With a 71 per cent win rate, you’d think Andre Agassi had it easy when playing against Boris Becker. If you delve into the record books though, you’ll see Becker beat Agassi at their first three meetings on the ATP Tour.
After that however Agassi won 10 of their next 11 matches despite suffering a rollercoaster career with crashing lows to match his exhilarating highs.
So why the change in fortune?
Why was Agassi so dominant across a decade of playing top level tennis against Becker at blue-riband events including Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open?
Becker had one of the most effective serves of his generation that propelled him to over $25 million in career prize money, six major titles and an Olympic gold medal. Yet Agassi was able to take one of Becker’s greatest strengths and turn it into his Achilles’ heel.
After the third crushing defeat – when Agassi took just four games off the German – he invested time analysing their matches in fine detail. After watching hours upon hours of video he noticed Becker had what Agassi would later describe as a “weird tick thing with his tongue”. On preparing to serve, as he tossed the ball into its arc, Becker would stick his tongue out in the direction he was going to hit the ball.
This information was potentially dynamite but, if used carelessly, Becker would surely have realised that his rival had the march on him.
As Agassi himself said, “I had to resist the temptation of reading his serve for the majority of the match and choose the moment when I was going to use that information on a given point to execute a shot that would allow me to break the match open.”
What Agassi effectively did, in resisting temptation to read Becker’s serve at will (instead choosing the moment when he was going to use that information) was to create the circumstance to win points against Becker’s serve to win games – and then matches - most of the other players on the ATP Tour would lose.
Some have called Agassi identifying Becker’s ‘tell’ a hack, but this misses the point as most advocates of hack culture frequently do.
It wasn’t luck either.
First, Agassi invested time in trying to discover why his famed ability to return serve was failing.
Second, his relentless focus on detail allowed him to spot something that no other player or coach did.
Third, he then used this information carefully. It wasn’t until 2021 – 22 years after their last match and Agassi’s 10th win over Becker – that he revealed his secret to the world.
Finally, Agassi still had to execute the right return of serve to win the points.
In doing all this Andre Agassi created the right circumstances to win.