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#96. The Substandard on the Aussie Open and Agassi's Hairpiece
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Dudes Chatting — Australian Open and Agassi's hairpiece: A micro-episode pegged to Roger Federer winning his 20th Grand Slam title at age 36. Sonny watched zero seconds of the tournament; JVL explains that the Australian Open occupies an odd-hour slot that makes it appointment viewing only for parents of young children who are already awake at 3 a.m. The centerpiece is the Agassi wig story: Andre Agassi secretly wore a hairpiece throughout his career, and during the 1990 French Open final against Andres Gomez it nearly came off; JVL argues that losing that match was actually better for Agassi's image than winning would have been, since it preserved the secret and allowed his actual redemption arc to happen. Sonny trolls JVL by claiming Serena Williams is the GOAT over Federer; JVL patiently defends Serena's actual legacy (she has never claimed to be better than the men) while acknowledging the trollish framing. The hosts briefly discuss Venus and Serena refusing to play the role of racial victims despite their stage parents — Richard Williams is mentioned — and compare him to Mary Pierce's abusive father and Agassi's domineering dad.
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00We are live. I haven't taken this off since last week. Lovely. We weren't at the whole time. Lovely. Sleepinging in it, showering in it. So, uh... Showering. In it.
Vic00:00:15Hello and welcome to another micro-episode of Substandard, sponsored by Tripping.com. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of The Substandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. So, this weekend we wrapped up the Australian Open. Did you guys watch anything of it? Part of it? Some of it? All of it?
Sonny00:00:37I watched literally zero seconds of the Aussie Open. I caught about five minutes. Zero seconds. Not only did I not watch any of it live, I watched no highlights.
JVL00:00:46The Aussie Open is the tennis tournament designed for parents of young children. Explain JVL. Because all the action is happening either super late at night or super early in the morning when you're awake anyway because your children are sick or up to go to the bathroom or asking you to come cuddle them or saying, it's Saturday, let's go downstairs and play. Come on, let's play, let's play, let's play.
Sonny00:01:11No, my daughter sleeps for 11 hours straight like an angel.
Vic00:01:17And that's all the time we have.
JVL00:01:19What time is it, Vic? Yeah, it's 5.05. Wow. You're one child. So you have one child. This is why you only have one. Because you hit the lotto with the first one. Anything after this would be a disappointment. It can't possibly be better.
Sonny00:01:32I know, I know. Look, I'm... She goes to bed at like 8.30. She wakes up at... She would sleep till probably... She would probably sleep for 12 hours if we let her. We have to get her up though. We got things to do.
Vic00:01:47You got things to do. Hey, baby, wake up. Wake up. I want to go out now.
Sonny00:01:50Wake up, baby. Get up.
Vic00:01:53You know what that's like, right, JVL?
Sonny00:01:54Big girl. Well, she gets very angry when we call her baby now. She says, no, I'm not a baby. I'm a big girl. Oh, yeah. Wake up, big girl.
Vic00:02:00That happens. That happens. It's the beginning of that. It's very funny. It's the beginning of that.
Sonny00:02:03Anyway, she's great. So I'm not awake when the Australian Open is on. So you didn't watch. I didn't watch any of it. Any of it. I watched none of it.
Vic00:02:10I think I must have been watching replays because I saw some middle of the day.
Sonny00:02:14The first I saw of it was today when I saw the story by Tom Perotta talking about how great Roger Federer was. I hear he won again. Is that accurate? I hear he won. He won again. He won again. This is number 20.
Vic00:02:26Is that the winner? That's it, isn't it? He's four up on Nadal. Is that what's going on here?
Sonny00:02:31Oh, he's more than four up on Nadal. He's five or six up on Nadal, right? Because Nadal is not yet at the Sampras mark. Yeah, he hasn't passed Sampras yet. Sampras was 16. 17. Oh, boy. 16. Whatever.
Vic00:02:44And how old is Federer now? 36. So that's pretty remarkable, isn't it? I mean, if you think about, well, how old were, because you're going to have to effort this, too, where we'll figure this out later. Our listeners will tell us about, like, when I think about Macro or I think about Jimmy Connors, I mean, how old, you know, were the oldest guys when they were winning the last Grand Slam titles?
JVL00:03:04So I don't know about that. What I can tell you is it is almost unheard of to win a bunch of Grand Slam titles because he's now won three in 13 months. It's hard to win bunches of them after the age of 27. He is long past the sell-by date.
Sonny00:03:22The only one I can remember doing that recently was Agassi, right? Didn't Agassi have, like, a late career comeback?
JVL00:03:29He did, but even his late career comeback was not like this. I mean, winning three slams in a year, in a calendar year is wild.
Vic00:03:35I remember worrying when they shaved his head that he would have no more powers.
JVL00:03:40The secret was, as we found out in his autobiography, that he was always like that, and he was wearing a wig.
Vic00:03:47Oh, you mean the sort of the metal, glam metal hair thing was— That was a wig. And it didn't come off while he was playing?
JVL00:03:55His first French Open final, which he lost to Andres Gomez in straight sets, which I remember as a child being crushed by, because I was an enormous Agassi fan. And I had been waiting for him to break in and get his first— I mean, I had the jean shorts that you played tennis in, the Agassi shirts, the whole rock and roll tennis thing. And I just thought, oh, well, he's going to win, because he's Andre Agassi. Playing this guy nobody's ever heard of, Andres Gomez, who is he? And he lost in straight sets. And he later wrote, the entire match, he felt the wig slipping, and he was afraid it was going to come off and that his whole image would then just blow up.
Vic00:04:40So do you think he threw the match because he was worried about the hair? If I had a choice of winning or the hair comes off, I'm going to lose. I'm going to lose and keep my hair on.
JVL00:04:47And you know what? Wow. Not wrong to his image at the time. It would have been worse for him to, which would have been worse? Losing to Andres Gomez or winning and having your hair come off? And the answer is winning and having your hair come off. Would have been much worse. I'm afraid to say I agree with that. Can you imagine Phil Knight's head exploding?
Sonny00:05:07No, I mean, there is no equivalent to anything like that ever happening in professional sports. I don't even know what the-
JVL00:05:16Richie Tenenbaum sitting down on the court and taking his shoes and socks off.
Sonny00:05:22What would you even have? Is there a baseball equivalent to this? I don't even know.
Vic00:05:28Only an acting equivalent, which would be like Burt Reynolds, which he's always maintained some piece of fake hair, Ted Danson. But Ted Danson finally made a joke about it at the end of Cheers. And of course, Frank Sinatra always had a piece.
Sonny00:05:40Like Muhammad Ali messing with Howard Cosell's hair? Oh, yes. I don't actually know what the equivalent-
JVL00:05:46Wardrobe malfunction would be the equivalent. It would be like-
Sonny00:05:50Yeah, but that was intentional.
JVL00:05:52Well, the Janet Jackson one was intentional, but this has happened. There's a famous YouTube clip of Idina Menzel. Have you seen this, Hannah? She's on stage doing a show, and her boob pops out of the dress, and she's in this very complicated dress. Oh, boy. And she goes, she's so charming. So she keeps singing while she looks off stage, and the assistant comes out and gets her re-situated at the end of the show. And after the song, she goes, the good thing is, there isn't an internet, so we won't all see that tomorrow.
Sonny00:06:28That's good for her.
Vic00:06:29Good for her. So, but these things happen. Well, I remember watching or following Andres Gomez, because I used to read all the old catalogs from the Volvo Masters games from the 80s. And we used to go there in Madison Square Garden, and I used to look at the guide. And he was always a regular. He'd been making the rounds with Guillermo Villas, yes, Jose Luis Clark. And finally, it was like, okay, he finally got his due. He retired right after that, too. And that's it, because there's that. It will not get any better. I could dine out on this for the rest of my life.
Sonny00:06:56He's not possibly going to win again. I would say, if we can bring it back to today, to Roger Federer.
JVL00:07:00Oh, you don't want to talk about 1990 tennis. Let's talk about. I want to talk about Yannick Noah.
Sonny00:07:04Let's talk about the 1990 French Open. I want to talk about Yannick Noah. I'm really excited that Roger Federer has finally cemented his place as the second greatest tennis player of all time, of course. To who? Well, after Serena Williams. Oh. I mean, Serena won, you know, 23 Grand Slams, all those doubles titles. She won. She won a major while she was pregnant. Roger Federer never did that.
JVL00:07:28I believe Roger Federer's never even been pregnant.
Sonny00:07:30She could definitely beat him in a head-to-head matchup. If we look at, if we look at, if we just look at all of the people who she is, she's the best in her, in the women's game. And the women's game is equivalent to the men's. They serve basically the same. They serve almost as hard as each other. They run about the same speed, you know.
JVL00:07:48Here is why I do not like this argument. Because Serena herself not only does not advance it, but in fact runs all the way in the other direction. She is not Michelle Wee saying, I just want to get on the tour and play with the men because I'm as good as them. Serena always says, I play women's tennis. It is a different sport than men's tennis. If I were to play somebody like Andy Murray, I would lose in about 15 minutes.
Sonny00:08:16She has internalized the oppression of the patriarchy, and as a result, she needs somebody to come up and explain to her, a man possibly, to explain to her why she would actually be much better at tennis than somebody like Roger Federer, who is very good for a man, but obviously is the second best player of all time.
JVL00:08:39I am not going to hold Serena Williams responsible for the sins of Nike and ESPN, because that's what that is. I mean, this is what we are reacting against. And Twitter. Nike and ESPN and Twitter. People on Twitter. Does Twitter actually say this?
Sonny00:08:56Oh, of course. Well, I mean, not Twitter corporate.
JVL00:08:59So back when Serena was in her heyday, she played a pro set against her practice partner, who's a guy who's like number 650 in the world, and he beat her 6-1 while smoking and drinking beer during the set. This is why I say it is not fair to Serena to, and I will go one better, that Serena and Venus, and I've written this. They have almost heroically resisted the tennis establishment's attempt to dragoon them into being race victims for their entire careers. The USDA and the tennis club world has wanted nothing more than for Venus and Serena to be oppressed, victimized African-American minority tennis players. And every single turn, they have said, pass, not interested. There is a famous interview. It was done January 20, 2008, at the Australian Open, where Venus played her match and then is, you know, doing her press conference that you have to do by rules afterwards. And a bunch of foreign reporters start asking her about, did she have a little bit of extra motivation because of what was happening that day? And she was like, I, you know, it's, I'm on Australia time. I don't even know what day it is, but like, well, you know, back home, she's like, what are you talking about? Like, well, the. The inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president. And she was like, I don't know. I didn't, you know, I don't vote. I'm a Jehovah's Witness. We stay out of politics. I hope that the best person was elected president and I support the American president. Is that OK? I mean. And the answer is no. No, but the answer was no. The answer was absolutely no.
Vic00:10:43What's wrong with you?
JVL00:10:43And then she finally had to say that she was like, you know, if you guys could ask me questions about tennis, I could answer those really well. How do you not know? I don't love Serena as a as an athlete and a player because I think she's sort of a bully and was in total opposition to Venus, who's like one of the sweetest people in the universe and is a class act and whose game I love. I actually think her game is awesome and beautiful to watch in ways that Serena's is not necessarily. But I respect Serena and Venus is not only as tennis players, but in the way that they have refused to play a part in this parade. And I think they deserve to be saluted for it.
Vic00:11:22At what point? At what point was the Williams sisters' father no longer there? Wasn't he their coach for a while and then stopped? Or did he stop a long time ago? A long time ago. He was just this presence.
JVL00:11:32Yeah. Yeah. I think when their parents got divorced, that was part of it. I mean, the thing I one of the many things I respect about them is they not only came from a tough environment in South Central Los Angeles, they came from a tough environment with some crazy parents. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:11:48Who's worse, do you think? Williams' father? Mary Pierce's father?
JVL00:11:52Well, Mary Pierce's father is worse, but I would say he's not all, does not seem all that dissimilar from like Stefano Capriotti.
Sonny00:12:01Andre Agassi's dad.
JVL00:12:02No, Andre Agassi's dad is Mary Pierce level bad.
Vic00:12:07Professional boxer, right? Wasn't he a Olympic boxer? Yeah, a boxer and a guy.
JVL00:12:09I mean, you know, like, Agassi doesn't like talk with his dad much anymore. I mean, it's like, it's a real, he's a bad guy. Yeah.
Sonny00:12:18Yeah.
JVL00:12:18But the French Open was awesome. And did you, did you see- Australian Open. The Australian Open. No, but the 91 French Open was really good. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it was fun.
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