Agassi’s tale of setbacks, victories

By Charles Zhu

Tennis hero Andre Agassi thrilled fans with his ace serves and power-charged hits that brought new life to the game. The former world’s best professional American tennis player was an icon of physique and discipline. But his story was never told.

His first biography reveals the seamy side of the game’s realities in Open: An Autobiography (386pp, Alfred A. Knopf, $28.95). Behind the family pleasure and travels was family violence, threats and emotional and psychological damage.

Agassi is honest in recalling his shattered childhood, a Dickensian adolescence and his adulthood struggle with alcohol and drugs. His famous matches brought him both the joy of victory and the pain and anxiety of defeat.

Born in Las Vegas to a tyrannical Iranian immigrant, Agassi was forced into the sport at an early age. His father, a former Olympic boxing hopeful, wanted to build a family fortune by making tennis stars of his four children.

As a boy, Andre was asked to hit balls on the backyard court for hours every day. His father, a family terror with indomitable will, barred him from school, friends and play. His sisters were determined to leave the sport and his elder brother had no talent: Andre was his father’s only hope.

His father pitted him at age 8 against football great Jim Brown, who bet $500 he could beat the boy: he lost.

Agassi went to Australia at age 12 with a young American team. For each tournament he won, he was rewarded with a beer. When he was in the seventh grade he was transferred to the Bollettieri Academy in Florida, “Lord of the Flies with forehands” in Agassi’s words, where he went through formal, regular tennis training and immensely improved his skills. However, he became wildd led an untamed life. He began to drink hard liquor and smoke dope. Like a hipster, he put on an earring and eyeliner and sported a mohawk.

In retrospect, Agassi said the academy’s owner Nick Bollettieri has no aptitude or experience and oes not know how to cope with children in training. As all tennis players used to do, he dropped out of school in ninth grade and turned pro at 16.

Despite his professed love of the game, Agassi laments that he hated tennis from the start – that he hates it still – and that he lacked both option and talent to pursue another career.

Agassi won eight Grand Slam titles, an Olympic gold medal in the men’s singles and tens of millions of dolars. But off the court he had no idea who he was. He found himself being defined by brokers, agents and sports writers with only a passing interest in him.

He felt lonely and depressed, and turned to drinking a lot, just as he’d been doing since adolescence. He pursued the actress Brooke Shields who was shallow, materialistic and dense, and who had no interest in his career. The marriage was doomed.

Soon he got lost. He admitted that he began snorting crystal meth in 1997, the worst year of his career. People wonder whether the drug ruined his game or was it in fact what allowed him to come back when his ranking fell out of the top 100. Regardless, the Association of Tennis Professionals ultimately accepted his bogus claim that he accidentally drank a spiked soda.

Agassi has shown emotional tenacity and iron will. He retired from professional tennis on September 3, 2006, after losing in the third round of the US Open. He married fellow tennis player Steffi Graf, started a charity for the education of poor children and refused to ask his kids to play tennis.

“I see everything with bright, starting clarity – every setback, victory, rivalry, tantrum, paycheck, girlfriend, betrayal, reporter, wife, child, outfit, fan letter, grudge match and crying jag,” he said.