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Monday November 2, 2009

Agassi admits ‘lion mane’ was a wig

LONDON: Former tennis star Andre Agassi has admitted the lion mane-style hairstyle he sported during the 1990s was actually a wig, in extracts from his autobiography published in British newspapers on Saturday.

Agassi said he wore a hairpiece held together with pins in his first Grand Slam final, the 1990 French Open final, and blamed his concerns that it would fall apart for losing the match to Andres Gomez.

Before the match he prayed “not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off“, he writes in “Open“.

Vanishing act: A combo image of Andre Agassi at the French Open finals on June 9, 1991 and four years later during a third-round match on June 2, 1995 in Paris. — AFP

In previous excerpts, Agassi admitted he had used the drug crystal methamphetamine in 1997.

He said he started to wear a wig to disguise hair loss.

“Every morning I would get up and find another piece of my identity on the pillow, in the wash basin, down the plughole,” he wrote.

“I asked myself: you want to wear a toupee? On the tennis court? I answered myself; what else could I do?“

But 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.

It was actress Brooke Shields, who he married, who persuaded him to cut off all his remaining hair.

“She said I should shave my head,” he said. “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.”

But after taking the plunge, “a stranger stood before me in the mirror and smiled,” Agassi said. — AFP

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