The story eventually cheers as Agassi becomes an adult and plays as a professional. He finds his self worth and begins to gather an entourage who help him with training, finances, public relations, and just dealing with his emotions. He was still a wild child and shows up at tournaments in denim shorts and mohawk haircuts. News reporters jeer him for a advertising slogan ("Image is Everything") that follows him even though it was none of his doing.
The young years are rough, and a nasty rivalry develops between Agassi and Bernard Becker (this becomes almost humorous as the book continues), but there's a turning point that happens when Agassi faces down his public self and turns inward. There are things that go horribly wrong, such as his marriage to Brooke Shields, and things that are quite brilliant, such as his re-dedication to training with his no-nonsense trainer. The book never makes clear why Agassi could have played it so wrong by falling for Shields, who had no interest in his life as a tennis player at all. He even writes that she liked it when he lost a tournament because then he was around the house, paying attention to her!
But in the areas where he digs in and grows up, he sheds the need to please people like his father and the long-disappeared Bollettieri. He begins to work hard on his charity for underprivileged children, because in a way he's working on the child he was, underprivileged and unschooled in Las Vegas: a child who needed love and received very little. Because he worked so hard on the inner Andre, his tennis improved, and he attracted fans like never before.
Then he chased after and won the heart of Steffi (properly called Stefanie) Graf, former tennis pro and all-time Grand Slam record winner. With Graf, Agassi finds love, peace, and the joy of fatherhood with young Jaden and Jaz.
This writer was at the U.S. Open when Andre ended his career. I watched as he played the biggest match of his career (which he describes in detail in the first chapter of Open) against Marcos Baghdatis. The next match he lost and then announced the end of his long and historic career. It was one of those most moving and heart-rending moments in tennis. This book captures all of it.
Article comments
1 - Flo
Nice comment. I really liked this book. I think it was very interesting in many ways, the way he talks about life and the lessons you have to/need to learn along the way.
What made me tick in this story is how much Agassi is impressionable. He is impressionable nearly as much as he is impressive. That's fascinating. Very smart and honest guy it seems anyway.
Ps: It's BORIS Becker not Bernard :-)
2 - Lynn Voedisch
What's amazing about the book is that he "wrote" it by speaking into a tape recorder and then just tossing the tapes into a basket. A helpful editor worked with him on putting it all into a workable, flowing format. So what you are getting are extremely candid observations, not screened by a ghost writer or co-writer. I think that's what gives this book its immediacy.
3 - Flo
Yeah, that's very interesting that "tossing tapes" thing. It really makes the work quite unique indeed. I think that's also why it is written in present tense, meaning that we have his thoughts and reactions of that time and not his reflections and memories of it from now. Like any biography it is highly subjective but the tone is very particular as the result of the way he did it.
4 - Lynn Voedisch
I really like books in present tense. Puts you in the Now, if you know what I mean.