Agassi’s Mom Has a Cause

NEW YORK â€”  Her son is the winner of eight Grand Slam singles titles, her daughter was married to tennis legend Pancho Gonzalez, and her husband once boxed in the Olympics for his native Iran and had enough moxie to write a book about their famous child, Andre Agassi.

To say Betty Agassi has been comfortable in the backdrop of Family Agassi is an understatement.

But nearly everyone seems to get thrust into the spotlight when it’s the last act of a family member’s sporting career, as it is at the U.S. Open for Andre Agassi, playing his final tournament.

In the hours before Agassi’s stirring first-round comeback against Andrei Pavel, Agassi’s father, Mike, whittled away some of the anxious moments Monday by conducting a lengthy interview with a TV crew, signing autographs and speaking with a handful of reporters.

The media merry-go-round was not as easy for Betty Agassi. She met with three reporters Tuesday in a luxury suite in Arthur Ashe Stadium, not more than 15 hours after her son’s rally.

Betty had to cover painful ground. Six years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent a mastectomy. Her cancer was a second blow to the family, as, only months earlier, her daughter Tami had received a similar diagnosis. The family was devastated and Andre seemed almost a shadow of himself at the 2000 U.S. Open, losing in the second round.

Now, Betty is not only taking in her son’s final tournament, she is trying to give back, kicking off a global campaign to educate women battling breast cancer. She has just started talking about her experience for the first time in recent days.

“It took me quite a while, quite a while,� Betty said, looking emotional. “It was a bad experience. So I’m trying to tell other breast cancer survivors that they have a big fight on their hands and that there’s always a chance that it might return.... It does affect the whole family. It puts a hole in the whole family structure. Everybody is changed.�

Betty was asked if it was a family trait to fully embrace a cause.

“When they get the opportunity, they are there, but Andre seems to have gotten a leap on it,� she said. “ ... He’s always into something and always doing something for other people.�

She joked about Andre as a child, saying: “But he was the kid stealing the cookies out of the cookie jar. But if you asked him for something, he was always there.�

The family is dealing with mixed emotions during Andre’s last tournament, but Betty sounded as though she kept it together better than most when he was struggling against Pavel. The great turnaround, rebounding from an 0-4 third-set deficit, happened when she left her seat.

“I wasn’t stressing it,� she said. “I went to the restroom and I was just kind of listening. You could tell by the crowd what the score was. And down deep I felt sorry for the opponent, how he has to go through that. I came back and saw the score, ‘How did that happen?’ �

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Rain disrupted the Open and no matches were completed, just making it a long day for the likes of Amelie Mauresmo of France and hundreds of other players.

The top-seeded Mauresmo won the first set against German qualifier Kristina Barrois of Germany and trailed, 2-5, in the second. That will be the second match on Arthur Ashe Stadium today, weather permitting, following the match between second-seeded Rafael Nadal of Spain and Mark Philippoussis of Australia.

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At a glance

Today’s top matches at the U.S. Open in New York:

MEN

* Mark Philippoussis, Australia, vs. Rafael Nadal (2), Spain

* Roger Federer (1), Switzerland, vs. Yeu-Tzuoo Wang, Chinese Taipei

WOMEN

* Amelie Mauresmo (1), France, vs. Kristina Barrois, Germany

* Maria Sharapova (3), Russia, vs. Michaella Krajicek, Netherlands

Source: usopen.org