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Open: An Autobiography Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 9, 2009
| Andre Agassi (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Agassi’s incredibly rigorous training begins when he is just a child. By the age of thirteen, he is banished to a Florida tennis camp that feels like a prison camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. He dyes his hair, pierces his ears, dresses like a punk rocker. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning-fast return.
And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world’s best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target.
Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals from several generations—Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer—Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals a shattering loss of confidence. And he recounts his spectacular resurrection, a comeback climaxing with his epic run at the 1999 French Open and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one.
In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf. Inspired by her quiet strength, he fights through crippling pain from a deteriorating spine to remain a dangerous opponent in the twenty-first and final year of his career. Entering his last tournament in 2006, he’s hailed for completing a stunning metamorphosis, from nonconformist to elder statesman, from dropout to education advocate. And still he’s not done. At a U.S. Open for the ages, he makes a courageous last stand, then delivers one of the most stirring farewells ever heard in a sporting arena.
With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, Open will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi’s game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed, and power.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateNovember 9, 2009
- Dimensions6.62 x 1.41 x 9.51 inches
- ISBN-100307268195
- ISBN-13978-0307268198
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Review
“Insightful [and] exceedingly well-written . . . [Open] has the cadence and plotting of a good novel . . . The raw energy and emotion throughout are pure Agassi.”
-Newsday Top 10 Books of 2009
“Surprisingly candid . . . The baseline bad boy serves up his harrowing anecdotes with the same force he put behind every on-court ace.”
-Entertainment Weekly 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2009
“Bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily, Agassi’s is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete.”
-The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009
“Andre Agassi’s memoir is just as entrancing as his tennis game . . . By sharing an unvarnished, at times inspiring story in an arresting, muscular style, Agassi may have just penned one of the best sports autobiographies of all time. Check—it’s one of the better memoirs out there, period.”
-Sean Gregory, Time
“Not just a first-rate sports memoir but a genuine bildungsroman, darkly funny yet also anguished and soulful. It confirms what Agassi’s admirers sensed from the outset, that this showboat . . . was not clamoring for attention but rather conducting a struggle to wrest some semblance of selfhood from the sport that threatened to devour him.”
-Sam Tanenhaus, The New York Times Book Review
“A remarkable and quite unexpected volume, one that sails well past its homiletic genre into the realm of literature, a memoir whose success clearly owes not a little to a reader’s surprise in discovering that a celebrity one may have presumed to know on the basis of that haircut and a few television commercials hawking cameras via the slogan ‘image is everything’ emerges as a man of parts—self-aware, black-humored, eloquent.”
-Michael Kimmelman, The New York Review of Books
“[A] heartfelt memoir . . . Agassi’s style is open, all right, and his book, like so many of his tennis games, is a clear winner.”
-O, The Oprah Magazine
“Open describes [Agassi’s] personal odyssey with brio and unvarnished candor . . . His career-comeback tale is inspiring but even more so is another Open storyline. It could be called: The punk grows up . . . Countless athletes start charitable foundations, but frequently the organizations are just tax shelters or PR stunts. For Mr. Agassi helping others has instead become his life’s calling . . . Open is a superb memoir, but it hardly closes the books on an extraordinary life.”
-Jay Winik, The Wall Street Journal
“It’s both astonishing and a pleasure to report that Andre Agassi . . . has produced an honest, substantive, insightful autobiography . . . The bulk of this extraordinary book vividly recounts a lost childhood, a Dickensian adolescence, and a chaotic struggle in adulthood to establish an identity . . . While not without excitement, Agassi’s comeback to No. 1 is less uplifting than his sheer survival, his emotional resilience, and his good humor in the face of the luckless cards he was often dealt.”
-Michael Mewshaw, Washington Post
“Honest in a way that such books seldom are . . . An uncommonly well-written sports memoir.”
-Charles McGrath, The New York Times
“Probably the most candid sports autobiography ever written . . . A remarkably real, tell-it-like-it-is, record-breaking read.”
-Nancy Isenberg, The [Baton Rouge] Advocate
“Agassi weaves a fascinating tale of professional tennis and personal adversity . . . His tale shows that success is measured both on and off the court.”
-Doree Shafrir, New York Post
“Refreshingly candid . . . This lively, revealing, and entertaining book is certain to roil the tennis world and make a big splash beyond.”
-Publishers Weekly
“Enigmatic tennis great Agassi lays it all on the line . . . Agassi’s photographic recall of pivotal matches evokes the raw intensity of watching them from the stands. Lovers of the sport will also appreciate this window into the mind of a champion . . . An ace of a tale about how one man found his game.”
-Kirkus
About the Author
From The Washington Post
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I open my eyes and don’t know where I am or who I am. Not all that unusual—I’ve spent half my life not knowing. Still, this feels different. This confusion is more frightening. More total.
I look up. I’m lying on the floor beside the bed. I remember now. I moved from the bed to the floor in the middle of the night. I do that most nights. Better for my back. Too many hours on a soft mattress causes agony. I count to three, then start the long, difficult process of standing. With a cough, a groan, I roll onto my side, then curl into the fetal position, then flip over onto my stomach. Now I wait, and wait, for the blood to start pumping.
I’m a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if ninety-six. After three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body, especially in the morning. Consequently my mind doesn’t feel like my mind. Upon opening my eyes I’m a stranger to myself, and while, again, this isn’t new, in the mornings it’s more pronounced. I run quickly through the basic facts. My name is Andre Agassi. My wife’s name is Stefanie Graf. We have two children, a son and daughter, five and three. We live in Las Vegas, Nevada, but currently reside in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City, because I’m playing in the 2006 U.S. Open. My last U.S. Open. In fact my last tournament ever. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.
As this last piece of identity falls into place, I slide to my knees and in a whisper I say: Please let this be over.
Then: I’m not ready for it to be over.
Now, from the next room, I hear Stefanie and the children. They’re eating breakfast, talking, laughing. My overwhelming desire to see and touch them, plus a powerful craving for caffeine, gives me the inspiration I need to hoist myself up, to go vertical. Hate brings me to my knees, love gets me on my feet.
I glance at the bedside clock. Seven thirty. Stefanie let me sleep in. The fatigue of these final days has been severe. Apart from the physical strain, there is the exhausting torrent of emotions set loose by my pending retirement. Now, rising from the center of the fatigue comes the first wave of pain. I grab my back. It grabs me. I feel as if someone snuck in during the night and attached one of those anti-theft steering wheel locks to my spine. How can I play in the U.S. Open with the Club on my spine? Will the last match of my career be a forfeit?
I was born with spondylolisthesis, meaning a bottom vertebra that parted from the other vertebrae, struck out on its own, rebelled. (It’s the main reason for my pigeon-toed walk.) With this one vertebra out of sync, there’s less room for the nerves inside the column of my spine, and with the slightest movement the nerves feel that much more crowded. Throw in two herniated discs and a bone that won’t stop growing in a futile effort to protect the damaged area, and those nerves start to feel downright claustrophobic. When the nerves protest their cramped quarters, when they send out distress signals, a pain runs up and down my leg that makes me suck in my breath and speak in tongues. At such moments the only relief is to lie down and wait. Sometimes, however, the moment arrives in the middle of a match. Then the only remedy is to alter my game—swing differently, run differently, do everything differently. That’s when my muscles spasm. Everyone avoids change; muscles can’t abide it. Told to change, my muscles join the spinal rebellion, and soon my whole body is at war with itself.
Gil, my trainer, my friend, my surrogate father, explains it this way: Your body is saying it doesn’t want to do this anymore.
My body has been saying that for a long time, I tell Gil. Almost as long as I’ve been saying it.
Since January, however, my body has been shouting it. My body doesn’t want to retire—my body has already retired. My body has moved to Florida and bought a condo and white Sansabelts. So I’ve been negotiating with my body, asking it to come out of retirement for a few hours here, a few hours there. Much of this negotiation revolves around a cortisone shot that temporarily dulls the pain. Before the shot works, however, it causes its own torments.
I got one yesterday, so I could play tonight. It was the third shot this year, the thirteenth of my career, and by far the most alarming. The doctor, not my regular doctor, told me brusquely to assume the position. I stretched out on his table, face down, and his nurse yanked down my shorts. The doctor said he needed to get his seven-inch needle as close to the inflamed nerves as possible. But he couldn’t enter directly, because my herniated discs and bone spur were blocking the path. His attempts to circumvent them, to break the Club, sent me through the roof. First he inserted the needle. Then he positioned a big machine over my back to see how close the needle was to the nerves. He needed to get that needle almost flush against the nerves, he said, without actually touching. If it were to touch the nerves, even if it were to only nick the nerves, the pain would ruin me for the tournament. It could also be life- changing. In and out and around, he maneuvered the needle, until my eyes filled with water.
Finally he hit the spot. Bull’s- eye, he said.
In went the cortisone. The burning sensation made me bite my lip. Then came the pressure. I felt infused, embalmed. The tiny space in my spine where the nerves are housed began to feel vacuum packed. The pressure built until I thought my back would burst.
Pressure is how you know everything’s working, the doctor said.
Words to live by, Doc.
Soon the pain felt wonderful, almost sweet, because it was the kind that you can tell precedes relief. But maybe all pain is like that.
MY FAMILY IS GROWING LOUDER. I limp out to the living room of our suite. My son, Jaden, and my daughter, Jaz, see me and scream. Daddy, Daddy! They jump up and down and want to leap on me. I stop and brace myself, stand before them like a mime imitating a tree in winter. They stop just before leaping, because they know Daddy is delicate these days, Daddy will shatter if they touch him too hard. I pat their faces and kiss their cheeks and join them at the breakfast table.
Jaden asks if today is the day.
Yes.
You’re playing?
Yes.
And then after today are you retire?
A new word he and his younger sister have learned. Retired. When they say it, they always leave off the last letter. For them it’s retire, forever ongoing, permanently in the present tense. Maybe they know something I don’t.
Not if I win, son. If I win tonight, I keep playing.
But if you lose— we can have a dog?
To the children, retire equals puppy. Stefanie and I have promised them that when I stop training, when we stop traveling the world, we can buy a puppy. Maybe we’ll name him Cortisone.
Yes, buddy, when I lose, we will buy a dog.
He smiles. He hopes Daddy loses, hopes Daddy experiences the disappointment that surpasses all others. He doesn’t understand— and how will I ever be able to explain it to him?—the pain of losing, the pain of playing. It’s taken me nearly thirty years to understand it myself, to solve the calculus of my own psyche.
I ask Jaden what he’s doing today.
Going to see the bones.
I look at Stefanie. She reminds me she’s taking them to the Museum of Natural History. Dinosaurs. I think of my twisted vertebrae. I think of my skeleton on display at the museum with all the other dinosaurs. Tennis-aurus Rex.
Jaz interrupts my thoughts. She hands me her muffin. She needs me to pick out the blueberries before she eats it. Our morning ritual. Each blueberry must be surgically removed, which requires precision, concentration. Stick the knife in, move it around, get it right up to the blueberry without touching. I focus on her muffin and it’s a relief to think about something other than tennis. But as I hand her the muffin, I can’t pretend that it doesn’t feel like a tennis ball, which makes the muscles in my back twitch with anticipation. The time is drawing near.
AFTER BREAKFAST, after Stefanie and the kids have kissed me goodbye and run off to the museum, I sit quietly at the table, looking around the suite. It’s like every hotel suite I’ve ever had, only more so. Clean, chic, comfortable— it’s the Four Seasons, so it’s lovely, but it’s still just another version of what I call Not Home. The non-place we exist as athletes. I close my eyes, try to think about tonight, but my mind drifts backward. My mind these days has a natural backspin. Given half a chance it wants
to return to the beginning, because I’m so close to the end. But I can’t let it. Not yet. I can’t afford to dwell too long on the past. I get up and walk around the table, test my balance. When I feel fairly steady I walk gingerly to the shower.
Under the hot water I groan and scream. I bend slowly, touch my quads, start to come alive. My muscles loosen. My skin sings. My pores fly open. Warm blood goes sluicing through my veins. I feel something begin to stir. Life. Hope. The last drops of youth. Still, I make no sudden movements. I don’t want to do anything to startle my spine. I let my spine sleep in.
Standing at the bathroom mirror, toweling off, I stare at my face. Red eyes, gray stubble— a face totally different from the one with which I started. But also different from the one I saw last year in this same mirror. Whoever I might be, I’m not the boy who started this odyssey, and I’m not even the man who announced three months ago that the odyssey was coming to an end. I’m like a tennis racket on which I’ve replaced the grip four times and the strings seven times— is it accurate to call it the same racket? Somewhere in those eyes, however, I can still vaguely see the boy who didn’t want to play tennis in the first place, the boy who wanted to quit, the boy who did quit many times. I see that golden- haired boy who hated tennis, and I wonder how he would view this bald man, who still hates tennis and yet still plays. Would he be shocked? Amused? Proud? The question makes me weary, lethargic, and it’s only noon.
Please let this be over.
I’m not ready for it to be over.
The finish line at the end of a career is no different from the finish line at the end of a match. The objective is to get within reach of that finish line, because then it gives off a magnetic force. When you’re close, you can feel that force pulling you, and you can use that force to get across. But just before you come within range, or just after, you feel another force, equally strong, pushing you away. It’s inexplicable, mystical, these twin forces, these contradictory energies, but they both exist. I know, because I’ve spent much of my life seeking the one, fighting the other, and sometimes I’ve been stuck, suspended, bounced like a tennis ball
between the two.
Tonight: I remind myself that it will require iron discipline to cope with these forces, and whatever else comes my way. Back pain, bad shots, foul weather, self- loathing. It’s a form of worry, this reminder, but also a meditation. One thing I’ve learned in twenty-nine years of playing tennis: Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.
I lie on the bed with a glass of water and read. When my eyes get tired I click on the TV. Tonight, Round Two of the U.S. Open! Will this be Andre Agassi’s farewell? My face flashes on the screen. A different face than the one in the mirror. My game face. I study this new reflection of me in the distorted mirror that is TV and my anxiety rises another click or two.
Was that the final commercial? The final time CBS will ever promote one of my matches?
I can’t escape the feeling that I’m about to die.
It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.
But if tennis is life, then what follows tennis must be the unknowable void. The thought makes me cold.
Stefanie bursts through the door with the kids. They flop on the bed, and my son asks how I’m feeling.
Fine, fine. How were the bones?
Fun!
Stefanie gives them sandwiches and juice and hustles them out the door again.
They have a playdate, she says.
Don’t we all.
Now I can take a nap. At thirty- six, the only way I can play a late match, which could go past midnight, is if I get a nap beforehand. Also, now that I know roughly who I am, I want to close my eyes and hide from it. When I open my eyes, one hour has passed. I say aloud, It’s time. No more hiding. I step into the shower again, but this shower is different from the morning shower. The afternoon shower is always longer—twenty-two minutes, give or take— and it’s not for waking up or getting
clean. The afternoon shower is for encouraging myself, coaching myself.
Tennis is the sport in which you talk to yourself. No athletes talk to themselves like tennis players. Pitchers, golfers, goalkeepers, they mutter to themselves, of course, but tennis players talk to themselves—and answer. In the heat of a match, tennis players look like lunatics in a public square, ranting and swearing and conducting Lincoln-Douglas debates with their alter egos. Why? Because tennis is so damned lonely. Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players—and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer’s opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face- to- face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They’re inches away. In tennis you’re on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement, which inevitably leads to self- talk, and for me the self-talk starts here in the afternoon shower. This is when I begin to say things to myself, crazy things, over and over, until I believe them. For instance, that a quasi-cripple can compete at the U.S. Open. That a thirty-six-year-old man can beat an opponent just entering his prime. I’ve won 869 matches in my career, fifth on the all-time list, and many were won during the afternoon shower.
With the water roaring in my ears— a sound not unlike twenty thousand fans—I recall particular wins. Not wins the fans would remember, but wins that still wake me at night. Squillari in Paris. Blake in New York. Pete in Australia. Then I recall a few losses. I shake my head at the disappointments. I tell myself that tonight will be an exam for which I’ve been studying twenty-nine years. Whatever happens tonight, I’ve already been through it at least once before. If it’s a physical test, if it’s mental, it’s nothing new.
Please let this be over.
I don’t want it to be over.
I start to cry. I lean against the wall of the shower and let go.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf; Illustrated edition (November 9, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307268195
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307268198
- Item Weight : 1.52 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.62 x 1.41 x 9.51 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #38,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Soccer Biographies (Books)
- #15 in Golf Biographies (Books)
- #1,054 in Memoirs (Books)
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About the author

Andre Agassi played tennis professionally from 1986 to 2006, winning over $30-million in prize money. Often ranked #1 in the world, he won eight Grand Slam singles tournaments and an Olympic gold medal. He is only one of five men to have won all four Grand Slam singles titles and the only man in history to have won GS titles on all three playing surfaces (hardcourt, grass, and clay). He also won the Tennis Masters Cup and was part of a winning Davis Cup team. He is the founder of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, which has raised over $60 million and opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a K-12 charter school for some of the underprivileged children of Las Vegas. He lives in that city with his wife, Steffi Graf, and his two children.
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Like I'm sure most of the people who read this book, I was struck by Agassi's central point--he hates tennis. He played tennis because his dad wanted him to play tennis. He became a champion because his dad wanted him to be a champion. He obtained a number one ranking because his team told him that was a good goal. Indeed, the only tennis-related goal that Andre seemed to have was winning the French Open after winning the other three slams, and he pursued that with a vengeance.
That doesn't mean Andre didn't hate to lose, or that he wasn't great at tennis through at least the sheer amount he practiced and played, or that he didn't appreciate the money and celebrity that his tennis success brought. But fundamentally, the person everyone thought Andre was--a dedicated tennis champion pursuing his dream--was bogus. And he spent much of his life rebelling against that image, even though nobody realized it at the time.
Fast forward to Tiger. Tiger's goal according to the media is to win 19 majors and pass Jack Nicklaus on the all-time list. And I'm sure he does want to accomplish that at this point. But think about it in light of Agassi's revelations. When was that goal set? Everyone talks about Tiger having a poster of Jack on his wall from a very young age. Does it really make any sense that Tiger at the age of 4 or 5 knew he wanted to pass Jack Nicklaus? Or was it his dad's goal for him? We know from the reports that Tiger's dad had Tiger practicing from an incredibly early age. He would yell at him while Tiger hit shots to try to make him mentally tough. Does that sound any different than Andre's father?
I remember an anecdote that Tiger told once to get a laugh. He was in his second U.S. Amateur and staging a furious comeback against his opponent. Off the tee on 15 or 16, he bombed a 300 yard drive, which landed less than a foot off the fairway. As they marched up to it, Tiger's dad yelled, "that doesn't count as a fairway hit." It was funny because it seems ridiculous that someone would care about Tiger missing the fairway by a foot after hitting a near-perfect drive and staging an incredible comeback. But what if Tiger's dad wasn't joking. What if he was dead serious, and that's the way it was for Tiger--nothing was ever good enough? As I read Agassi's book, I was reminded of that story when Andre talked about his dad getting upset when he would miss a ball from the ball machine that hit another ball and took a funny bounce. It seemed ridiculous to get upset about something that would never happen in a match, but it was dead serious to Agassi's dad, and therefore it was one more thing for Agassi to fear and to think about.
It's not that Tiger's dad didn't turn Tiger into a great player. It's not that Tiger's dad didn't make him exceptionally mentally tough. It's not like Tiger's dad didn't give him a goal to try to achieve. But isn't that exactly what Andre said his dad did for him?
The point is that if Tiger's pursuit of 19 majors is his dad's goal, then does it make a little more sense that at some point Tiger would try to rebel, to do something that was just for himself--i.e., all these affairs? Especially after his dad died in 2006, which is when the affairs really seemed to take off?
Because Tiger's problem right now is that the goals he's pursuing are career goals--and it's going to take playing at the top of his game for a few years before he gets there. So, he's not getting the rush of winning individual tournaments, and he can't just buckle down and live the dream through for a short period of time until it's done. If he's living his dad's dream--and really doesn't care that much for golf--then his life isn't giving him the joy that we all would assume it does. And if he feels like a fraud--because it doesn't bring him that joy, and maybe marriage initially was the same way--then why not just indulge and do what you want because you're a "fraud" anyway?
Agassi's book was phenomenal because it shattered a perception we had of a professional athlete. We assumed he loved what he did, both because he had to in order to be great, and because he was getting to be essentially a rock star playing to thousands of adoring fans every match. But what Andre said was no, he did it because other people thought it was important, and by the time he realized it, he felt like there wasn't anything else he could be doing with his life. He was happiest after he met Stephanie, while playing with his kids, and while working with his school.
What if Tiger's the same way? What if he's great because it's what he's always done, but he doesn't love it. What if Tiger secretly has just wanted to hang out with people and maybe hook up--a typical mindset for many, many people his age. But he feels like he couldn't because he has an obligation to pursue this goal. And what if the wins and the championships don't give him much of a rush anymore, because he still has a ways to go to achieve the career goals set in front of him?
Then doesn't it make sense that Tiger might just have decided to indulge himself, that me might have justified to himself that it was okay to betray his wife because his entire life is a fraud anyway? My wife mentioned that she never say Tiger happier then when he was playing with the kids at the school he set up--just like Agassi said in his book. Maybe that's the one time we've gotten to see him doing something that he really wants to be doing.
I raise this not to justify Tiger's actions, but to understand them. After all, we all assume that Tiger is single-mindedly focused on his dream--winning 19 majors and passing Jack--which is why all these affairs seems like such a shock and contrary to our image of him. But what if it's our image of him that is flawed, that he's playing golf because what else is he going to do at this point, and he feels like his life is a fraud. Well, then, he sounds a lot like Agassi sounded about himself, and maybe he'll be happy--like Agassi--only when he wraps up and decides that he's going to live his life the way he wants to--even if's not all that different than the lives that you and I lead every day.
I have no idea if any of this is correct. But we assume that people who are incredibly successful must be happy and must be doing what they love. Agassi proved that was wrong, at least for him. Maybe it's wrong for Tiger as well.
In any event, a great book, and I highly recommend it.
Agassi's autobiography is more like a novel. You read it and think it would make a phenomenal movie, the way it starts at the very end and then flashbacks to the beginning. You can't just read about the revelations in some online review and think you've gotten everything out of this book. This is a book that needs to be read front to back. It's superbly written -- not by Agassi himself, as he never had the education to pull that off, but he did spend thousands of hours on it and as a longtime fan I know that this is his authentic voice. In a recent interview, Andre expanded on why he and Pete Sampras were opposites by saying that when they saw each other in October 2009, Andre realized that Sampras had also just released an autobiography and tried to start a conversation by mentioning how he was so glad how his turned out, and how many thousands of hours of sweat and tears he put into it. He said that Sampras just looked at him like he was crazy. Sampras felt that an autobiography was just an encyclopedic sort of thing, not a cathartic baring of the soul. When you compare their books, it shows.
Another thing that separates this book is Agassi's remarkable memory. Agassi has always been known as one of the best analysts of the sport, and has always astounded the press with his point-by-point recollection of matches that had taken place decades before. After I play a recreational tennis match, I can barely remember the points I just played. You could ask Agassi about a point he played in 1988 and he'd be able to tell you what was going through his head, how fast the serve came at him, the sequence of shots, what someone in the crowd shouted out, what the temperature was, the humidity, the wind speed. He mentions in the book how he seems to notice the most trivial things, and once he notices them they forever stay in his mind. I'm sure if his memory was somehow measured, it would be found to be in the very upper tier in the populace. This combined with his deep, empathetic ability to notice and understand human behavior creates a truly astounding read. It is rare to find an athlete as intelligent as Agassi, and if his father hadn't been so anti-education, I believe he could have had a brilliant academic career and flourished in some intellectual field. Perhaps psychology. Sports psychology would have been an easy fit, certainly!
You don't have to be a tennis fan to enjoy this book, although you will certainly get a little bit more out of it. Similarly, a sports fan will be able to get more of it than someone who doesn't care much for any sport. However, there is not a person out there who could not gain something from reading this book. This is not simply a tennis story, or a sports story. This is a human story.
In regards to the crystal meth revelation, I will say this in his defense:
1. Testing positive for a recreational drug (crystal meth is a recreational, performance inhibiting drug, NOT a performance enhancer) in 1997, the year that he started and stopped taking the drug, had the penalty of a 3 month suspension. 3 months. That's like a nice little vacation to get rested and refreshed for the rest of the season.
2. In 1997, Agassi won nothing. He was losing in the first round of every tournament. He was playing challenger events, the minor leagues of tennis, and even losing in those. It is true that he won a few matches, and he did have a surprising run at the US Open when everyone thought he was going to quit tennis any minute. This was not fair to the players he beat - he should have been suspended at the time. However, when you really think about it, it just speaks to his talent that at his absolute lowest, when he was quite literally disabled physically, when he went out in front of that New York crowd and felt the magic and realized that he wanted to win, he was still able to muster up the game to beat world class players. At the end of the day, the only person hurt by his drug use was himself. Andre has said in recent interviews that he would happily have 1997 thrown out of his career. Have all of his results from that year blacked out. It makes absolutely no difference to the total number of titles and championships he won.
3. For the past decade, Agassi has been the most admirable person to ever come out tennis. What he's given back is remarkable. What he's done for the sport is unmatched. Tennis is an unpopular sport in the United States, but people would always tune in for Agassi, and this book is selling like hot cakes. People love Agassi, and for good reason.
This doesn't justify him lying to the ATP, but we need to keep this in perspective. It's important to understand that this doesn't diminish his legacy in the slightest. He is still one of the best tennis players of all time -- and as you'll see in this book, he may have achieved twice as much if he hadn't stumbled and fallen and beaten himself for so much of his life. He hated tennis, he admits it. His father, a man who would make Joe Jackson quiver with fear, thrust him into it as a toddler. He makes a strong argument for why it is the loneliest sport in the world, the sport most likely to produce insanity in its players. On the other hand, look at what it gave him. He loved holding up trophies and gold medals. He would never have met Stefanie without it. There was a duality to his life that I'm sure we can all relate to in some way.
Top reviews from other countries
I love watching a tennis player whose game flows and who plays with flair and instinctive inspirational genius when he or she is on form, more than those power house machines who play with cool calculation. Agassi was such a player and on form there was no one who could touch him.
The book was as good as his tennis.
I absorbed the tension and suspense of each match he described as if I was there, even the ones I watched at the time.
I don’t know if you’d like this if you don’t like tennis but it’s probably one of the best autobiographies by a tennis player, or by any sportsperson I’ve read.
I had a vague interest in Andre Agassi. What I got was an open athlete who has told his life as it was. I found a man baring his soul and his life. I found one of the most open, honest biographies I have ever read.
What I also found is one of the best biographies I have ever read. It grabbed me and did not let me go again until the final page and then some internet researches in wikipedia. I am very happy that he is still married to Steffi Graf and seems to be a happy man while I am, unknown to him, writing these lines. I really wish him all the best. This because I really feel I know this man now although we have never met and we have never exhanged letters. And that is all the hallmarks of a brilliant biography.
This books is among the five best biographies I have ever read. And I have read a looooot of biographies. Too many.















