The Gospel Coalition

I didn’t much care for tennis until I met a girl who was a member of a tennis club. Suddenly, at seventeen, I found myself drawn to the sport and was soon taking lessons (with her!) and learning to enjoy the game. She and I played until we got married and have only rarely been out on the courts since. But along the way I began to enjoy watching the professionals play. That was during Andre Agassi’s heyday and it was always fun to watch him, especially when he played his friend and arch-rival Pete Sampras. Though Sampras will go down in history as one of the game’s all-time greats, it was Agassi who was the fan favorite. His flair, his personality, his style–somehow they made him larger than life.

Agassi played until 2006 and, in life after tennis, began to write his memoirs. Released just weeks ago, Open is a look at the life of one of tennis’ most interesting figures. Like so many sports superstars, Agassi was pushed into the game by his parents and had nothing like a normal childhood. From the time he was able to walk (and even before) he was being trained as a tennis star. When he was just a child he would have to spend hour after hour, day-after-day on the courts, relentlessly pushed further and higher by his father. Already as a child he learned to hate tennis even while dedicating his life to it. At just thirteen he was sent across the country to a tennis camp which was more of a boot camp than a training academy. He rebelled, he dropped out of school, but still he learned to play the game. Over the course of his storied career he won eight Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal. He took in $30 million in tour earnings and over $25 million per year in endorsement deals. He left the game rich and famous.

In Open Agassi presents himself as a reluctant celebrity, a hesitant hero. He did not seek fame but had it thrust upon him by others. He learned quickly that this fame would demand of him a brutal toll. By thirty-six he was physically destroyed, having to sleep nights on the floor and having to spend hours working on his body just to be able to stand. His career had wrecked his body and taken the first thirty-six years of his life.

Agassi shows that fame is fleeting and that it does not deliver what it promises. “I understand that there’s a tax on everything in America. Now I discover that this is the tax on success in sports–fifteen seconds of time for every fan. I can accept this, intellectually. I just wish it didn’t mean the loss of privacy with my girl.  … Fame is a force. It’s unstoppable. You shut your windows to fame and it slides under the door. I turn around one day and discover that I have dozens of famous friends, and I don’t know how I met half of them.” The same is true of victory; he pursues it relentlessly at times, yet is so often disappointed. At one point he says, “A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.”

Agassi writes well–very well, even (or, more likely, his co-author/ghost writer does). He has chosen to write this book in the present tense–rather an unusual decision but one that works very well, especially when describing the long and grueling tennis matches. There is an urgency and pain that is communicated so well in the present tense but that might be lacking if it was written in the past. Agassi shows a sly and subtle but terrific sense of humor. His mockery of Michael Chang is friendly, I’m sure, but funny. His description of the first meeting between his father and Steffi Graff’s father is downright hilarious.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Agassi’s continual insistence that he hates tennis, that he despises the game and all that it has demanded of him and taken from him. He hates tennis. Yet whenever he tells anybody this they smile and say, “No you don’t.” No one is able to understand that he hates the very game he has given his life to. He is a prisoner of tennis and a slave to it. This theme carries wonderfully to the final page of the book where it receives a satisfying resolution during an at-first-friendly-then-competitive game with his wife.

If you know Agassi, you will not be surprised to learn that there is a fair amount of cussing in the book. His mouth often got him into trouble during his career and there seems to be little change here. He also spends too much time complaining about Brooke Shields to whom he was married for a short while. I always hate to hear a man complain about his wife, whether they are still married or not, and Agassi gives far too much ink to describing his apathy toward her and the ways in which she bothered him. These are unnecessary details that ought to have been left in the past.

All-in-all Open is a fantastic book and one of the most enjoyable biographies I’ve read in recent days. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a sports star whose upbringing seems oh-so-typical. Badgered by a domineering father, forced into a sport he learned to hate (precisely because he was forced into it), having to trade a normal life for it, seeing that it brought him little true happiness, Agassi’s life ought to stand as a warning to the multitudes of parents out there who impose their dreams of superstardom upon their children.