Open An autobiography

Review by Choice Review

This book describes Agassi's life through his 2006 retirement from professional tennis. Agassi mentions that J. R. Moehringer actually wrote the book, based on recorded oral sessions. Agassi stresses what he considers his misfortunes--bullying by his father into intense tennis practice as a child on the court at his home in Las Vegas, life as a teenager at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, painful and debilitating injuries during his playing career, an unhappy first marriage, a lifetime devoted to a sport he always hated. He is open about his alcohol and methamphetamine use and about lying to tennis association officials about drug use and to interviewers about his feelings regarding tennis in order to preserve his income and prestige. Open offers insights into the life of a professional athlete who reached the top of his profession; it includes the role of his support crew (trainer, coach, personal assistants). The book ends on a positive note, describing Agassi's marriage to former tennis champion Steffi Graf and establishment of a charter school for underprivileged children in Las Vegas. Though not useful as a scholarly resource, the book should provide interesting reading for Agassi fans and those intrigued by details of the lives of the rich and famous. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. R. McGehee University of Texas at Austin

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

Agassi has always had a tortured look in his eyes on the tennis court. In 1992, when he burst onto the world sports stage by winning the Grand Slam at Wimbledon, he looked like a deer in headlights. Nobody seemed more surprised and upset by his big win that day than he did. For good reason, too. Agassi hated tennis. This is the biggest revelation in his very revealing autobiography. Agassi has hated tennis from early childhood, finding it extremely lonely out on the court. But he didn't have a choice about playing the game because his father drove him to become a champion, like it or not. Mike Agassi, a former Golden Gloves fighter who never made it professionally, decided that his son would become a champion tennis player. In militaristic fashion, Mike pushed seven-year-old Andre to practice relentlessly until the young boy was exhausted and in pain. He also arranged for Andre, age 13, to attend a tennis camp where he was expected to pull weeds and clean toilets. The culmination of all of this parental pushing came when Andre began winning as an adult. But it didn't make him happy. Within this framework, Agassi's other disclosures make sense. He had a troubled marriage to Brooke Shields that didn't last. He developed a drug problem that sabotaged his career. He was insecure about everything. Only when Andre met tennis star Steffi Graf (whom he eventually married) did things begin to change. Readers will definitely cheer when Andre finally makes peace with the game he once hated and learns to enjoy it.--Eberle, Jerry Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Agassi endured his father's rage-filled obsession to make him a tennis superstar. Actor/narrator Erik Davies's breathy, edge-of-the-seat delivery brings to life the near disaster of Agassi's childhood as well as his desire that his life could have been different. [Audio, LJ 3/15/10, starred review] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Enigmatic tennis great Agassi lays it all on the line. Near the end of his beefy confession, the author excerpts one of the more famous passages from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": "Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then, I contradict myself." It's a powerful invocation that resonates well with the portrait unveiled here of the boy born with spondylolisthesis and racked with lower-back pain; the rebel who quit school at 14 but went on to found an academy for underprivileged children; the world-class player who won eight Grand Slam titles yet sometimes hated tennis because of his overbearing father ("Bad things happen when my father is upset. If he says I'm going to play tennis, if he says I'm going to be number one in the world, that it's my destiny, all I can do is nod and obey"); the champion who became, at age 33, the oldest player to be ranked No. 1. From a heart-wrenching childhood loss to a cheating Jeff Tarango to his last professional victory, a brutal five-setter against Marcos Baghdatis, Agassi's photographic recall of pivotal matches evokes the raw intensity of watching them from the stands. Lovers of the sport will also appreciate this window into the mind of a champion who lived and breathed his father's belief that "tennis is noncontact pugilism. It's violent, mano a mano, and the choice is as brutally simple as in any ring. Kill or be killed. Beat or take your beat-down." Those intrigued by Agassi's personal life will relish the accounts of his significant romantic liaisons, particularly his obsession with and eventual wooing of current wife, Steffi Graf, and his team mentality in building a close support network. An ace of a tale about how one man found his game. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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THE END I open my eyes and don't know where I am or who I am. Not all that unusual--I've spent half my life not knowing. Still, this feels different. This confusion is more frightening. More total. I look up. I'm lying on the floor beside the bed. I remember now. I moved from the bed to the floor in the middle of the night. I do that most nights. Better for my back. Too many hours on a soft mattress causes agony. I count to three, then start the long, difficult process of standing. With a cough, a groan, I roll onto my side, then curl into the fetal position, then flip over onto my stomach. Now I wait, and wait, for the blood to start pumping. I'm a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if ninety-six. After three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body, especially in the morning. Consequently my mind doesn't feel like my mind. Upon opening my eyes I'm a stranger to myself, and while, again, this isn't new, in the mornings it's more pronounced. I run quickly through the basic facts. My name is Andre Agassi. My wife's name is Stefanie Graf. We have two children, a son and daughter, five and three. We live in Las Vegas, Nevada, but currently reside in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City, because I'm playing in the 2006 U.S. Open. My last U.S. Open. In fact my last tournament ever. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have. As this last piece of identity falls into place, I slide to my knees and in a whisper I say: Please let this be over. Then: I'm not ready for it to be over. Now, from the next room, I hear Stefanie and the children. They're eating breakfast, talking, laughing. My overwhelming desire to see and touch them, plus a powerful craving for caffeine, gives me the inspiration I need to hoist myself up, to go vertical. Hate brings me to my knees, love gets me on my feet. I glance at the bedside clock. Seven thirty. Stefanie let me sleep in. The fatigue of these final days has been severe. Apart from the physical strain, there is the exhausting torrent of emotions set loose by my pending retirement. Now, rising from the center of the fatigue comes the first wave of pain. I grab my back. It grabs me. I feel as if someone snuck in during the night and attached one of those anti-theft steering wheel locks to my spine. How can I play in the U.S. Open with the Club on my spine? Will the last match of my career be a forfeit? I was born with spondylolisthesis, meaning a bottom vertebra that parted from the other vertebrae, struck out on its own, rebelled. (It's the main reason for my pigeon-toed walk.) With this one vertebra out of sync, there's less room for the nerves inside the column of my spine, and with the slightest movement the nerves feel that much more crowded. Throw in two herniated discs and a bone that won't stop growing in a futile effort to protect the damaged area, and those nerves start to feel downright claustrophobic. When the nerves protest their cramped quarters, when they send out distress signals, a pain runs up and down my leg that makes me suck in my breath and speak in tongues. At such moments the only relief is to lie down and wait. Sometimes, however, the moment arrives in the middle of a match. Then the only remedy is to alter my game--swing differently, run differently, do everything differently. That's when my muscles spasm. Everyone avoids change; muscles can't abide it. Told to change, my muscles join the spinal rebellion, and soon my whole body is at war with itself. Gil, my trainer, my friend, my surrogate father, explains it this way: Your body is saying it doesn't want to do this anymore. My body has been saying that for a long t Excerpted from Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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