To read -- Open by Andre Agassi

We usually write reviews for books that we have read. I haven’t read this one, but somehow I feel too excited by the undercurrents that surround it to ignore it. Open—By, Andre Agassi.



Andre Agassi is a man that I would love to meet. Not because of himself, but because he married my all-time favorite tennis star, Steffi Graf. I was in school those days and remember quite clearly the excitement I use to feel when I used to watch her matches on T.V. with my father. Those memories are part of my favorites. Why did I like her? Well... wasn’t she daddy’s girl, just as I was

Getting back to Agassi (that’s what he will be referred to from now). The wild child. Enfant Terrible. Quasi-cripple. And after reading an excerpt from his book, reproduced by NPR that I recommend you all read, I call him “human”. He gets as temperamental as all of us at times, may be more.

The news going around these days is about how he absolutely “hates” tennis. Can you take that from a former world number #1 tennis player? Love and Hate sure are strange bed fellows.

The book is his autobiography. I believe he spared no one. Not himself, not his game. And I definitely believe he loves them both. In his book though he has admitted to drug use that he had previously denied, I believe that his legacy will not be tarnished by it. His reputation has not only lasted through many years, but has also been put through the paces of his own personal trials and tribulations.
He had some rather interesting beliefs. One of them was that “image is everything”.

Now it has become know that his previously famous longish hair was actually a wig he wore to cover a bald spot. In fact, he even blames his loss in the 1990 French Open Final was because his mind was more on his wig than his match. He said something to the effect of “I prayed before the match … so that my wig would stay on!” He eventually went bald after his maturity started setting in.

His return to tennis in 1998 after most of his earlier contemporaries had retired, was based no longer based solely on his previously deadly combination of his skill and youth, but was now dependent on his new-found fitness that somehow compounded his skill. He was back with a bang.

I would not consider him as the poster boy for tennis. But I am definitely going to buy that book.