“It only takes you 11 minutes to win this match,” he told Reilly Opelka at one point, perhaps a tad optimistically.
Later, Agassi was even bolder, assuring the American that “it only takes 11 seconds to turn this match around.”
What does Andre know about the number 11 that the rest of us don’t? Better not to ask. Better, like John Belushi in Animal House, to let him roll, and get caught up in his excitement.
Agassi’s presence for the eighth edition of Laver Cup, in San Francisco, is part of changing of the guard at the event. Since its start in 2017, only two men have sat in the captain’s chairs, Bjorn Borg for Team Europe, and John McEnroe for Team World. The spot needed some new blood: Borg had hardly said an audible word in all that time, and McEnroe is a couple—or more—generations past his playing days. So this year Agassi replaced McEnroe, and Yannick Noah replaced Borg.
