Andre Agassi's autobiography "Open"

[Vamos Rafa Nadal]

I had read Pete Sampras's autobiography a few weeks ago and this past week I read Andre Agassi's "Open". I found it incredibly sad ): He exposes the dark underside to starting kids at such a young age towards a career in tennis. He claims throughout the book that he hated tennis and always hated tennis. He loved to win but he never loved the sport. He felt forced to be a tennis player by his over-bearing abusive father.

I must say he comes across throughout the book as an incredibly selfish and dishonest person. Getting away with lying about taking drugs. Trashing his opponents. Mistreating his girlfriends.

He found happiness with Steffi Graf I guess.

The book is at it's most interesting when he details his thought processes during his matches. No wonder he lost so much of the time! It's such an interesting contrast to Pete's book and Pete's thinking, which is why Pete won more often.

I will be reading Billie Jean King's new autobiography next.

 

[GameSetR]

Agassi was a clown. Obviously, a great talent and a great player, but such a fabricated, dislikable personality. It was always a pleasure watching the nice and humble Pistol Pete dismantle him time after time.

 

[R. Schweikart]

Agassi was a clown. Obviously, a great talent and a great player, but such a fabricated, dislikable personality. It was always a pleasure watching the nice and humble Pistol Pete dismantle him time after time.

Since Steffi married him he must be quite likable.

 

[bjsnider]

Let me offer an alternative interpretation of the 'trashing his opponents' complaint. Klaus Kinski wrote a book some time before he croaked. The book was, in part, a vicious, almost comically over-the-top attack on his frequent collaborator Werner Herzog. A short passage is reprinted in Ebert's Book of Film.

Later, after Kinski had been dead for a number of years, Herzog made a documentary about him called "My Best Fiend", in which Herzog reveals he and Kinski used a thesaurus and guffawed their way through the process of writing the anti-Herzog parts.

It's just something in book publishing, you can't release a book like Sampras' or Michael Jordan's, in which you talk about how much you enjoy afternoon tea. No one cares. That snooze-fest won't sell books.

I think Agassi's statements about Sampras, and his other contemporaries, and tennis in general is just part of a calculated attempt to sell books. You can also include cynically revealing the drug use in that fold. Agassi didn't own up to it while he was on the tour, and could be punished. He waited until he could use the information to sell more books. Let's not forget severely and thoroughly trashing Brooke Shields and Nick Bolletieri.

On the other hand, I do not expect Agassi, or anyone, to be a paragon of moral virtue, and I still watch his old matches on Youtube for the fun of it.