Open

I’m not a sports fan. I run and I work out, but I can’t be bothered with watching other people do it. Except for Wimbledon, that’s different, though. I watch Wimbledon most years, and that’s how teenaged Claire came to fall for a young Andre Agassi. He was cute, he wore silly clothes, he had 80s hair (in the 90s), he whacked the ball pretty hard, and raced around the court like an energetic, excited puppy, what’s not to like? He seemed so cheerful and sweet. But apparently he was not. He hates tennis. He tells us this many times in the book. One was enough, in my opinion. On the third or fourth telling he starts to sounds like a whining teenager. Now that I live in Las Vegas, as he does, there is an ever-so-slightly greater chance of my bumping in to him, so I thought it was time to learn more about him. I listened to the audiobook while walking my dogs. Agassi doesn’t read it, so he’s already lost points with me, I think the writer should be made by law to read their own audiobooks. I’ve had a few bad experiences with poorly chosen audiobook voices. We start at the end of Agassi’s career, where he’s grumbling about hating tennis and having a bad back and suchlike, and then we go on to his childhood. His dad was born in Iran, and, after a very poor childhood he managed to emigrate to the US. He was a boxer, and worked hard in the Las Vegas casinos, he wanted his children to have a good life, and to him that meant they should become tennis players. He bought a house with a backyard big enough for a court and encourages them all to play, Andre is the youngest, and obviously, the best. I think Mr Agassi senior is doing this for all the right reasons, it does seem a bit odd not to let them find their own skills and interests, and he does sound like quite a bully, but people from poverty will often put extra pressure on their kids to achieve. It’s understandable. Well, it is to me, not to Mr Agassi junoir, and it’s this whining teenager attitude that grinds me down after a while, with constant references to his father’s poor child-rearing skills. He’s retired from tennis now, and as far as I know, he hasn’t got any better ideas than his dad, he hasn’t retrained as an accountant or TV repairman, or a baker. Oh, no, of course he hasn’t, there’s no need, that’s because he’s a squillionaire from playing tennis, which has dad made him do, the poor thing. The book is a lot longer than I expected, and I think that’s because there’s an awful lot of detail about many games, I didn’t feel like I needed to know all that, but I suppose to the bigger fan, it’s good to relive those games. He talks about other players, and I get an insight to them, through Agassi’s eyes, which I quite liked. He tells us about the people who have meant a lot to him, in particular his trainer who was a father-figure to him, and about his entourage as a tennis player. He tells us about his wearing a hair-piece back when I was in love with him, which I didn’t know, but I can’t really manage to care too much about. He tells us about his experimenting with methamphetamine, which apparently he got caught doing, but he told a lie about it and got away with it, so he didn’t have to be so honest with us, and I’m impressed that he did. But it just adds to the general melancholic mood of his story. He talks about his marriage to Brooke Shields, who I can tell you is still going strong – I saw her in a Broadway production of Addams Family last year and she was looking and sounding great. He says some unkind things, he says he never really wanted to marry her, even at the wedding, even at the proposal. I find him a difficult person to understand or empathise with. Relationships end, but there’s no need to say so publicly that you were never really all that in love with someone after you’ve broken up. So, he was in love with Steffi Graf from the moment he met her, apparently, and this was before he married Brooke. I’m not sure I buy the fairytale-ness of the romance but I like the symmetry of

Open is a very vivid and well written depiction of the struggles Andre Agassi endured during his long and successful career playing tennis. It is a book that anyone could relate to. I would recommend anyone to read it.

I read the book because a non-tennis friend of mine read it and said that it is a great book. I certainly found the book fascinating and fast-paced reading. I also found that as I went through the book starting from his early days on the tennis court at age 3 to his retirement at 35, my impressions of Agassi went on the same roller-coaster ride that his life itself was. I have always loved tennis but I have never been a major Agassi fan. When he played Sampras, I wanted Pete to win. When anyone played against Rafter, I just wanted Rafter to win. Still, the book showed me so many aspects of Agassi that was unknown during his playing years. The thing that most stands out for me is the fact that Agassi hated tennis all through his playing life! It was unbelievable because I have listened to so many of his interviews after wins where he said always the opposite. In fact, in 2003 or so in Australia, when Jim Courier asks him 'when is Jaden Agassi going to play Christian Sampras?', I remember Agassi saying, 'well, I hope to play Christian Sampras first...'! But Agassi is honest in the book saying that he played because that was the only thing he was good at. Agassi writes that he started losing his hair early on in his life and played much of his professional tennis by wearing a wig. This is amazing because Agassi was known for his flamboyant hair in those days. I wonder how much he lost in concentration as a result of a subconscious fear of his wig falling off in a breeze....? The other thing that strikes you is how hard his father was on him by forcing him to play tennis. His life at home did not seem a happy one even though his brother Philly and his mother seem to be the nurturing types. Agassi is not kind to his contemporaries like Becker, Connors, Courier, Chang and Sampras. Chang's invokation of Jesus Christ seems to get his goat. He hates Connors' arrogance and elitism. He is nasty to Pete Sampras saying that Pete was dull and spectacularly uninspiring as a tennis player. This rankles me because I have seen Pete play brilliant matches in Grand Slams against Agassi and prevailing over him in most of them. In tennis, the serve and volley player is the one who is seen as the dashing, adventurous one while a baseliner is seen as conservative. That is why a McEnroe or Edberg or Navratilova was more exciting to watch than a Lendl or Chris Evert. Sampras was the serve and volleyer while Agassi was the baseliner. So, it is odd for Agassi to call Sampras 'spectacularly uninspiring' compared to him. But I liked Agassi's honesty in saying his mind when it comes to all of them or even his early mentor Nick Bolliteri. He characterises Nick's famous academy as a prison camp. Agassi also shows his small-mindedness and pettiness when he slams Sampras as a miserly tipper. This was uncalled for and it made me wonder if Agassi is actually all that honest, blunt, working-class Armenian kid that he makes himself out to be in the book. He is quite supportive of Brooke Shields whom he married first. He is also quite loyal to his 'team Agassi' which consists of many of his old trusted buddies. It is also nice to see at the end that he finds peace and happiness in his life with Steffi Graf. Too much has been made out of his drug habit. But he seems lucky to get away with his lies to ATP. One cannot help thinking that his status as an American and a top player had probably something to do with such a lenient treatment. Agassi writes that he tanked many matches even in Grand Slams because his mind was 'elsewhere' and he couldn't care less. This would come as a big surprise to many of his fans. It is an absorbing book to read and particularly so for tennis fans.