Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal's tennis careers coincided briefly. The tennis players, who share a 16-year age gap, met only twice in their careers, with both playing in the same tennis rounds for a short period of 5 years. This week, a video of Agassi discussing the moment he first met Nadal, and how he knew instantly that he wouldn't be able to defeat him.
The clip was shared on the Instagram account Olly Tennis and shows Agassi discussing the first time he noticed Nadal's character and strong will."You want me to tell you when I knew I would never beat him?" said Agassi.
"I was at the French Open. I don't know what year it was, but it was one of the years where I said I shouldn't come back to this tournament anymore because I have no chance."
"And here's this 17-year-old kid," he said, referencing Nadal.
"And you remember those lockers where they used to click them? I prided myself on how hard I worked. I was the last one leaving the job, so to speak. Except this kid comes in later than me, and we're the only ones in the locker room."
When Agassi knew Nadal was something special
Agassi shared that he could see Nadal through the lockers, and he was struggling to open the lock. With mounting frustration, Nadal hit the locker. "I'm not kidding, God as my witness. He hits the locker. And then, he like, shakes it off. And I'm going, 'Is this kid serious?'"
Ultimately, Nadal managed to open the locker. "And he opens it and he goes 'Vamooooooos,'" said Agassi, throwing a fist in the air, as Nadal has done many times throughout his career, celebrating tennis points and games.
"He was like in a war with the locker and he was gonna win it. And he won it. And I was like, 'I can't beat this guy. That's too good.'" The pair met twice in their careers, with Nadal defeating him on both occasions.
Agassi took to the comments section to reiterate the truthfulness of this moment. "True story," he wrote.