Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

Aside from my Mom and I buying cheap tennis racquets and trying to play a bit of tennis at the PV park one summer break when I was a high school student, I have no experience of tennis apart from as a spectator (we decided racquetball was more our thing since once could actually hit it as hard as possible without worrying about those pesky lines as much). I do, however, remember watching the Slams and really enjoying it.

Still, I wouldn't have read Andre Agassi's new book had a good friend (and tennis player and enthusiast) not told me how amazing this book was, how riveting it was; a dramatic memoir full of failure, self-sabotage, huge highs (literally and figuratively) and massive lows. So I got it at the next opportunity and am so glad I did.

The book grabbed me in its first few sentences of the most intense prologue as he recounted his battle, both mental, emotional and physical to play his last Slam against giant Bogdanovic in the 2006 US Open. From that amazing start, we next meet a 7 year old Andre as he faces The Dragon, a killer ball-spouting machine his overbearing and raging father had constructed. Andre, who is admittedly slightly OCD, calculated he must have returned 1,000,000 balls a year that The Dragon exploded upon him. "Hit harder!"

I won't recount a summary of the book, there's just too much to talk about! Here are a few thoughts on some the many things that stand out for me: 

Growing up
He talks about his childhood in very clear and often painful detail, where I could feel tension emanating from the descriptions of his father and the life he led as a slave to tennis (and his father). His unbending and angry father dedicated everything he and Andre had to making Andre the best tennis player possible and we learn he had done the same thing with some of Andre's older siblings but had broken each of them so Andre was his "last chance".

People
I was touched by his longstanding and meaningful relationships which include his kind and soulful brother, Philly, his best friend from school, crafty Perry, mentor PJ and most importantly maybe his trainer and surrogate father Gill. Andre was a wounded a soul but he had the benefit of people he could trust 100% to keep him going.

 Trainer, sometimes bodyguard, mentor and surrogate father Gill and Andre's wife, tennis legend Steffi Graff.

Fears
I appreciated his honesty about his fear of losing his hair, that how he, like his brother, were balding prematurely.  Thus, the big hair including blond highlights and mullet were actually his way of hiding the hair piece he was wearing by the time he was 16. He incorporated a head band into his look to help keep it in place during matches. I loved the "head-shaving" ceremony he talks about when his then wife, Brooke Shields, invited his close friends over and he had a "coming out" party once he had let go of all the hair and just went bald.

Steffi
This man LOVES his wife Stephanie (she actually doesn't refer to herself as Steffi, so neither does he). She's his very favorite person in the world and it's adorable to hear his recounting of trying to court her (she did not make that easy!)

Openness
Andre's story does have an arc, and an arc of discovering who he really is. He spent his whole life (not just his childhood but adulthood) being someone other than himself. He sabotaged himself during matches, maintained he HATED tennis for decades. He let others define him (fans, sportswriters, corporate sponsors, Brook Shields) and he doesn't lay blame with anyone other than himself. It took a long time for him to start to realize he could be his authentic self and it might just be ok.

My only quibble was a repeated grammatical "error", though I presume the editor of the book also has vast knowledge of English grammar so would disagree with me. The book is full of sentences like: He was so much taller than I. C'mon, "than I?" Really? It must be in the book at least a dozen times and every time I wanted to say "than ME, than ME, Andre!!" and then have a little lesson with the Editor about subject and object pronouns. When your only criticism about a book is a grammatical anomaly, that means it's worth reading, don't you think?

To read an excerpt from the prologue, click HERE.

I think...even if you're not an avid tennis fan, this book is an excellent read which is just so human. His story is an example of life and told in a very engaging way. 

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