Andre Agassi, Caroline Wozniacki, Genie Bouchard and James Blake Talk Tennis

Memorable matches, sacrifices, personal style, and superstitions were volleyed back and forth in a lively conversation Thursday night with tennis stars Andre Agassi, Caroline Wozniacki, Genie Bouchard, and James Blake, hosted by Ralph Lauren.

The conversation, which was held at Ralph Lauren’s women’s store at 888 Madison Avenue in New York, was moderated by Gigi Salmon, a British sports journalist and tennis commentator.

Ralph Lauren has been the Official Outfitter of The Championships, Wimbledon, which will take place from Monday through July 12, for over 20 years. To celebrate the tournament, a grass court was installed by Wimbledon in Central Park, where the four former tennis professionals competed in a mixed doubles match on Friday afternoon.

“I don’t think anyone has played on grass in a while,” said Bouchard. “I did hit a few times on hardcourt in the past couple of weeks, and every time I posted about it, Caroline [Wozniacki] would respond to my story like, ‘You’re practicing so much! Oh my gosh!’”

“I myself have been out there twice this week….but I’m also still planning on James [Blake] taking three quarters of the court,” said Wozniacki.

Salmon asked Agassi what emotions would go through his mind when he would play on grass courts.

“Oh, emotion? There’s no place for emotions on a tennis court. You’ve got to get to business and you didn’t have much time to do that,” said Agassi. In fact, Salmon said that Agassi once described playing on grass “like playing on ice that was plastered with Vaseline.”

“Bambi on ice,” said Agassi.

Agassi said the first time he actually played on grass, he lost in a hour and six minutes “so I wasn’t off to a good start.” He said there used to be two weeks between Paris and the grass courts of Wimbledon, “And that’s a quick adjustment. Adjustments are really hard. You can play for five hours on clay, but then you go practice for two hours on grass and you’re sore…..every surface asks something different of you,” he said.

Wozniacki described her experience playing at Wimbledon. “When you’re on Wimbledon Centre Court, and you bounce the ball, you can hear everything because everyone’s so quiet, and you can hear a pin drop. It’s kind of terrifying because you’re playing on Centre Court. Here, it’s so loud, you can’t even hear yourself. You look up on a night session, and you can’t see the top stance. But Wimbledon, everything just feels so magnified because everything is so quiet and everyone’s paying attention to how you breathe.”

Salmon asked Bouchard to take the audience back to 2014 Wimbledon when she didn’t drop a set all week and ended up making it to the finals.

“Yes, it was such a special moment for me. Wimbledon has always been my favorite tournament. I just loved the tradition that Caroline was talking about. It just has so much history. It’s like the one you want to win. I was just in the zone, in a bubble, and it’s kind of like I don’t even know what happened, and it happened. I think that’s kind of a good way to be an athlete because if you realize what you’re doing in the moment, you kind of get out of the moment and realize the consequences of winning and losing. And that kind of happened to me in the finals a little bit, and I got killed. [She lost to Petra Kvitova 6-3, 6-0.] But it was a great and amazing couple of weeks for me,” said Bouchard.

Agassi described what happened to him the year he won Wimbledon in 1992. “Oh, it was very surprising, I think no one was more surprised than I was. I lost three Grand Slam finals leading into that Wimbledon final. And the three Grand Slam finals I lost, I was favored in each one, a pretty heavy favorite. So coming into Wimbledon, I had low expectations, and I kind of thrived on that. It felt pretty liberating to not be expected to win one…So when I got to Wimbledon, I was like, ‘Who cares?’ I’m getting good at losing…and I was up against somebody where I was truly the underdog….You never forget the first time you get over a finish line in an environment in tennis that asks something so unique of you, and Wimbledon [asks] something very, very unique of a tennis player.”

Asked about the highlight of being a professional tennis player on tour, Blake said, “The best thing was getting to live your dream. I mean, I think we all started tennis as a game and something that was fun. I wanted to be like my parents. I joked they were too cheap to pay for a babysitter when they went to play tennis. I picked it up too, and always loved it. And then to get out there and be able to do what you love, and it’s something that brings entertainment and joy to other people. For me, anytime I need perspective, I was feeling sorry for myself after a loss or something, and it gave me that perspective of like, ‘OK, it’s not the end of the world. I did just lose a tennis match, but I still have a much better day than a lot of people in this world,’” said Blake.

As for the downside of the game, whether that’s loneliness on tour or chasing rankings, Wozniacki said, “I think I was one of the lucky ones. I never felt lonely because my dad was my coach, and he was always there with me and traveling with me, so anytime I would feel sorry for myself after a tough loss, I always had family, and that was important to me.”

“Yes of course we go to amazing places, but we often don’t get to really see them,” said Bouchard. “I mean it’s really a business trip and we see the airport, the hotel, the tennis courts, and a couple of restaurants, if you’re lucky.

“And usually when you lose, you want to leave the city and go to the next city. You don’t often hang around to do the sightseeing and stuff,” she said.

Salmon asked Agassi what’s the best and worst parts of life as a tennis player.

“Oh, I’m a very complicated person,” admitted Agassi. “Tennis fundamentally just teaches you how to be a tortured perfectionist, right? Because you got to focus on being better than one person, and you never know who that person is, and you have to do everything in your control better than these imaginary opponents out there are doing, whether it means practicing or training or resting. So you start to end up, always in your mind pushing yourself to make sure you’re getting the most out of yourself, for the opportunity to go out there and measure it against somebody else in front of the world, right? So there’s an intensity to it… At times in my life, it felt very daunting, and you know, at times it made me want to quit and at times, I did quit.

“You know, I went to Number One thinking it was going to mean something, and then you realize you still have to figure out a way to get better, and go do it again on Monday. And I felt that at 141 in the world, and you realize that’s just as much of an illusion because I actually kind of gave up on myself and recommitted, and I felt more comfortable getting on the tennis court for my own reasons, having that ownership and getting better and climbing back up to the top again. I think that’s probably the best part for me, you know, figuring out a way to take ownership of a life I didn’t choose,” said Agassi.

“You can’t pass the ball, you can’t run out the clock, you can’t call time out. You’re X amount of feet away from your opponent, and yet you’re so intimately connected that you’re on your own little island. You end up talking to yourself. You never see [other] sports where people talk to themselves. Talking isn’t the problem, it’s answering. We end up having Lincoln-Douglas debates with ourselves, and you can feel pretty lonely in real time,” said Agassi.

Salmon then asked a happy memory of the players. Blake went with beating Roger Federer at the Olympics. “Every time you’re playing with your country on your chest, it means a little more,” he said. “The first time I played Davis Cup, I had complete butterflies in my stomach, and it felt different because they say, ‘Game USA, Advantage USA,’ and you’re playing for something much more than just yourself.”

Wozniacki said her happiest moment was probably playing the 2018 Australian Open finals against Simona Halep, whom she defeated to win the tournament, receiving her first and only Grand Slam title.

Agassi recalled his best moment in tennis came in 1999 when he won the French Open against Andrei Medvedev in a dramatic five-set final “because it was the last of the four that had eluded me,” after having been the favorite twice a decade earlier two years in a row. “I was old enough to realize I’ll never have another chance to win, this is my chance, and so I kind of had to fight my demons. It was like my entire life in a microcosm, and getting over the finish line. There, I knew in real time that I would never have another regret as it related to inside the lines of tennis.”

Bouchard said her most memorable moment was when she beat Venus Williams. “I played her in a non-Grand Slam, but it was tournament in Charleston, and it just felt so surreal to be on the court and see across the net someone I had seen on TV. It really felt like I wasn’t living in reality, and my feet did not feel like they were on the ground. She said she had to overcome this feeling of like, ‘Wow, I’m playing a living legend.’”

The conversation then turned to fashion, and Salmon asked Wozniacki how important was it to feel stylish and fashionable on the tennis court?

“It was very important to me. I was an Adidas and Stella McCartney ambassador for so long,” she said. It was back in 2019 and she was 19 years old, and McCartney was just getting into tennis. For more than 10 years, Wozniacki helped design the things she wore on the court. “It was a very special thing for me, and I felt special that I got to wear not only the designs that we designed together, but also do it with such a cool person, and also have a big say in what I was wearing and how I felt comfortable, as a woman. I like to look classy. I like to look cool, and I’m on the court, even when we’re out fighting and sweating, and it’s great that you have an outfit that not only works, but also looks great on court, and so it was a good combo.”

Wrapping up, Salmon asked the players for any superstitions they have before playing a match.

“I did so many,” said Blake. “I had to get the balls from the same ball kid to start my service game. My light drink had to be a little bit behind my water bottle. I had to shower in the same shower after I won the first round. I’d eat the same breakfast after I won the first round. I didn’t shave once the tournament started.”

Agassi said he wouldn’t step on lines in between points, and he would get the ball with the ball kids in a certain order. “If I play an Italian, I’m definitely having pasta the night before. The year I won the French Open, I had everything except my underwear. So my choice was to use my coach’s underwear or none. so I’m not using my coach’s, so I went with none, and I won the match. I should have lost. So then the real big decision-making. So I made the noble right decision and I went total commando and I won the tournament. So I swore I was never going to wear underwear again, but it started to work against me, let’s put it that way,” he said.