Andre Agassi

Emmanuel Agassi, then a waiter at Tropicana Las Vegas, had met Kerkorian in 1963.

Andre Kirk Agassi ( born April 29, 1970) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player.

He is an eight-time major champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and a runner-up in seven other majors.

Agassi is widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Agassi is the second of five men to achieve the career Grand Slam in the Open Era and the fifth of eight overall to make the achievement.

He is also the first of two men to achieve the career Golden Slam (career Grand Slam and Olympic gold medal), as well as the only man to win a career Super Slam (career Grand Slam, plus the Olympic gold medal and the year-end championships).

At the age of 12, Agassi and his good friend and doubles partner, Roddy Parks, won the 1982 National Indoor Boys 14s Doubles Championship in Chicago.

Agassi describes memorable experiences and juvenile pranks with Roddy in his book Open.

When he was 13, Agassi was sent to Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy in Florida.

He was meant to stay for only three months, because that was all his father could afford.

After thirty minutes of watching Agassi play, Bollettieri, deeply impressed by his talent, called Mike and said: "Take your check back. He's here for free."

Agassi then dropped out of school in the ninth grade to pursue a full-time tennis career.

Agassi turned professional at the age of 16 and competed in his first tournament at La Quinta, California.

He won his first match against John Austin, but then lost his second match to Mats Wilander.

By the end of 1986, Agassi was ranked No. 91.

He won his first top-level singles title in 1987 at the Sul American Open in Itaparica and ended the year ranked No. 25.

He won six additional tournaments in 1988 (Memphis, U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships, Forest Hills WCT, Stuttgart Outdoor, Volvo International and Livingston Open), and, by December of that year, he had surpassed US$1 million in career prize money after playing in just 43 tournaments—the fastest anyone in history had reached that level.

During 1988, he also set the open-era record for most consecutive victories by a male teenager (a record that stood for 17 years until Rafael Nadal broke it in 2005).

His year-end ranking was No. 3, behind second-ranked Ivan Lendl and top-ranked Mats Wilander.

Both the Association of Tennis Professionals and Tennis magazine named Agassi the Most Improved Player of the Year for 1988.

In addition to not playing the Australian Open (which later became his best Grand Slam event) for the first eight years of his career, Agassi chose not to play at Wimbledon from 1988 through 1990 (although he first played there in 1987, only to lose in the first round to Henri Leconte) and publicly stated that he did not wish to play there because of the event's traditionalism, particularly its "predominantly white" dress code to which players at the event are required to conform.

Strong performances on the tour meant that Agassi was quickly tipped as a future Grand Slam champion.

While still a teenager, he reached the semi-finals of both the French Open and the US Open in 1988 and made the US Open semi-finals in 1989.

He also won 17 Masters titles and was part of the winning Davis Cup teams in 1990, 1992 and 1995.

He began the 1990s with a series of near-misses.

He reached his first Grand Slam final in 1990 at the French Open, where he was favored before losing in four sets to Andrés Gómez, which he later attributed in his book to worrying about his wig falling off during the match.

He reached his second Grand Slam final of the year at the US Open, defeating defending champion Boris Becker in the semi-finals.

Agassi reached the world No. 1 ranking for the first time in 1995, but was troubled by personal issues during the mid-to-late 1990s and sank to No. 141 in 1997, prompting many to believe that his career was over.

Agassi was the first man to win all four singles majors on three different surfaces (hard, clay and grass), and remains the most recent American man to win the French Open (in 1999) and the Australian Open (in 2003).

Agassi returned to No. 1 in 1999 and enjoyed the most successful run of his career over the next four years.

During his 20-plus year tour career, Agassi was known by the nickname "The Punisher".

In 2001, the Foundation opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a K–12 public charter school for at-risk children.

He has been married to fellow tennis player Steffi Graf since 2001.

Andre Agassi was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, to Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi (Aghassian), a former Olympic boxer from Iran, and American Elizabeth "Betty" Agassi (née Dudley).

His father is of Assyrian and Armenian heritage.

Andre Agassi's mother, Betty, is a breast cancer survivor.

He has three older siblings – Rita (last wife of former number one Pancho Gonzales), Philip and Tami.

Andre was given the middle name Kirk after Kirk Kerkorian, an Armenian American billionaire.

After suffering from sciatica caused by two bulging discs in his back, a spondylolisthesis (vertebral displacement) and a bone spur that interfered with the nerve, Agassi retired from professional tennis on September 3, 2006, after losing in the third round of the US Open.

He is the founder of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, which has raised over $60 million for at-risk children in Southern Nevada.