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What was so different about the Agassi tennis generation?This tennis game has gone through many changes, and the Agassi tennis generation provided one of the major ones. I remember growing up with Agassi as my idol, wearing the pink-and-black ski pants under the tennis shorts. I am going to include Boris Becker in this generation because, although he won Wimbledon in 1985, he was only 17, and he is really just three years older than Agassi and Sampras. I include Becker because he is a good example of how this generation introduced the power game. If you look at, for instance, the French Open final of 1984 between Mats Wilander and Yannick Noah, you see high quality tennis, with not so much power. Ten years on, in the final between Alberto Berasategui and Sergi Bruguera, there was a considerable increase in topspin and power. The 90s also followed on from Boris Becker's example of a big serve, and out came the huge servers like Goran Ivanisevic, Mark Philipoussis, Greg Rusedski and Richard Krajicek. For the first time, the tennis industry was actually looking for ways to slow the game down, and they even introduced a heavier tennis ball to slow it down. Also, the grass courts at Wimbledon have also been made slower because of the huge serving game that has arose. There were some great characters out there during the Agassi tennis generation, players like Thomas Muster, Marcelo Rios, Petr Korda, Marc Rosset and Stefan Edberg. Besides the big servers, another big advancement was the level of fitness required to be a top players. Thomas Muster exemplfied fitness on the court, and Michael Chang could run for days at a time. This was a great time for tennis with the Sampras-Agassi rivalry and many other great talents out there.
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