Andre Agassi says that he knew that he would never beat Rafael Nadal after seeing the teenager in 2004, 12 months prior to their first-ever meeting.
As the American was in the very final stretch of his career, a new force in tennis was on the rise – someone who would break the dominance of a young Roger Federer.
As tennis fans know, that person was Rafael Nadal, and, whilst the tennis scene had drastically changed, the teenage Spaniard still had opportunities to play the giants of the past.
Nadal would play Agassi – himself – on two occasions, once in Wimbledon and the other in Canada.
However, it was the eight-time champion’s first (off-court) encounter with Nadal at the French Open in the mid-2000s that displayed to Agassi that he would be a force to be renowned with.
“You want me to tell you when I knew that I would never beat him [Nadal]?” Agassi recently recalled, whilst speaking on the Served with Andy Roddick podcast.
“You remember those lockers where they used to click them?”
“I could see him through lockers, and he looks at his code, and he’s a rookie trying to figure it out.
“He’s like [Rafa grunt] and then he starts again. Looks at his code, click, click, click, and it doesn’t open. He goes BAM! and he hits the locker. I’m not kidding, God as my witness, he hits the locker. I’m going, ‘Is this kid serious?’
“Then he’s like click, click, click, and it opens, and he goes, ‘Vamos!’.”
“There was no one else in there, and he self-Vamos’d?” quipped Andy Roddick, in reply.
“He was like in a war with the locker and he was going to win it, and he won it, and I was like, ‘I can’t beat this guy,’ ” said Agassi.
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Ultimately, Agassi was correct in his overall assessment, with Nadal winning 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 in the final of the 2005 Montreal Masters, before capturing a 7-6(5), 6-2, 6-4 victory in the third round at the third Grand Slam of 2006 – the American’s final Wimbledon match.
The pair would share the court four years later, during an exhibition match at Indian Wells alongside Roger Federer and Pete Sampras – in order to raise funds for charity.
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