Andre bestows gifts, possibly without fully intending to, and the haircut was one of his gifts to me.
When you're with Andre, you're in a serene place that is not precisely part of this world. In part, it's because he travels in that protected universe of the famous, in our reality but not at all of it. But, more than that, Andre is surrounded by his people, people he loves and who are empowered and actualized by his love and who exude the same serenity that Andre does. But that's not exactly it, either. Andre believes and Andre's belief creates a sense of mission in the people he gathers around him. For most of his public life and for most of his athletic career, the belief and the sense of mission created a self-sustaining force—a force that abetted his natural gifts and allowed him, for example, to become one of only four men to win all four Grand Slams.
That force gets breached on occasion. Brooke caused a breach that sent him tumbling into the minor leagues of professional tennis. But that was a long time ago and he recovered so completely and became even more focused on his sport and on his good works that we nearly forget that period of his history. I was not calm as Andre prepared to cut off all my hair, as he offered me one of his T-shirts (so I wouldn't have itchy hairs stuck in my own shirt) and draped a bath towel over my shoulders, but his resolve and his confidence reassured me. "I can tell you're stressing a little," he said, "so I'm going to start on the part you can't see."
As the Oster clipper with the No. 2 blade did its work, Andre made small approving noises. Small consoling and encouraging noises. He was quick and sure and when he finished and turned me to the mirror what I looked at first was not my own smooth, round head, but Andre's beaming face. "Dude," he said, "you look at least 33 percent better!"
There are people who can heal with a touch, cure with a hug. The gift Andre gives is belief. He offers the surety that things will go well, that success is just a matter of reaching out and accepting it. The Andre Agassi Preparatory Academy is one majestic outgrowth of that belief and my head was and is a small, shiny example of the faith and force that is Andre.
David Granger is the editor of Esquire.