Want to raise a racquet at the club or municipal courts this year with the ultimate Wimbledon collectible?
Get a high-tech edition of the Donnay Pro One OS that propelled Andre Agassi to his first major, 25 years ago this month -- the 1992 Wimbledon.
BREAKING NEWS!
1. Hello and congrats to Thomas DAmore of New Hampshire, the first of our daily winners (8 in all) of the Donnay Pro One OS. "Most likely this will be a gift for my wife who wants a larger hitting area," he says. We also nominate Thomas for the good spouse award. Enjoy Wimbledon, Thomas, and for everybody else, keep those entries coming. We're giving away one a day throughout Wimbledon that ends Sunday.
2. Congrats to Suzanne Hamby of Amarillo, winner of our second of 8 prizes of the Donnay OS. It will be her fourth Donnay frame, "truly a server's racquet." Her first was "three years ago when I was having arm problems." Look here for tomorrow's winner and keep those entries coming.
3. Another day, another sweepstakes winner: Hans Gebbens of Michigan is our latest daily winner. Hans really has a grip on his game -- a big 5 1/4-inch tennis grip puts him in Ivo Karlevic country.
4. Semi-final chance to enter our sweeps: Wimbledon is in the semis which means just four more days to enter, just like Indiana’s Wesley Albright did. He's today's winner and his OS will be his fourth Donnay. “I was drawn to your brand by the superior comfort and now I never worry about my arm,” says this former tennis elbow sufferer. Now he plays three-hour marathon sessions, reaching a personal best of 1,050 balls hit last Sunday.
5. As we enter the final weekend of Wimbledon, here's today's 5th winner in our sweeps -- Tona Sanders of Redding, CA. "Awesome," she said when she was told the news. "The mid version ofthe Donnay Pro One was the reacquet I used when I started to play tennis in the early 1990s."
6. Bad day today for Venus, but not for Dianne Tanselli of Philomath, OR. She's our sixth winner of the Donnay Pro One OS sweeps giveaway. Says Dianne: "If you were close, I'd bake you cookies."
You still have until midnight Sunday night to still enter our Pro One OS Silver anniversary edition sweeps.
(1) Enter our SWEEPSTAKES for a chance to win one of eight of Silver Anniversary Donnay Pro One OS’s we’re giving away, or:
(2) Buy any 2017 Pentacore model during the same period and you’ll receive the Pro One OS FREE with our compliments. (The Pentacores will be immeidately delivered to you; expect delivery of the OS this October.)
The OS Silver Anniversary model matches the specs of the original model that took Wimbledon by storm a quarter of a century ago. Same mauve-and-gray paint job. Same 107-square-inch head size. Same 18-millimeter beam.
But this is not just a collectible to hang in the study. It's a thoroughly modern “playable” racquet that far exceeds the technology in the original Pro One OS. That's because, like all our current models, It is filled with Donnay’s patented Xenecore foam throughout the frame that blocks out shock & vibration and adds unprecedented performance versus our competitors' conventional hollow frames.
FLASHBACK: HERE'S HOW THE DONNAY PRO ONE OS DID IT
Believe it or not, it’s been 25 years this month that Andre Agassi won his first (and only) Wimbledon championship. "The kid who looked like he watched too much MTV" (according to the British tabloids) was seeded 12th and was expected to be elminated early. But beneath his flashy image-is-everything attitude and multi-colored lion’s-mane streaming out of the back of his cap, beat the heart of a real-deal champion. He also wielded an equally stunning mauve-and-gray colored Donnay Pro One OS when tennis racquet graphics were about as exciting as watching their paint dry.
Agassi came into the tournament with only one hour of grass court prep after arriving at the All-England Club. Making things even seem more improbable, it was the serve-and-volley era (think Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker) and Andre operated mostly fro the baseline.
He lost the first set of the opening round to the Russian Andrei Chesnokov, but then swept the next three in a match that stretched over two days. In the quarterfinals, he faced three-time Wimbledon winner Becker and prevailed, 4-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.
His next round was against his boyhood idol -- John McEnroe, who had given Andre some tips before the tournament. Agassi obviously listened because he routed his hero in the semis, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3.
In the final, he faced the hard-serving Goran Ivanisevic. It wasn’t until Andre found himself ahead 5-4 in the deciding fifth set with a match point service breaker, that he thought, "Jeez, I’m one swing of the racquet away from winning Wimbledon.”
Ivanisevic’s second serve was to Agassi’s backhand. He grunted, hit a big swing and Ivanisevic failed to volley it back. Game. Set. Match. And a legacy had begun.
He then dropped to his knees, holding the Donnay to the sky with a look of joy and disbelief.
The rest, as they say, became both tennis and pop culture history.
George Vescey, the excellent sports columnist at The New York Times had recognized Agassi's potential back in 1990. “Agassi has the aura of the alien, something like killer bees or television weathermen or the Pan Am building that is just not going to go away,” he wrote.
Well, the killer bee epidemic went away and weather-men have largely been replaced by weather-women and apps. And what about the PanAm building in Manhattn? It became the MetLife building a year after the Pan American World Airways company collapsed in 1991.
But Andre Agassi? He not only propelled himself through the 90s but was still winning Grand Slams until he retired in 2006 (8 in all) to raise a family with wife Steffi Graf. He since has thrown himself into his charity work as fiercely as he hit that two-handed backhand passing shot as a player.
And just to show that the great ones never go away, this year at Wimbledon you'll see him coaching former World #1 Novak Djokovic.