Game, set and thatch Agassi

In his newly published autobiography, Andre Agassi makes the claim that he took crystal meth during his career and that he lied about it to the tennis authorities, who then proceeded to brush the whole affair under the carpet. Now that the story has become public, said authorities are receiving a lot of flak for their handling of the case and other cases like it, and the game's reputation threatens to go the way of baseball's as a result.

Now, whilst not wishing to condone drug taking at all, I'm not aware that crystal meth is in any way performance enhancing - in fact, I would think it's quite the opposite - and in my opinion the people who run tennis should be more embarrassed about another of Agassi's misdemeanors that has come to light in his book.

I'm talking about his wig!

It would appear that the ridiculous mane that Agassi sported in the early part of his career was in fact an even more ridiculous syrup that covered up his prematurely balding pate, and its disintegration the night before the 1990 French Open final was the reason behind Agassi's crushing loss on that day. His brother had to help him reattach the perished postiche with about twenty clips, and Agassi was consequently very wary of diving around the court lest his toupee tumble to the floor mid-rally. If Agassi is now going to receive retroactive punishment, it has surely got to be for his follicular crimes rather than his drug-related ones! Donning a wig is one thing, but to become Joe Dirt's role model out of one's own volition is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.

Finally, I must quote you this line from the book; Agassi is talking here about the letter he claims he wrote to the ATP in 1997 to explain his positive drug test, but in a grand case of Freudian slippage I think he's really making an admission about the state of his hair:

"It was full of lies, interwoven with the truth."

Priceless - you just can't write that stuff (unless you're Andre Agassi, of course).