A brief break in the action during Friday\u2019s Wimbledon semifinal between Carlos Alcaraz and Taylor Fritz brought a difference of opinion on what the talking point should be. Andre Agassi, serving as a color analyst for the BBC, wanted to talk about the match. Andrew Castle, his broadcast partner, wanted to talk about the Royal Box at Wimbledon\u2019s Centre Court.<\/p>\n
Agassi did little to hide his frustration.<\/p>\n
It started innocently enough. Castle observed the Royal Box, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s a lovely Royal Box there today. And this is obviously a great ticket for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if I can just make one comment here, that\u2019s short of a prediction,\u201d Agassi said. \u201cWe saw Taylor go to another level of risk with his serve, which dropped his percentage, but then paid off for him. We saw him go to another level of risk with the backhand pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seeing that Castle had a point to make, Agassi ceded the floor to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I was just gonna say, that\u2019s Elaine Paige,\u201d Castle said. \u201cShe\u2019s a musical theatre star. But she\u2019s also president of the Dan Maskell Tennis Trust. They support disabled tennis very much.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Agassi remarked that he \u201ccan\u2019t keep up,\u201d Castle, who\u2019s had<\/a> some problems stargazing<\/a> at Wimbledon, continued.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s test,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is Andre Agassi, and this is \u2018Guess the Royal Box Member.\u2019 Let\u2019s go and find someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t torture me,\u201d a frustrated Agassi replied. \u201cLet me finish my point. So he\u2019s gone up on his wrist on his first serve, Taylor. He\u2019s gone up on his wrist on the pace of his rally shots. He\u2019s letting his forehand fire at will. So he has chosen his sort of, you know, poison pill. \u2018This is how I have to play if I\u2019m gonna win.\u2019 The question is, how long can you really do it? And this is where I really believe in tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n While this exchange was going on, BBC viewers saw occasional shots of the court. For the most part, though, they saw the people in the Royal Box that Castle was talking about. So, immediately after Agassi made his point about Fritz\u2019s approach, Castle abruptly turned his attention back to the Royal Box.<\/p>\n \u201cOK, that\u2019s great,\u201d Castle said in reply to Agassi. \u201cWell, that was Nick Clegg, our former Deputy Prime Minister.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople watching are watching for tennis,\u201d Agassi said. \u201cNot for this.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s tough not to side with Agassi here.<\/p>\n Make no mistake, the camera\u2019s consistent focus on the Royal Box was probably a cue to Castle that that\u2019s where his bosses wanted the attention to be. Assuming that\u2019s true, he was a rock in a hard place. But regardless of whether that\u2019s true, it doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense to bring in Agassi, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, for commentary if his focus isn\u2019t supposed to be on the tennis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brief break in the action during Friday\u2019s Wimbledon semifinal between Carlos Alcaraz and Taylor Fritz brought a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[38012,100611,192,79,1068,16,15,88279],"class_list":{"0":"post-263208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andre-agassi","9":"tag-andrew-castle","10":"tag-bbc","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wimbledon-2025"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114849467867142629","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}