By Howard Fendrich
November 10th 2009 @ 2:25am
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Agassi’s book reveals lies he can’t live with
Andre Agassi says his book is part of his atonement for saying and doing things he now wishes he hadn’t. It turns out Andre Agassi was lying throughout his career.
To fans. To opponents. To tennis authorities. To first wife Brooke Shields. To friends, including Barbra Streisand. To the media. And, he says, to himself.
“I can’t live with that anymore,” Agassi said in a telephone interview with The AP.
“These lies – some of them came, certainly, out of fear. A lot of them came out of real confusion. A lot of it was thinking out loud. A lot of it was just getting stuff wrong. And a lot of it started with lies to myself,” Agassi said. “When I retired from tennis, I had the opportunity, the time, the energy, to turn a real hard lens on myself.”
His book “Open,” in stores on Monday, allows Agassi to unburden himself of secrets he’s carried for years. Secrets about using crystal meth, about evading punishment for a failed drug test, about wearing a hairpiece, about what he calls a long-standing hatred of tennis.
Agassi described the memoir, crafted by Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer from recordings of the eight-time Grand Slam champion’s taped recollections, as part of his “atonement for where I’ve been in my life.”
As he retraces that life in present tense, Agassi sets out to explain himself and describe his journey from ninth-grade dropout to founder of a prep school in Las Vegas. He writes about his courtship of tennis star Steffi Graf, now his wife and the mother of their two children.
Along the way, he offers critical words for rivals such as Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Boris Becker; discusses “tanking” matches; and poignantly describes his childhood fear of his father.
Agassi recounts how, when he was a kid, his father would give him Excedrin before matches because it contained caffeine. Once, Agassi writes, his father gave him what Agassi believes to be speed. He also writes at various points about using marijuana and alcohol.
Speaking to the AP, Agassi called crystal meth “a performance inhibitor” and said, “Everything I earned on the tennis court, I actually had to probably earn more than I needed to, because of many of the things I did to myself.”
Asked whether he ever took performance-enhancing substances as a professional, Agassi – who retired in 2006 – replied, with a light chuckle, “No. No. The answer is ‘No.”‘
He is not surprised by the negative reactions to some of the book’s revelations. Martina Navratilova, for example, likened Agassi to baseball’s Roger Clemens; Roger Federer referred to material in the book as “a bit of a pity.”
Agassi understands such responses because, “You’ve got to remember: I spent many years angry and disappointed at myself.”
He said he simply felt compelled to confess to using crystal meth “a lot” in 1997, failing a doping test that year, lying to the men’s tennis tour about how the drug entered his system and avoiding punishment.
“How can you tell people to not hide from truth when you hide from it?” Agassi said in the interview. “While I know this story cuts against the grain of one’s perceptions of me, it is the true me. And I believe in that authenticity.”
He added: “I have no regrets about what’s in there.”
There are plenty of fascinating passages, aside from the “sensationalised” excerpts sold to magazines and newspapers as part of the publicity push.
He hopes people will read the entire book so they can appreciate what he called its “power.”
“It’s about me learning how to commit fully, despite the fear of failure,” he said. “It’s a person waking up in a life that they didn’t choose, in a life that they maybe don’t want, and not being sure how to take ownership of their own life, and figuring that out.”
The book also is about tennis:
On Sampras: Agassi says Sampras “sounds more robotic than” a parrot. At his depths, Agassi thinks: “I envy Pete’s dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.”
Agassi tells of betting coach Brad Gilbert about how much Sampras tipped a parking valet; they ask the valet, who says $1; Agassi’s conclusion: “We could not be more different, Pete and I.”
On Chang: “He thanks God – credits God – for the win, which offends me. That God should take sides in a tennis match, that God should side against me, that God should be in Chang’s box, feels ludicrous and insulting. I beat Chang and savor every blasphemous stroke.”
When Chang wins the 1989 French Open, Agassi thinks, “I feel sickened. How could Chang, of all people, have won a slam before me?”
On other opponents: Agassi writes about holding grudges against Becker (who Agassi says blew kisses at Shields during a match), Jim Courier, Thomas Muster, Yevgeni Kafelnikov, Jeff Tarango (who Agassi says cheated during a match between them when Agassi was 8).
On “tanking”: Agassi says he lost on purpose against Chang in the Australian Open semifinals one year so he wouldn’t have to face Becker in the final, writing: “It’s almost harder than winning. You have to lose in such a way that the crowd can’t tell.” He also says of sports writers: “They never get it right. When I tank, they say I’m not good enough; when I’m not good enough, they say I tank.”
On his fake hair: Of the 1990 French Open final, Agassi writes, “Warming up before the match, I pray. Not for a win, but for my hairpiece to stay on.”
On the 1999 French Open final, which he won to complete a career Grand Slam: “I’ve already obsessed about this tournament for the last 10 years. I can’t bear the idea of obsessing about it for another eighty.
“If I don’t win this thing right now, I’ll never be happy, truly happy, again.”
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Mushi said | November 11th 2009 @ 12:45pm | Report comment
If he was truly apologetic he would have come out with it when he had something to lose not simply when it could be deployed as just more leverage for the personal gain of a hollow soulless man.
Ben said | November 26th 2009 @ 1:42pm | Report comment
What we need is more people saying the right thing! Andre was an amazing player, one of the greats. He now has a bestseller. People seem to like the guy. Why? Because he’s a real person. Faults and all. Good for him to have an opinion. So he took crystal meth, who cares? There are lots of people taking drugs who have not been able to turn it around – why do they take drugs in the first place? As Andre says – to escape. Why do people want to escape?
Go read the book. And learn something.