Image is Everything

Excerpt from Andrew Agassi's (awesome) autobiography OPEN, p 130-131:

Even though I'm a punching bag for sportswriters, big companies beg me to pose with their products. In the middle of 1989 one of my corporate sponsors, Canon, schedules a series of photo shoots, including one in the wilds of Nevada, in the Valley of Fire. I like the sound of that. I walk every day through a valley of fire.

Since the ad campaign is for a camera, the director wants a colorful setting. Vivid, he says. Cinematic. He builds an entire tennis court in the middle of the desert, and as I watch the workmen I can't help thinking of my father building his tennis court in his desert. I've come a long way. Or have I?

For a full day the director films me playing tennis by myself, the flame-red mountains and orange rock formations in the background. I'm weary, sunburned, ready for a break, but the director isn't done with me. He tells me to take off my shirt. I'm known for taking off my shirt, in moments of teenage exuberance, and throwing it into crowds.

Then he wants to film me in a cave, hitting a ball at the camera, as if to shatter the lens.

Then, at Lake Mead, we film several scenes against the watery backdrop.

It all seems silly, goofy, but harmless.

Back in Vegas we do a series of shots on the Strip, then around a swimming pool. As luck would have it, they choose the pool at good old Cambridge Racquet Club. Finally, we set up for one last shot at a Vegas country club. The director puts me in a white suit, then has me drive up to the front portico in a white Lamborghini. Step out of the car, he says, turn to the camera, lower your black sunglasses, and say, Image is Everything.

Image is Everything?

Yes. Image is Everything.

Between takes, I look around in the crowd of spectators I see Wendi, the former ballgirl, my childhood crush, all grown up. Now she's definitely come a long way since the Alan King tournament.

She's carrying a suitcase. She's just dropped out of college and she's just come home. You were the first person I wanted to see, she says.

She looks beautiful. Her brown hair is long, curly, and her eyes are impossibly green. She's all I can think about while the director is ordering me around. As the sun goes down, the director yells, Cut! That's a wrap! Wendi and I jump into my new Jeep, the doors and top off, and go roaring away like BOnnie and Clyde.

Wendi says, What was that slogan they kept making you say into the camera?

Image is Everything.

What's that supposed to mean?

Beats me. It's for a camera company.

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Weeks later I begin to hear this slogan twice a day. Then six times a day. Then ten. It reminds me of those Vegas windstorms, the kind that begin with a faint, ominous rustling of leaves, and ultimately turn into high-pitched, gale-force, three-day blows.

Overnight the slogan becomes synonymous with me. Sportswriters liken this slogan to my inner nature, my essential being. They say it's my philosophy, my religion, and they predict it's going to be my epitaph. They say I'm nothing but image, I have no substance, because I haven't won a slam. They say the slogan is proof that I'm just a pitchman, trading on my fame, caring only about money and nothing about tennis. Fans at my matches begin taunting me with the slogan. Come on, Andre—image is everything! They yell this if I show any emotion. They yell it if I show no emotion. They yell it when I win. They yell it when I lose.