Agassi described his memoir, “Open” a compelling read crafted by Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer from tape 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—and without quotation marks, because “this is reconstructed dialogue,” as he put it—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, 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 who refused to read the book.
Agassi recounts how, 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, “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.”
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 “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.”
There are plenty of fascinating passages, aside from the excerpts sold to magazines and newspapers as part of the publicity push to help sell books. Agassi used the word “sensationalized” repeatedly during the 20-minute interview to describe those excerpts.
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.”
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