Andre Agassi: Hair today, gone tomorrow

HAIRDRESSING SECRETS: By the time Andre Agassi won the Olympic Gold Medal at the Atlanta Games in 1996 (pictured, left), he had been shaving his head for more than a year.

But that was not the case six years earlier when Andre was about to compete in his first grand slam final: the 1990 French Open against Andres Gomez. What was not known until recently was that Agassi played that final wearing a wig (pictured above) that he was afraid would fall apart.

Agassi writes in his new memoir Open that the wig began to disintegrate as he took a shower the night before the Paris final – “probably I used the wrong hair rinse,” Agassi writes.

He panicked and called his brother Philly into the room. Together, they managed to clamp the wig together using clips and pins.

“Of course I could have played without my hairpiece, but what would all the journalists have written if they knew that all the time I was really wearing a wig?

“During the warming-up training before play I prayed. Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off.

“With each leap, I imagine it falling into the sand. I imagine millions of spectators move closer to their TV sets, their eyes widening and, in dozens of dialects and languages, ask how Andre Agassi’s hair has fallen from his head.”

It was Brooke Shields, who Andre was married to for a few years in the 90s, who persuaded him to cut off all his remaining hair.

“She said I should shave my head,” he writes. “It was like suggesting I should have all my teeth out. Nevertheless, I thought for a few days about it, about the agonies it caused me, the hypocrisy and lies. My wig was like a chain and the ridiculously long strands in three colours like an iron ball which hung on it.”