Andre Agassi was thought to be a punk– all you had to do was look at his hair, outfits, and jewelry. But the truth of the matter is that he was really trying to rebel against the situation he was put in. Forced to play tennis as a youngster by his father, Agassi never really chose to be a tennis player.
“The net is the biggest enemy, but thinking is the cardinal sin. Thinking, my father believes, is the source of all bad things, because thinking is the opposite of doing. When my father catches me thinking, daydreaming, on the tennis court, he reacts as if he caught me taking money from his wallet. I often think about how I can stop thinking. I wonder if my father yells at me to stop thinking because he knows I’m a thinker by nature. Or, with all his yelling, has he turned me into a thinker? Is my thinking about things other than tennis an act of defiance?
I like to think so.”
I had heard prior to reading the book (as many others had) that he discloses his crystal meth use in the late 90s, and that he wore a headpiece. Shocking, not really. Dissapointing, yes. What I found to be shocking was his revelation about his feelings on the game of tennis: he views it as a neccessary evil because as a teenager, who had dropped out of school, it was his only real skill to earn a living.
Many passages are quite profound (as evidenced above). He skillfully conveys the contradictions that go on in an athlete’s head– especially an athlete in “the lonliest sport.” He delves respectively into his marriage to Brooke Shields, his “passionate friendship” with Barbra Streisand, and ultimate courtship and marriage to Steffi Graf.
An excellent autobiograhpy, by a boy who grew up to become a classy and generous man.
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Tags: Athletes, Biography/Autobiography, Tennis
