Entertainment :: Books
Open by Lewis Whittington
EDGE ContributorFriday Nov 20, 2009 Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open has sparked scorn from fellow athletes because of the Wimbledon champ’s admitted loathing of the game, his crystal meth use, and the fact that his mullet was fake.
But the real headline from Open is Agassi’s prose prowess, crafted by J. R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Tender Bar. Whoever is serving the literary style in the book, it is a manic page-turner.
The opening passages present a rakish play-by-play of Agassi’s nail-biter at the 2006 U.S. Open; the scene reminds you of the chariot race in Ben-Hur. He then exorcises all of his demons that got him to this point. Agassi’s lost youth saga is the stuff of rebellious American anti-heroes.
High-stakes tennis aside, suddenly the reader is up close and personal in Agassi’s lifelong dramas that have crushed his emotions as hard as his sport is crushing his body. It is not the normal sports star saga, it is an existentialist drama with balls, Babs, Brooke and bad extensions.
His dad, Mike, an Iranian immigrant who competed in the Olympics, is the main piston to his tortured life; he makes Joan Crawford look like parent of the year. His dad does more than try to groom his son to be the best tennis player in the world, he puts him on a tennis chain gang, souping up a ball machine ("the dragon," Andre calls it) and forcing him to practice seven hours a day and exploiting his son’s ability for all it is worth.
He is also militaristic and controlling. By the time Andre is in Nick Bollettieri’s notorious tennis boot camp, he is rebelling within an inch of his life, getting his ears pierced because his dad would think he is gay and sporting a pink mohawk to taunt his teachers.
Agassi Sr. is thrilled that Andre wants to leave school at 16 and go pro. Up and down on the tennis circuits, Andre is a partying pre-frat boy who gets burnt out on the perks and the celebrity grind. Agassi is an honest, manic personality, willing to question his own motives and insecurities. His defeats and comebacks are already legend.
Agassi gives dimensional accounts of his relationships and,especially touching, his appreciation to siblings and his childhood friends.
The book features lots of male locker-room bonding and celebrity trackers will get a few thrills: Babs comes off classy, Brooke self-absorbed, and Steffi Graf, who he married and with whom he is raising two children, an earthly goddess.
Andre is not chasing grand slams anymore since he won all four and Olympic gold. As founder the Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Vegas, it is obvious this book is intended to be more than a sports celeb confessional. For net fans, Agassi writes tennis like a ’40s fight reporter, you can smell the success and failure from inside the arena.
by Andre Agassi
Lewis Whittington writes about the performing arts and gay politics for several publications.
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