When Andre Agassi played professional tennis, he didn't dare do anything that might get him injured.

"I wasn't allowed to go off a diving board," he says.

Since retiring in 2006, Agassi, 37, has become a risk-taker: He snowboards. He wears a helmet but refuses forearm guards, which are de rigueur in a sport notorious for broken wrists.

"He got bitten hard," his wife, Steffi Graf, 38, says of Agassi's obsession. Graf, who won 22 Grand Slam singles championships, prefers skiing. They play almost no tennis.

Agassi and Graf are taking even bigger chances with their money. A few years ago, they visited western Idaho, a hinterland of cattle and sagebrush, looking for a place to spend time with their son, Jaden, 5, and daughter, Jaz, 3.

The couple, whose career tennis winnings alone exceeded $50 million, not counting lucrative endorsements, bought a house at a new ski resort called Tamarack in Long Valley. For decades, it was a secluded playground for the gentry in Boise, 100 miles (161 kilometers) downriver. Idahoans came to fish and boat on Big Payette Lake, below mountain ridges that hold snow long into summer.

Now, Agassi and Graf plan to build a Fairmont hotel there. If all goes as planned, it'll be the first Fairmont in the world with a rock-climbing wall and a machine that simulates kayaking. There will be a bowling alley, too.

The place will be a condominium hotel, meaning that people will buy the rooms, use them when they want and let the hotel rent them when they're not. Selling the 224 rooms and 69 penthouses — plus 50 private homes on the mountain — will bring in $600 million for Agassi Graf Development LLC and its partner, Bayview Financial LP in Coral Gables, Florida.

SECOND CAREERS

The Fairmont Tamarack is part of a hyper-active second career in real estate and hospitality for Agassi and Graf. Among their other projects: a luxury vacation development in Costa Rica with Exclusive Resorts LLC, a string of restaurants with San Francisco chef Michael Mina and a joint venture with high-end furniture maker Kreiss Enterprises.

In their spare time, Agassi and Graf both run foundations. Agassi's opened a kindergarten-12th grade public charter school in 2001 in a rough part of Las Vegas, where he grew up. Singer Elton John is on the board. Graf's provides psychological help to children who've been the victims of war and exile.

To hear Agassi and Graf tell it, all their business ventures came about by chance. They liked Idaho and decided to build. Agassi and Steve Case, co-founder of America Online Inc. and owner of Exclusive Resorts, had too much in common not to do something together. Agassi and Graf always liked Kreiss furniture and often asked for tweaks to pieces they bought, so they did their own line. "It's been a pretty organic process," Agassi says.

NO COWBOY DECOR

Agassi and Graf are hoping to lure buyers with their taste. They'll decorate and furnish all of the rooms, and they've built a model one-bedroom suite at Tamarack to show off their decor. The couch is made of woven leather. Fabrics and carpets run to muted greens and grays. Chocolate-brown trim lines the doors and ceilings. Countertops are gray concrete.

It's a far cry from the barn wood and cowboy prints that clutter so many ski condos.

Graf says the model approximates how the rooms will appear, except the drapes and the artwork. "That's temporary," she says.

Picking Tamarack for their first development is a risk for Agassi and Graf. The 3-year-old resort is north of Boise on a two-lane road that can be treacherous in winter. The airport in nearby McCall can take private jets but has no commercial service. Plans are under way to expand the airport.

Nonetheless, Tamarack is aiming for the affluent. It may be the only place in North America where you can buy a $148 bottle of 1998 Dom Perignon and a $24 cigar out of a tent. Many of the buildings at Tamarack are "contemporary domes" — Tamarackese for temporary structures made of aluminum poles and high-tech canvas. One houses the ski school, another the gourmet deli.

CASH-CRUNCH RUMORS

The resort made headlines in Boise in June when it said it planned to slow spending on a $91 million condominium project at the base village while it reviewed expenses. Around the same time, Tamarack said it had fired 11 workers out of about 375, fueling rumors of a cash crunch. The Idaho Statesman ran a story on the front page on June 22 headlined "Tamarack Denies Money Woes."

Spokesman Scott Turlington says Tamarack has plenty of cash. "The rumor mill got completely out of control," he says. Construction had been going six days a week, sometimes seven. "We thought we should slow down a bit and make sure we're within our budget."

As a new resort, Tamarack operates at a loss, sustaining operations with real estate sales. It posted revenue from golf, skiing, lodging and its restaurants of $13.5 million in the year ended on April 30 compared with property sales of $76.3 million.

To survive after the real estate is gone, Tamarack must make money from operations. That could be tough, because this year it limited the number of skiers to 2,000 per day and plans only modest increases in the future.

VIEWS AND SKI SLOPES

In exchange for building a five-star hotel in the middle of nowhere, Agassi and Graf got dibs on what may be the best piece of property in the whole resort — a hillock on the golf course with views of Lake Cascade to the east and the ski slopes to the west. If the artist's renditions are any guide, the eight-story Fairmont will tower over the rest of Tamarack like a cruise ship over a fishing village.

So far, it looks like Agassi and Graf may have hit another winner. They sold their first batch of units in March. Buyers snapped up all 125 in seven hours, stumping up a total of $140 million. Among them: Matt Leinart, quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals football franchise, and José Cruz Jr. of the San Diego Padres baseball team.

One thing Agassi and Graf say they love about Tamarack is that the slopes are uncrowded. Sometimes, Agassi snowboards all the way to the bottom of a hill and no one passes him. "In Europe, the danger is other people," Graf says.

As they near middle age, Agassi and Graf are more willing to take chances — with their money and their limbs. If they wanted to play it safe, they could stay in tennis as coaches or commentators. Tamarack, site of their biggest post-tennis project, has yet to build a single court.