Pair of aces

Neither Andre Agassi nor his wife, Steffi Graf, ever hit the “sweet spot” on a tennis racket more accurately than did Bill Dwyre in his piece last Sunday revealing Agassi’s charity efforts and magnet school.

It was the perfect portrayal of an athlete transformed from a tennis brat, with a “posse” before anyone knew what one was, to one of sports’, or life’s, truly beautiful people.

Bob Jackson

Simi Valley

I know it may not sound like enough, especially since Althea Gibson is dead and cannot read these words, but I honor Althea Gibson every day.

Even though I used to play tennis for five hours every day, I was never more than a B player. But, the graceful, gracious, humanistic and deterministic manner in which she achieved her successes was something I tried to emulate in another field, that of writing.

And although it may not sound modest, I’ve actually achieved quite a lot in the field of writing. That was not all due just to Althea Gibson, but it would not have happened without her being there as a role model.

It is sad that the U.S. Tennis Assn. is honoring Miss Gibson so late, perhaps too late. Still, I think that somewhere she knows that for me and so many other black women, she was right on time.

Skye Knight Dent

Los Angeles