is what I remember the most.
-Those protective instincts of Richard Williams is something
Andre may have missed out on as a child.
But now 25,
Agassi appears to be self-possessed
and handling the media spotlight just fine.
[ Camera shutter clicks, rock music plays ]
He's now dating actress Brooke Shields,
and after winning his second Grand Slam title
at the 1994 US open,
Agassi is treated the same as any show business celebrity.
-Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back
the hunkiest tennis player ever.
[ Cheers and applause ] Andre Agassi! Andre!
[ Rock music plays ]
-But under the media spotlight,
it's harder to hide from those tabloid rumors
that he's losing his hair,
especially, when they're true.
[ Hip-hop music plays ]
His signature mane of fleecy hair is partly a weave.
Agassi's been going bald since he was a teenager,
and it's Brooke Shields
who finally convinces him to embrace it...
by buzzing off what he has left.
♪
[ Cheers and applause, camera shutters clicking ]
To the public, Agassi is living a sparkling life.
Going into 1995...
he's got a glossy girlfriend,
a polished scalp, and a shiny number 2
in the world tennis rankings.
But in the shadows,
Andre is hiding a secret much darker
than a synthetic hairpiece.
And it's about to come to light.
-I think he was always trying to stay ahead of the game
and ahead of the curve.
I think, he just went too far.
-[ Snorting ]
-It looks like this is all coming back to her.
-In 1995, 2 years after her stabbing,
Monica Seles makes a courageous return to tennis,
winning the Canadian Open.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Game, set, match, Seles.
-Months later, she proves it's no fluke
by capturing her fourth Australian Open.
♪
Jeff Tarango is also making headlines during this time,
but for a less celebratory reason.
-Uh, 1995 at Wimbledon,
there was an interesting incident involving Jeff Tarango.
-Tennis player Jeff Tarango stormed off the court
at Wimbledon.
The American is upset with what he calls
corrupt officiating. -That's it!
-Yesterday, Tarango became,
in his fouling, the first player in the Open era
to default himself from a Grand Slam,
storming off the court after accusing the chair umpire
of being corrupt.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-1995, I'm playing against Steffi Graf's boyfriend.
You know, Alexander Mronz's in the third round.
♪
I keep acing the guy out wide, and they keep calling it out.
Can you call the supervisor, please?
I have a big beef.
-When Jeff argues the call with umpire Bruno Rebeuh,
the crowd at Wimbledon
turns against him. [ Shouting ]
-They were screaming so loud that I literally
couldn't hit the serve.
So, I turned around to them and I said...
Oh, shut up! [ Cheers and applause ]
-Code violation, audible obscenity warning, Mr. Tom.
-And he got a code violation for that.
-I'm not -- No. I'm not playing! No way!
-But then Jeff takes it one step further.
-You are the most corrupt official in the game,
and you can't do that!
And I'm just like, "You know you're the most corrupt official
on the planet." -For calling him corrupt,
the umpire deducts one game from Jeff's score.
-This is very serious. -And he doesn't take it well.
-Code violation, verbal abuse, point --
-No way! That's it!
[ Cheers and applause ] -[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-I can do two things, I can grab him by his tie
and smash him down onto the net post.
Or I could just take the better side of life
and just walk off the court right now.
-As he exits, his wife,
who had been watching from the stands,
decides it's time for her to come to her husband's defense.
-Meanwhile, Madam Tarango,
lovely French woman, you know,
gets up out of her place court side,
walks over, and Bo comes down from the chair.
She just gives him a --
whacks him across the face with a,
you know, classic, like, French slap.
[ Cheers and applause, crowd jeering ]
♪
-The slap at Wimbledon.
I heard that it happened,
and I know that my wife said it happened.
And the chair umpire, I don't think he ever said it happened.
[ Crowd jeering ]
It's a gray area to me,
so, I'm not going to go on the record about the slap.
-For his behavior at Wimbledon,
Tarango gets fined $20,000 by the Tennis Association.
-Cha-ching. Cha-ching.
-2 years later, in 1997,
Andre Agassi will face significantly less repercussions
when a routine drug test comes back positive
for a drug not normally ingested by professional athletes.
Crystal meth.
Agassi denies knowingly taking the drug
and blames his assistant for spiking his energy drink
until a decade later,
when he finally tells the truth in his memoir.
-Going through Agassi's book, then, you come to the point
where he actually experiments with meth
while he's basically a player.
♪
-I think, in that time, when he says he was on meth,
I think, he was always trying to stay ahead of the game
and ahead of the curve.
I think, he just went too far.
But not everyone thinks he was taking crystal meth
as a performance enhancer. -[ Snorting ]
-Andre's use of meth, in a sense,
it's not shocking or surprising,
because, look, he was obviously, you know,
in rebellion against the sport for much of the time.
-[ Snorting continues ]
♪
When do people turn to drugs?
Well, when they're confused or unhappy
or depressed, whatever.
I think, that probably had a fair amount
to do with Andre. -These hands.
These miracle, magical, life-giving hands.
-The drug seemed to make him erratic.
-Maybe even lick one. [ Laughter ]
-On the set of the sitcom, "Friends,"
where his girlfriend Brooke Shields is guest starring...
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-He gets irate watching a scene that he thinks is too sexual.
[ Laughter continues ]
♪
He storms off and drives back to his home in Las Vegas alone...
♪
...where he destroys most of his tennis trophies.
♪
Despite incidents like this,
Andre hides his addiction from Brooke,
and they tie the knot in a small ceremony in April of '97.
-I don't think it's like he was running down the street
looking for meth, because, you know, he had an issue.
I think, he was, like, trying to make himself
a better tennis player.
And it wasn't happening.
And -- And he was looking for something.
He made a mistake. He made a few mistakes.
♪
-If he took the drug to improve his game,
it clearly doesn't work.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] Within a year,
Agassi falls from the top 5
to 141st in the world rankings.
♪
Like the struggles of Capriati and Seles,
Agassi's downward spiral highlights the pressures
facing star players
in a decade when little attention
is being paid to mental health.
-I think, in the '90s, mental health,
it was kind of like a taboo to really say
that you were having any kind of problems.
Well, people just didn't talk about it,
because they, maybe thought it was, uh,
a sign of weakness. [ Camera shutter clicks ]
-I think, sports psychology
started becoming big in the '90s,
but nobody was thinking about it
as mental health, they were thinking about it as,
"How can I be better than that other person?"
-While both Agassi and Capriati's troubles
take them down, neither is taken out.
They're both about to shock the world of tennis
with what they do next. -And we used to say,
"It's not how you fall. It's how you get back up."
-As the '90s wind down,
Andre Agassi surprises everyone in his sport
by doing the unexpected.
He makes a comeback.
-I think, Andre showed a lot of character
in how he rebounded from this very confusing,
I think, period in his life.
-I think it made an impact on a lot of people,
and you realize we're all vulnerable.
Like if Andre is the highest paid player
and he's having those kind of issues,
then it's okay for us to have some issues.
-Over 12 months, Agassi battles his way from 141st in the world
back into the top 10.
By summer of 1999,
his two-year marriage to Brooke Shields is over,
but off the drugs and on a new fitness routine,
Agassi finishes the year as the number one men's
professional tennis player in the world.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I think he kind of came to terms with tennis,
and he came to value and appreciate
his profession and his talent.
-At the dawn of Agassi's rebirth,
Steffi Graf, just 30 years old,
announces her retirement mere months after winning
her 22nd Grand Slam title at the French Open.
She and Agassi start dating that year.
-When she retires, that leaves a void.
That leaves an opening.
-One Jennifer Capriati is surprisingly ready to fill.
In 2001, 11 years after her promising debut,
she enters the Australian Open as the 12th seed,
beats Monica Seles to enter the semi-finals,
and then defeats Martina Hingis
to win her first Grand Slam tournament.
By the end of the year,
Capriati is the number one female player in the world.
-She played a perfect match.
-She'd won the Australian Open.
That was a very heartwarming story.
And then, of course, you had
the biggest story of all, really,
was the Williams sisters' rapid development
and emergence as Grand Slam champions.
-To see where we come from, out of the worst ghetto,
to be here at the finest club in the world.
-Starting in 1999,
the Williams sisters began dominating
the sport's top events.
-It will quickly become Serena versus Venus
in most of these major tournaments.
Those were the two that were really
just taking over the sport of tennis.
-Unlike Zina Garrison back in 1990,
the Williams sisters have no trouble landing sponsors,
including Venus's five-year,
$40 million endorsement deal with Reebok,
the biggest for any female athlete in history.
-When Venus Williams signed her deal with Reebok,
it was huge in the landscape of female sports.
Still to this day,
the highest-paid female athletes in terms of endorsements
are tennis players.
-The Williams sisters profoundly changed the demographic
of who watches and plays tennis, attracting people of color
to a sport historically dominated
by affluent white people.
-I feel so happy. It's like a dream come true
because I've been waiting for this moment
for a very long time.
-People that never would have watched tennis
started watching tennis, coming to tennis tournaments.
[ Announcer speaks indistinctly ]
They reached an audience that tennis hadn't reached.
-Televised tennis now reaches
more than a billion people globally,
and at the 2018 U.S. Open,
Serena's final match against Naomi Osaka
drew in 50% more television viewers than the men's final
the following day.
-You can't overestimate how big an impact Venus and Serena
and their story had on changing things.
-Much of the diversity of talent on the tennis circuit today
can be directly attributed to the Williams sisters.
But there's also the trailblazers of the '90s --
people like Zina Garrison,
Capriati,
Seles,
and Agassi, who all left their marks on the game.
-It doesn't just begin with Venus and Serena.
We're all standing on the shoulders of other people
that have come before us.
-I think that the stars of the past,
they have made a space to carve out for the next generation.
And so it's not just Venus and Serena.
Now we can have 5 of them, hopefully 5, 15 of them.
-Any time that you have a player
that can push back against an establishment,
then that creates more room
for somebody to come in behind them.
-That's what's great about tennis,
that every era is going to show something better.
The '90s made tennis happen for the future.