Judging by Andre Agassi's performance in the Italian Open last week, when he won the tennis tournament for the first time at the grand old age of 32, he's getting plenty of ball practice in between making bottles for seven-month-old Jaden Gil, whose mother is former women's number one Steffi Graf.

Agassi is the latest sports hero to celebrate the nurturing qualities of fatherhood in an ad he and Graf have made for a mobile phone company. The ad features video clips of Andre and Steffi as child tennis prodigies, then as adults celebrating their greatest triumphs.

Next we see a business-suited Graf in the back of a limo phoning home across time-zones to make sure "everyone's okay". The following frame shows Agassi, who has been warming a bottle at the kitchen sink, confidently reassuring her that father and son are just settling down "for a bite".

The ad challenges the "traditional" mould of families - where Mom minds the children and Dad earns the money. It's not-so-subtle message is that the new model for parenting is more like a game of mixed doubles, requiring teamwork from Mom and Dad.

A baby in arms is great for a man's image these days. What's more unusual is to see a female sports star presented as a positive parenting role model. She is taking a risk by exposing herself as a mother who travels to the other side of the world for work and is happy to leave her baby in the care of his father. Not everyone approves of mothers who leave seven-month-old babies in the care of somebody else - even the father - for longer than a working day.

Just how much hands-on parenting Agassi and Graf actually do on their $23 million San Francisco estate is anybody's guess. They can afford the best executive nannies money can buy. Whatever the reality, the image they are projecting is a healthy one.