Agassi says wig cost him French Open win

Tennis legend Andre Agassi has admitted he wore a blond mullet wig during the 1990s because he didn't want people to know he was going bald.

The grand slam winner wore a toupee for much of his early career, successfully deceiving the audience into believing the long, flowing locks were his, he writes in a soon-to-be-published autobiography.

Agassi discusses in his upcoming book how distressed he felt to be going bald: "Every morning I would find another piece of my identity on the pillow, in the wash basin, down the plughole."

"I asked myself: you want to wear a toupee? On the tennis court? I answered myself: what else could I do?" he writes.

The deception came to a head in the 1990 French Open final, when his toupee fell apart the night before the match, forcing him to play with the wig clamped down with hair clips.

"During the warm-up training before play I prayed," he wrote. "Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off."

Agassi would go on to lose the match to Ecuadoran Andres Gomez.

He decided to ditch the toupee and shave his head at the insistence of his then-wife Brooke Shields in the late '90s.