I Played Andre Agassi When I Was Twelve. He's Still Teaching Me Something About Racquet Sports.
The only racquet sports advisor who’s been a player, a brand builder, and a CMO. Real growth pressure. Clear thinking. No fluff. For leaders navigating the racquet sports industry right now.
I was twelve years old at the national clay court championships in Houston, my first national tournament, when I drew Andre Agassi.
I took the first set off him. I remember exactly how that felt.
Then he answered the way he'd answer everything for the next thirty years. Six-love. Six-love. Two sets gone almost as fast as the first one ended.
I saw him over and over through juniors, at the same tournaments, on the same circuit. He was already the best player on any court he stepped onto, and everyone around him knew it.
What I didn't understand at twelve was what that talent was costing him.
Where the pressure actually came from.
Agassi has said plainly in his own memoir that tennis was never his choice.
His father, Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi, was an Olympic boxer who immigrated from Iran and put a racquet in his son's hand before that son had any say in the matter. Andre moved to Florida at thirteen to train under Nick Bollettieri. He turned pro at sixteen.
He hit number one in the world, then dropped as low as 141, while losing his relationship with the sport that made him famous. He's been honest about the years in between not being good ones.
Then something shifted. Not because winning got easier. Because he decided, on his own terms, what all of it was actually for.
"I wasn't pushed by the idea of grandeur or applause or trophies or rankings," he said years later. "I don't need adrenaline. I need purpose."
By the time he retired in 2006, he'd raised tens of millions for the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education and opened a charter school in Las Vegas for kids who, like him, didn't get much say in their own path. He's since put his name behind more than a hundred schools.
"Tennis gave me a lot and it took a lot," he said. "So I just try to stay positive and now say tennis and I are about even."
Most people don't get to settle the ledger with the thing that shaped them. He did.
Now he's applying the same discipline to a company.
This week, the US Open gets underway at Flushing Meadows, a tournament Agassi won twice. He won't be on that court.
But in the last month, he's made two of the biggest moves anyone in racquet sports has made this year.
On August 4, Agassi Sports Entertainment, the public company he co-founded, announced a global initiative called "Let's Play," aimed at building a worldwide network of pickleball and padel clubs through acquisitions, partnerships, and franchising.
Stefanie Graf, his wife and one of the greatest players the women's game has ever produced, is leading the initial push into Germany. Darren Cahill, the coach behind four different world number ones, is leading Australia.
A week later, on August 11, ASE signed a multi-year agreement with USTA Coaching to build USTA's coaching philosophy and certification content into an AI-powered coaching platform ASE is developing with IBM.
Cahill is headlining USTA Coaching's first "Coaches Open" conference in New York this week, timed to land right alongside the Open itself.
Two major moves, one week apart, both aimed squarely at where racquet sports is headed next: facilities, and how the next generation of players gets coached.
"Having been involved with pickleball as an advocate, investor, and player, I've grown to love all the sport has to offer to so many people," Agassi said when the company took his name.
He's not chasing a trend. He's putting his name and his capital behind the same sport that once cost him a decade of his life, and betting he's learned enough since then to build something that lasts.
Here's why that matters to you, whether you follow ASE the stock or not.
I'm not here to tell you whether ASE's valuation holds up. That's not my lane.
What matters to operators and leaders in this industry is what it means when a global name with global reach decides that racquet sports facilities and coaching are worth building at scale.
It means the mainstream money and mainstream attention this newsletter has been tracking all year are no longer coming. They've arrived.
Agassi and Graf, a 22-time Grand Slam champion in her own right, are actively recruiting facility operators in multiple countries and building coaching technology intended to sit within the USTA's own certification pathway.
That's validation for the industry. It's also a test of whether operators can make clear decisions before the pressure arrives, instead of scrambling once it does.
If you run a pickleball or padel facility, you may get a call, an offer, or a franchise pitch from a brand-backed platform like this one, sooner than you think.
The operators who do well out of that moment won't be the ones reacting to a press release. They'll be the ones who already know what they're worth, what they're willing to give up, and where they refuse to compromise, before the offer ever lands on their desk.
Do you know what makes your facility worth acquiring versus worth walking away from?
Do you know which parts of your business you'd protect in a partnership, and which parts you'd hand over without hesitation?
If the honest answer is "I'd have to think about it," that thinking is the work. Do it now, while you're not deciding under pressure.
That's a decision problem, not a growth problem. It's the question I sit down with clients on every week.
The other side of this is operational. A wave of acquisitions, franchise offers, and new facility partnerships is arriving in this category.
The operators who benefit most will be the ones with real discipline already in place: real estate strategy, staffing that can scale, and systems that hold up under new ownership or a new brand on the door.
Luke Wade, The Community Creator built Facility Ally to close exactly that gap. Whoever ends up owning the next wave of clubs, someone still has to run them well.
On the coaching side, this is worth watching too. The USTA Coaching deal is a real signal that certification and standardization are becoming a bigger part of how this industry professionalizes, not just in tennis but across every racquet sport that's growing right now.
Padel is watching a version of the same thing play out globally, as international bodies push for shared standards across a sport that's still being built market by market.
The pattern is the same everywhere growth outruns structure: someone eventually shows up to organize it. Better that it's you setting the terms than someone else setting them for you.
I took a set off Andre Agassi once. He answered with six-love, six-love. That's the pattern of his whole life: get caught off guard, then come back with more discipline than the moment before.
He learned that lesson the hard way, over a decade, on a path he didn't choose. Racquet sports don't have to learn it the same way.
The moment has already arrived, whether any one operator is ready for it or not. The ones who treat that as a reason to get clear now, rather than a reason to wait and see, are the ones who'll be running the show when this moment passes and the next one shows up.
If you want a real read on where your racquet sports business stands.
The Inside The Lines Advisory Growth Pressure Review is 15 questions across three domains: Market Position, Execution, and Alignment. No AI Bot scores your answers.
I review every response myself and send back a plain-language read on what's working, what's drifting, and where the real pressure is coming from.
It's free. It takes about five minutes.
Go Find Your Court.
Mike
Comments