SEPT 25 - 27, 2026 | LONDON
Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah found a simple but effective way to connect with their players in their first year at the helm. Instead of doing all the talking, they listened.
Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah were, as Londoners say, like chalk and cheese. They couldn’t have had less in common.
The French-born Noah spent much of his childhood in his father’s homeland of Cameroon. There wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity in the Central African nation of six million, then in its early days of independence. That is, until Arthur Ashe spotted an 11-year-old Noah during a goodwill tour in the capital city of Yaoundé.
Ashe, who made history at the dawn of the Open Era as the first Black man to capture a major singles title at Forest Hills, was a bigger-than-life presence. Noah, earnestly swinging a homemade wooden racquet at a local tennis clinic, was barely five feet tall and not yet 100 pounds, the youngest of the bunch. But he showed something. Ashe took notice of that promise, presenting him with his signature AMF Head Arthur Ashe Competition frame.
The gift cost more than Yannick’s father, Zacharie, a former professional footballer, made in a month.
A world away, not far from the blinding neon luminescence of the Las Vegas Strip, the son of a casino greeter had just come into this world, seemingly born for the sport and all the trappings that came with it. In his celebrated autobiography “Open”, Agassi recounts how his father, Mike, dangled tennis balls over his crib. He was hitting with Jimmy Connors at age 4; shipped off to the Bollettieri Academy at 13; still shy of 20, leather-clad and perched atop a motorcycle Brando-style in a splashy Canon campaign: IMAGE IS EVERYTHING.
There was one commonality. Both were destined for Grand Slam glory. In 1983, the dreadlocked Noah employed a sky-walking athleticism previously unseen on a tennis court to overwhelm defending champion Mats Wilander at Roland Garros, 6-2, 7-5, 7-6(3), the first Frenchman to win the title in 37 years. (He remains the last of his countrymen to do so.) As L’Equipe informed its readers the following morning, UNE ÉTOILE EST NÉE! (A STAR IS BORN!)
Agassi’s star, too, shone bright from the very moment he turned pro in 1986, a platinum-mulleted rabble-rouser who would take the baseline game to new heights. He was a much-needed shot in the arm for the fast-fading ‘70s/’80s Tennis Boom, acid-washed jorts and fluorescent-pink spandex superseding all-tennis-whites and Stan Smiths. He would go on to collect 60 tour-level singles titles, including eight Grand Slams and an Olympic gold medal, pushed all along by archrival Pete Sampras. Agassi, the first man to complete the Career Grand Slam across three different surfaces, occupied the No. 1 world ranking for 101 weeks. Sadly, of his 1,144 career singles matches, only two came against Noah. (They split the head-to-head.)
“One of the great regrets in my career was not being more overlapped with this man’s career,” said Agassi last year, nodding in Noah’s direction. “He was just one of the great players, the great characters on the court, and one of the great people off the court.”
Despite their poles-apart origin stories, it somehow made sense that these two International Tennis Hall of Famers should come together in San Francisco in 2025, tapped to take over for Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe as Laver Cup captains. After all, each had spent their post-playing careers as leaders, as unifiers: Noah as a stadium-filling, charity-minded pop icon who, when he wasn’t out on tour, was busy captaining France in other international team competitions; Agassi as an education-first philanthropist who would champion the tuition-free charter school he launched for at-risk kids in 2001, the same year he married 22-time Grand Slam champion Steffi Graf.
Both Agassi and Noah embraced the on-the-job training in their first foray into this one-of-a-kind global competition, which sees the points, and therefore the stakes, increase by the day. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some unease.
“Coaching is about what you hear, not what you say. Learning who they are as people and players in real time is the challenge.” — Andre Agassi
“I was the captain, but I was also a rookie,” said Noah, whose Team Europe roster was headed by world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz. “It’s an honor to come after Bjorn, but it’s hard — those are big shoes to fill.”
“I didn’t know what to expect going in,” said Agassi, who had previously only dabbled in coaching as a de facto advisor to Novak Djokovic, Grigor Dimitrov and Holger Rune. “There’s so much that goes on behind the scenes to bring this event to life. I knew what I’d get from the boys from a playing perspective, but you don’t want to just parachute into their lives. I was really looking forward to seeing them in battle, finding ways for them to get the most out of themselves.”
It’s a juggling act, really, starting with the team selection process. While the top three members of each six-man roster automatically receive an invitation based on their ATP rankings, the rest are chosen at the captains’ discretion, including up to two alternates. Then there are the daily lineup cards to consider. Knowing that each player must compete in at least one singles match over the first two days, that no player can play singles more than twice, and that at least four of the six players must play doubles, the captains can’t take these decisions lightly. And with the points ramping up by the day — wins are worth one point on Friday, two points on Saturday, and three points on Sunday — strategy is paramount to success, as is how effectively the captains can both tune into and motivate their players.
“In some respects, it’s a little harder watching than playing,” asserted Agassi, now 56. “You always have things to focus on when you play — the perception of control. In this case, I’ve just got to try to rally the guys’ spirit, try to rally their energy, their focus, and try to be ready for a high level of engagement. Coaching is about what you hear, not what you say. Learning who they are as people and players in real time is the challenge.”
“You have to listen to who they are, especially now that they come from all these different places in the world. Then you can actually help them,” echoed Noah, 10 years Agassi’s senior. “But these guys are the ones who are going to have to do it between the lines.”
While Friday’s matchups are determined by a blind draw, it’s the host team’s prerogative to submit its lineup card first on either Saturday or Sunday. In turn, the opposition has 30 minutes to counter. The captains must consider the risks of showing their hand first.
“You have to listen to who they are, especially now that they come from all these different places in the world. Then you can actually help them. But these guys are the ones who are going to have to do it between the lines.” — Yannick Noah
An iconoclast and master strategist in his playing days, Agassi was thinking outside the box from the start in San Francisco. With Team World facing a 1-3 deficit after Day 1, he and his vice-captain, onetime on-court nemesis Patrick Rafter, the two-time US Open titlist and former No. 1, took many by surprise when they opted to submit first on Day 2.
“We were concerned about how we were going to get to a stage on Day 3 where we would be competitive,” recalled Rafter. “We thought that by stacking our team on Day 2, we could do that.”
Observed Agassi: “It’s basically a team telling you, ‘This is who we think can beat everybody.’”
If things didn’t go according to plan, five-time champion Team Europe, led by Noah and his vice-captain, the four-time Wimbledon semifinalist Tim Henman, would be in the driver’s seat come the all-important Day 3. But the gamble paid off. Saturday saw Team World sweep the proceedings, winning all four matches between singles and doubles, the most pivotal result being native Californian Taylor Fritz’s stunning 6-3, 6-2 upset of Alcaraz. Agassi & Co. took a 9-3 lead into Sunday, needing just four points to clinch.
One of the weekend’s most compelling scenes came late Saturday night when, away from the signature black Laver Cup court, 16,560 fans having long filed out, Noah and his troops gathered around the captain’s table in the depths of the Chase Center to hash out the following day’s lineup. Who would they call upon to recapture the lost momentum? And how would Team World counter? It was the game within the game.
“It was a democracy,” said Noah, a subdued, spiritual contrast to Agassi’s courtside freneticism. “We talked with the players. Everybody had to say how they felt, where they were physically and mentally. I felt that if we were performing at 100 percent, we were going to win the whole thing, regardless of who was in front of us.”
The war-room powwow nearly did the trick. Team Europe hung tough the following afternoon, Alcaraz and Casper Ruud topping the duo of Alex Michelsen and Reilly Opelka on the doubles court, and Alcaraz defeating Francisco Cerundolo in singles. However, Alex de Minaur held his ground against Jakub Mensik and, with the outcome hanging in the balance, the homegrown hero Fritz came through once again. He would edge Alexander Zverev in a 6-3, 7-6(4) thriller to seal the festivities, 15-9, and give Team World its third Laver Cup title in four years.
The exultant debutant Agassi, a lifetime of highlights to draw upon, called it “one of the most memorable weeks I’ve ever spent on a tennis court.”
As the Laver Cup returns to London’s O2 Arena for the first time since 2022, Noah and host Team Europe will surely be seeking some revenge; Agassi and Team World, a repeat. Each captain will have a new challenge before them, a new lineup with which to coalesce. You can bet they’ll be listening closely. •
