He was flat-footed and in pain at the finish, which is the way all but a few of the great ones bow out of their sport. They can choose when to leave, but not always how, and so some part of you wanted a better ending for Andre Agassi.
Another championship, maybe, the way Lance Armstrong left cycling and Rocky Marciano stepped between the ring ropes for the final time, or like Ted Williams, even, bathed in the afterglow of a home run in his last at-bat.
But there are precious few exceptions. Much longer is the list of those, who like Michael Jordan, Willie Mays, Wayne Gretzky and even Muhammad Ali, hung around long after they should have. Which is why, the more you think about it, there might have been no better way for Agassi to take his leave.
He broke into tennis as a precocious 16-year-old, oozing attitude, leaking talent and marked, it seemed, for a very short shelf life. Instead, Agassi departed the racket at age 36 with eight majors and a career Grand Slam in tow, revered as an elder statesman and secure in the knowledge that he'd left everything, absolutely everything, out on the court.
Few career arcs run on nearly that long or contain so many spectacular bounces. Even fewer encompass half as much satisfaction. That was what all those tears, finally, were about.
``I've spent a lot of time over the last few months knowing that this would be the end, this tournament,'' Agassi said in the interview room afterward. ``I've had a lot of time to think about it from many perspectives.
``I look at young guys who are talented who make us aware of life's endless cycle. I look at the life ahead of them, the journey ahead of them. It's so evenly balanced between me seeing how many great things they have to look forward to, at the same time how much I wouldn't do it again.''
Why not, a reporter asked.
``Because I did it,'' Agassi said, then paused waiting for the laughter to die down. ``Because I did it.''
One measure of how long and how hard it was is that his ticket out of tennis was punched by a B. Becker _ but it happened to be Benjamin, the 112th-ranked player in the world, and not Boris Becker, who was roughly a contemporary.
``I've lost to B. Becker before,'' Agassi laughed, but he wasn't kidding.
Boris Becker, now 38, turned pro in 1984, two seasons before Agassi did, and his quick climb up the ladder was, for a while, a kind of rebuke to Agassi's own lack of achievement. Becker won Wimbledon in his second season, and six majors in all, but walked away in 1999. By then, though, Agassi was just warming to the task.
The turning point in Agassi's career came almost unexpectedly in 1992, when after a string of losses to a handful of contemporaries in the finals of majors, he outlasted Goran Ivanisevic to win Wimbledon. It was the first time the ``image-is-everything'' brat in the photo shoots quit ``going for it'' on every shot, and figured out what real champions eventually understand: that winning is a test of nerves and not just power, a marathon instead of a sprint.
And what a marathon Agassi was about to embark on.
He shed the showgirl hair and fatty foods, got fitter, got married, then divorced and married again. He grew up in public, a painful process, anytime, but tougher when it includes almost as many bounces as a tennis ball.
Two years later, Agassi had fallen far enough to come back and become the first unseeded player to win the U.S. Open. The following January, he captured the first of four Australian Opens. Two years after that, he slid all the way down the world rankings to No. 141.
Had Agassi called it quits right about then, he would have had some grand stories and a nice little trophy case to show for all his troubles. But in the same way that carelessness characterized the start of his career, maturity claimed the middle and the end.
``My motivation was just wanting it to be on my terms. I didn't know I would be able to get back to the top. I knew that I would try to get the most out of myself everyday from that day forward. That was my commitment,'' he said. ``That never stopped. That's probably something I take the most pride in.''
In 1999, he rewarded himself with both the French and U.S. Opens, then threw in three more Australians after that. The final one came in 2003, with all the aches and pains taking an increasing toll. Still, mindful of how many times he took his took his gift for granted, what Agassi needed was proof that no amount of hard work would bring it back.
That came, decisively, as he stood by helplessly and watched the final shot off the racket of a B. Becker nearly a dozen years his junior go whizzing past. He knew then he'd chosen the right place to bow out.
``This is sort of, the last sort of window, to the whole series of windows throughout my career,'' Agassi said. ``I just feel like the colour on the last one can affect how you see the rest of them, you know.
``I didn't want it to be tainted with a lack of desire or preparation,'' he said. ``I'd rather just be inside the lines.''
