Blissful Thinking : He Cut His Hair. He’s Dating Brooke Shields. And He’s on the Verge of Becoming the No. 1 Player in the World. How Did Andre Agassi Become the All-American Guy?

LAS VEGAS —  When the burden of his potential was about to break him, Andre Agassi threw the beast of expectations off his back and unshackled his secret weapon:

Happiness.

Agassi is wearing his new life well. A calm radiates from him. He’s in a devoted relationship that has rendered almost any bad thing that happens to him not such a big deal. Tennis is what it used to be: fun.

Agassi has had a great time winning the last two Grand Slam tournaments, the U.S. Open in September and the Australian Open in January. There’s a possibility that after this week’s Newsweek Champions Cup at Indian Wells, Agassi might become No. 1 for the first time. The prospect excites and humbles him, but no longer does it overwhelm.

There have been some changes. Gone is the frenetic exhibitionist, the bleached hair, the layers of jewelry. At 24, Agassi has streamlined his life, shucking off the extravagant and extraneous and embracing the simple and the spare. After an extended internal overhaul, he is a man at peace with himself and others. Not always, not every moment, but most of the time.

Public figures often reinvent themselves to suit public style and personal whim. Agassi has. He has done the tortured soul thing before. But this is something more substantial. His core has changed, or he’s struggling to change it. The difference is not about hair or clothes.

“I always used to step on the court and feel I had to live up to something,” Agassi said Friday while preparing for an exhibition. “Now I feel like I just have to be responsible for something. I step on the court and just play and be as good as I am. Nothing more and nothing less. In the past, everything had a very specific benefit to it. I thought, ‘If I could just do this, then it’s a relief.’ Now, I don’t step on the court with those burdens or those skeletons where I feel I have to do something to somehow prove I am better. It’s freed me up.

“But I do feel a responsibility to my ability, and that’s in my preparation and my practice habits and my training habits and my strategy and preparation for each match. These are things I can control. The way that ball bounces, some days, I can’t control.”

Some of his new approach came after wrist surgery in 1993 dropped him to No. 34 in the rankings and brought him face to face with career mortality.

“The surgery had a direct impact on my tennis because I had to deal with the possibility of not playing,” he said. “I think my relationship and my business and my tennis, my family relationships--these are things that are succeeding not by chance. I feel like when you work on yourself and you strive to understand, then you get to a place where things start to become healthy. I would say that it’s not the relationship that makes my tennis healthy, it’s me being healthy that allows my tennis to prosper as well as my relationships.”

Agassi has gone from being painfully self-conscious to gratefully self-aware. His image as a feckless youth who squandered his talent may have had an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. Fear of success and the attendant pressure were aspects of his profession that he may have been too immature to handle.

“I always kind of feared the thought of being such a success at an early age. The thought of retiring at 26 like Bjorn Borg . . . that’s never set well with me,” he said. “Quite honestly, I think it’s lucky that it happened this way. Now I’m older and I’m realizing that the time is now, no question.

“Beyond that, I think I’ve gotten myself to a place where I enjoy what I’m doing. I don’t feel I’m doing it for reasons that aren’t mine. When I’m out there I’m loving it and I’m enjoying it. That’s something I thank God for every day. Let me tell you, I’ve been on the other side of that too many times. It’s not right to have a gift and not go out there and just enjoy it. That’s kind of my approach to the big picture.”

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The massive MGM Grand hotel smolders in a green light at night, crouching on the Strip like a massive beast. It is, among other things, the largest hotel in the world. It is Agassi’s hometown hotel and the place to which he has a contractual commitment to play exhibitions. An exhibition match is scheduled against fellow Nevada resident Michael Chang.

To this end, Agassi is obliging local journalists, offering sound bites and casual chat on the hotel’s blue indoor tennis court. He’s relaxed, having spent his week off in New York with his girlfriend, actress Brooke Shields, who’s appearing on Broadway in the musical “Grease.” He has seen the show more than 30 times. That’s love.

“When I go (to New York), I’m completely flexible. We’re on her schedule,” he said. “When she goes to the theater, I’m going to the theater. There’s a freedom in saying, whatever your schedule is, count me in. I just completely relax into it.”

There has been some sniffling from teen-aged girls since Agassi has been in the relationship with Shields. But if the relationship has not curbed the notes from the Clearasil set, his recent haircut may have wiped him off the teeny-bopper map.

The silver hoop earrings give lie to what might otherwise be suggested by the boot-camp hairdo. The closely cropped, slightly dangerous goatee maintains his ties with Generation X. As do the black Doc Marten boots. Shorn of hair but not of attitude. Clean-cut never meant this.

Agassi sighs when asked about the hair and the new tennis clothes; it’s old ground that never seems to get completely covered. He understands it’s a problem of his own making, or his sponsors’.

“There was an image to that (his long hair) and apparently there’s an image to how I look now,” he said. “I never cared about the image thing and I don’t care about it now. I don’t feel any difference in my day-to-day life at all. I still see people are convinced that it’s some sort of marketing scheme to shave my head. ‘Why did you do it? Did you talk to Nike about it?’

“I don’t anticipate ever living it down. Image is everything--I think it’s something that people think I believe. If I do it right, eventually they will just make reference to the way it used to be. But for now, it’s kind of a sad reality.”

Agassi’s reality is now his tennis career, which is poised on the edge of a remarkable place. He has already won Wimbledon, in 1992. Should Agassi or Pete Sampras win the French Open, that player would become the first American man to win all four Grand Slam events in the open era.

“Winning the French Open is the ultimate goal for me right now,” he said. “It’s the biggest goal that I can possibly think of that I am preparing for. I can’t legitimately look at the profession that I’m in and expect it or even go out on the court and demand myself to accomplish it. To accomplish something so great is a freak of nature kind of thing. To assume that you can would be disrespectful of the profession you are in and also to your peers. But I do feel like I can win on all surfaces, which does leave me the possibility that I can do it.”

Agassi’s accomplishment of winning the Australian Open the first time he entered, going into the final without losing a set, helped change him. He said he felt he went from a player who had won championships to being a champion.

The newfound confidence and dedication has Agassi thinking about his place in the tennis world, where it might have been had he cared when he was being identified as the next great American. One day he noticed it was other Americans who were winning titles.

“I guess when I saw (Jim) Courier make his move, that’s when I started feeling like maybe I let something slip and I can get a hold of it now, but I just didn’t know how,” he said. “Then Sampras. Then I realized with tennis I had let it slip, the years when I could have really done some damage. I got to a stage where I wondered if tennis had passed me by a little.

“I wondered if I would ever be able to contend for the top tournaments or ever be considered one of the best. It took me a while to adjust to that and believe in myself again.

“When I think of all that’s happened to me, and then people (now say), ‘What changed?’ What changed? Man, it’s been years. It’s been years of a lot of lessons.”