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!Shocking confessions from the former Tennis Champion Andre Agassi !
[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]
NEW YORK -- Andre Agassi's upcoming autobiography contains an admission he used crystal meth in 1997 and failed a drug test -- a result thrown out after he lied by saying he "unwittingly" took the substance.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography "Open" published Wednesday in The Times of London, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant "Slim."
Reilly: Agassi's Mea Culpa
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"Then I come to the central lie of the letter," Agassi writes. "I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
"I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it."
Agassi said the ATP reviewed the case, accepted his explanation and threw it out. The tour responded with a statement, noting an independent panel makes the final decision on a doping violation.
"The ATP has always followed this rule, and no executive at the ATP has therefore had the authority or ability to decide the outcome of an anti-doping matter," the statement said.
The International Tennis Federation said it was "surprised and disappointed" by Agassi's revelations.
"Such comments in no way reflect the fact that the tennis anti-doping program is currently regarded as one of the most rigorous and comprehensive anti-doping programs in sport," the ITF said in a statement.
In the past three years, the organization has begun overseeing anti-doping efforts on behalf of the ATP and WTA tours.
Andre Agassi
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"The events in question occurred before the World Anti-Doping Agency was founded in 1999 and during the formative years of anti-doping in tennis, when the program was managed by individual governing bodies," the ITF said.
The president of WADA, Jim Fahey, said he was disappointed by Agassi's revelations and expects the ATP to "shed light on this allegation."
Agassi, who married tennis star Steffi Graf and has two children, retired in 2006. Excerpts from his autobiography, which comes out Nov. 9, are being published this week in the London newspaper, as well as Sports Illustrated and People magazines.
In a story posted on People magazine's Web site Tuesday, Agassi says: "I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem."
According to the Times of London, Agassi writes in his book that "Slim" was the person who introduced him to crystal meth, dumping a small pile of powder on the coffee table.
"I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I've just crossed," Agassi writes.
"There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I've never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I've never felt such energy."
"I'm seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds."
U.S. Fed Cup captain Mary Joe Fernandez, a contemporary of Agassi's, described the revelations as disappointing and "a bit of a shock."
"It takes a lot of guts and courage to come out and say something that nobody would have really known about," Fernandez said. "I've always admired Andre. He was a huge part of inspiring my generation, and he did a lot of great things and continues to do a lot of great things. He's opening up now, and that's his choice. Maybe people can learn from it and not make the same mistakes."
Among the most successful and popular tennis players in history, Agassi drew attention not just for his play, but also for his outfits, hairstyles and relationships with women, including a failed marriage to actress Brooke Shields.
Agassi's first major championship came at Wimbledon in 1992, and he won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But by late 1997, he dropped to No. 141 in the rankings, and he was playing in tennis' equivalent of the minor leagues.
He resuscitated his career in 1998, making the biggest one-year jump into the top 10 in the history of the ATP rankings. The next season, he won the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam, then added a second career U.S. Open title en route to finishing 1999 at No. 1.
After an exhibition match Sunday in China against longtime rival Pete Sampras, Agassi was asked if his autobiography contained any major revelations.
"I think I had to learn a lot about myself through the process," Agassi said. "There was a lot that even surprised me. So to think that one won't be surprised by it, it would be an understatement.
"Whatever revelations exist, you'll get to see in full glory," he added. "But the truth is, my hope is that somebody doesn't just learn more about me, what it is I've been through, but somehow through those lessons, they can learn a lot about themselves. And I think it's fair to say that they will."
In a posting on People's Web site, Agassi says he "was worried for a moment, but not for long," about how fans would react if they found out he used drugs.
"I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story," Agassi says. According to the publisher, he worked closely on the book with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer, author of "The Tender Bar."
A writer from SI first revealed the crystal meth reference on a Twitter posting Tuesday.
According to the Times of London excerpt, Agassi was walking through New York's LaGuardia airport when he got the call that he had failed a drug test.
"There is doom in his voice, as if he's going to tell me I'm dying," Agassi writes. "And that's exactly what he tells me."
"He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation," Agassi writes. "Performance-enhancing drugs ... would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs." That would mean a three-month suspension.
"My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I've achieved, whatever I've worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It's filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth."
Fernandez said the episode didn't shake her faith in tennis' anti-doping program.
"WADA's drug testing is so severe I can't imagine anybody getting away with anything now," she said. "Players are getting tested in and out of competition at least 25 to 30 times a year."
In 2007, Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine after a third-round exit at Wimbledon. She denied using the drug but was banned for two years. In July, Frenchman Richard Gasquet was cleared to resume playing after a 2½-month ban upon persuading the ITF's tribunal panel that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
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The Transformation of Andre Agassi
Based on the recent publication of his much-anticipated 437-page autobiography — simply entitled Open — we explore the transformative Life of Andre (“Image Isn’t Everything”)
We knew Andre Agassi was quite the paradox. After all, the kid who was defined by his endless frosted locks overnight became the most famous bald man since Kojak. This was our beloved but rudderless ninth-grade dropout, who became an educational pioneer who launched his own inspired academy.
This was the (earrings and expletives supplied) Rebel Without a Cause who (how’d he do that?) morphed himself into an honored school elder who enforced a strict uniform policy and insisted on a Code of Respect, a deferential ode to authority. This is the dude the Hollywood songstress called a Zen master. Too bad he didn’t know what a Zen master was.
Go figure.
But what we didn’t really know was that this kid — who we were told was just “a haircut and a forehand” — was actually a tortured soul consumed by contradictions and a brutal battle against his body, mind and spirit. We hardly knew that this man — who was celebrated across this globe (and signed his first autograph when he was six) dismissed notoriety, saying, “How unexciting it is to be famous. How mundane famous people are. They’re confused, insecure and often hate what they do…money can’t buy happiness.”
We hardly knew that our great sports hero didn’t like sports one bit; that the guy who attained such status and fortune (and many an appealing lady) through tennis actually never wanted to play, continually hoped to quit and intensely hated a game that he dismissed as a crippling and isolating endeavor that was just a “lonely, meaningless version of boxing.” He would have much preferred to play soccer, where “the fate of my father, of my family, of planet earth, didn’t rest on my shoulders…[and where] if my team didn’t win, no one would yell in my ear.”
But as much as Andre despised tennis (his frequent plea was “Let this be over!”), he hated himself even more. The man who brought us such good cheer actually “felt bottomless gloom;” the star we wanted to see win trophies wanted to vomit into them; the down-the-line whiz whose hand-eye coordination astounded us, suffered recurring dreams of his hand having fallen off. This was a man whose specialty was torturing himself for “not being good enough.” The man who they pegged as a rebel, a villain and then a humanitarian hero was actually consumed by fear and went to dizzying heights to shred his self-image and tear his spirit to tatters.
Why?
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There’s a curious alchemy in tennis. Aspiring young athletes like Navratilova, Lendl, Seles, Chang and Sharapova adeptly combine the memory of poverty in the old country with the fierce cauldron of the American competitive ethos to forge championship careers. Agassi’s grandparents — or so the tale goes — trekked mountain passes on donkeys to escape the tyrannical Soviet Union to Tehran, only to endure dust and Dickensian squalor. There Andre’s dad, Emmanuel Agassian, crowded in with his family of nine (plus dogs) into a single room in an apartment complex that collectively shared a single, filthy courtyard toilet. There was no running water, electricity or furniture and little food. The clan slept on a dirt floor. And to make matters worse, according to Andre, his grandma “was a nasty old lady…with a wart the size of a walnut on the edge of her nose…[who] was put on this earth to harass my father.” Little wonder Emmanuel sought refuge in sports. He befriended American and British soldiers and became their ballboy and was one of few Iranians to even play the game.
But boxing was his ticket. A gifted counterpuncher with a penchant for faltering at crunch time. He lost at the ‘48 London Olympics, bitterly complaining that the judges were anti-Iranian crooks. Having seen a bright world beyond Tehran, he snuck out with a phony passport and landed in Chicago with $12 in his pocket. There he fought his way up boxing’s hardscrabble ranks until he finally got a big bout in Madison Square Garden. But scared and afraid, the wannabe (now known as Mike Agassi) ducked out of a toilet window.
But never mind, he would still show the world. Tennis would be his shortest route to achieve the American Dream, which he would now accomplish through his unsuspecting kids.
So he fled frigid Chicago to Vegas, where he eventually found a tract house where he built a court to train his world beaters. But his three oldest kids fell short. His fourth was his last hope. No stone would be left unturned.He famously dangled a ball above the newborn’s crib and encouraged his toddler to swipe at balloons to develop his hand-eye coordination.
But Papa Agassi was hardly a benign guide like Chris Evert’s dad or funny like Seles’ pops and offered little of the rollicking esprit de corps the Williamses relished. While Sampras’ dad was distant, Andre’s dad was imposing, overbearing.
Yes, wrote Andre, his father’s “sad and lonely past helps explain his odd behavior and violent rage.” Shrill, stern and strange, he suffered from curious tics, would rip hairs out of his nose and continually offered the odd disassociated affirmation, “I love you, Margaret” — to a mysterious woman who long ago saved his life.
He liked to shoot hawks and left the roof of his house cluttered with carcasses. A free-form abuser, he’d unleash his wrath on his deferential wife, a stunned car salesman, or let his road rage roar and have a violent confrontation with a befuddled trucker. Eventually he’d trash talk Steffi Graf’s dad.
Mike Agassi’s toxic tennis teaching style was the brutal and relentless expression of an obsessed man whose life philosophy was simply “put a blister on the other guy’s brain.”
His game was simple: “a child who hits a million balls each year will be unbeatable.” So he concocted a draconian homemade ball machine and ball retriever. His marching orders: hit 2,500 balls a day, 17,500 balls a week. Hit early, hit hard and then hit harder. Never hit into the net. The net is your enemy. No wonder Andre felt tiny and helpless. Still, his dad ranted: “You’re going to be No. 1 in the world. You’re going to make lots of money. That’s the plan and that’s the end of it.”
But when Andre doubted, his dad screamed, “Stop thinking. No f—-ing thinking.” When Andre lost a match but won the sportsmanship trophy, Agassi’s dad grabbed the prize and smashed it. So Andre sought havens. Hitting a perfect ball was a refuge. Intentionally bashing a ball over the fence was an early act of defiance and his (secrets-welcome) friendship with his brother/pal “Philly” was a desperately-needed release valve.
Thrust into the spotlight from the beginning, no one asked if he wanted to play tennis. No one wondered if wanted to be put on display against Jimmy Connors when he was four, or be a demeaning pawn for Ilie Nastase, or take down the NFL’s legendary Jim Brown to win the family $10,000.
And yeah, how could we forget, no one asked him if he wanted to traipse 2,317 miles to endure Florida’s Bollettieri Academy.
Just in seventh grade, he desperately wanted to stay home. Then he got a look from his mother that said, “I’ve seen Dad break three kids. You’re lucky to get out when you are whole.”
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Bollettieri’s is our sport’s leading training mecca. Still, the freefall of Andre’s devastatingly dysfunctional early years without sensible, strong mentors continued. Andre viewed the academy as a glorified prison that he yearned to burn down, a hellish boot camp that suffered from an invasive stench, too much pressure and too little supervision. Here, anarchy ruled, jaws were broken. It was the Lord of the Flies with forehands. Loud drums (thanks, Jim Courier) and simmering feuds abounded, along with a cafeteria that’s “like a mental hospital where the nurses forgot to hand out the meds.”
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Beyond this, Andre paints a cautionary picture of “the warden, founder and owner” of the place, claiming that Bollettieri (despite all his success) is a failed Navy pilot who’s obsessed with sports cars, tanning and getting married, and, like his own dad, is “captivated with cash.” As for Andre’s schooling, the educator-to-be all but failed most of his courses at an academy he thought was a scam.
Still, the boy who was always told what to do, came to realize that he was the best talent to ever come to the academy. He, at last, held the big cards. So he went all out, unleashing the most storied adolescent rebellion in a sport famous for its ragin’ rebels. Described as a “cocky showboat who seeks the limelight,” he threw tantrums, picked fights, wore dirty jeans in matches, snuck into the girls’ dorm and indulged in vandalism. “I drink [gallons of whiskey], I smoke pot, I act like an ass,” he confided. He pierces and dyes his body, grows a three inch pinky nail and paints it red, gets a Mohawk and dyes it pink and sports an earring which he views as a “neat little f—- you to my dad.”
“I’ve done something that seems like a desperate effort to stand out,” contends Andre. “But, in fact, I’ve rendered myself…my true self, invisible…[My] main act of insurrection is silence.” Agassi’s dad — oblivious to his son’s desire to come home, his cry for help — simply asked, “Are you a faggot?” Bollettieri claims his prime duty was keeping Andre out of jail. In fact, he came close to kicking out his rowdy fave, but a bizarre incident changed everything. Thanks to a scam by his buddy, Perry Rogers, Andre won a huge panda at a mall. But Bollettieri desperately wanted the adorable stuffed animal for his daughter. Agassi then bargained hard, telling Bollettieri, he could have the beast if he could break free, drop out of school and be free of rules. Plus, Nick would get him tournament bids so he could start playing the circuit.
Not since those diplomatic Chinese bears Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing came to the National Zoo had a panda played such a key role. Andre was now a free man (make that an unleashed kid) ready to hit the road and kick out the jams.
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When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Pete Sampras offered a provocative, minimalist self-assessment saying, “I’m just a tennis player. Nothing more, nothing less.” Agassi said he envied “Pete’s dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration.” Sorry, Andre, that ain’t happening. Your life has been more crowded with (“it’s good to live in interesting times”) razzmatazz and compelling storylines than any other men’s tennis player in history — even John McEnroe.
From the get-go, the themes of his career fell into place: not only did he have a penchant for self-loathing and destruction (together with his flair for gaining attention and commercial bounty), he also surrounded himself with an inspired support system. Plus, he had the redemptive ability to observe, pivot, learn and grow — the survivor becomes a seeker.
But the man who would one day gallivant from tournament to tournament in his own private jet began the circuit as just another clueless, 15-year-old, thrilled with his ranking of No. 610. Fresh for the adventure, he plied his trade in minor-league outbacks from Kissimmee to Sarasota. Subsisting on baked potatoes and lentil soup, he hit the road with his brother in an old jalopy. For this wind-in-their-hair duo, the height of luxury would be pulling up to a Sizzler in a car with “a tailpipe that didn’t blow black clouds.”
But, of course, anonymity and Andre don’t mix. John McEnroe soon announced that Agassi had the hardest return of serve of anyone he’d ever faced. Lendl was more succinct, defining him as “a haircut and a forehand,” while Nike forked over 45,000 of the best dollars it ever spent on sports marketing.
But things weren’t easy. The game was played at warp speed. Andre was shunned in locker rooms and he admitted that, as “a teenager from the desert with no education, I react badly to all that’s alien.” So European clay seemed like “hot glue and wet tar [that’s] laid across a bed of quicksand.” He despised Wimbledon because snooty know-it-alls “took special pleasure in telling players what to do,” plus the grass felt like ice that’s been “slathered with Vaseline.” He claims he’d hug his dad before he would embrace Wimbledon again. Soon Andre, just 17, would embrace a “no mas,” throw-in-the-towel routine that would repeat itself with dizzying regularity. Unfit, stressed and exhausted, after a loss in Washington, he said, “I can’t take this ‘s—- anymore! I’m f—-ing done! I quit!” and strode to a park, where he gave some homeless men his rackets, saying, “Help yourselves! I sure as hell won’t be needing them.”
What Andre needed was a big win. The most celebrated talent of his generation had been hoisted on the shoulders of ecstatic Brazilians. He was loved in Memphis and adored at Stratton Mountain. He collected many scalps, soared in the rankings and gained fame for his swashbuckling swagger and shake-’em-up-at-the-country-club denim rebellion. But as Chang, Sampras and Courier sizzled at majors, Andre fizzled, losing back-to-back upsets in French Open finals to Andres Gomez and to his ex-Bollettieri rival Courier.
Andre confided, “You’re trying to express yourself freely and creatively and artistically, and you’re slammed at every turn.” Andre knew well the conventional wisdom: “I’m a punk, I’m a clown, I’m a fraud. I’m a fluke. I have a high ranking because of a conspiracy, a cabal of networks and teens. I don’t rate the attention I get because I haven’t won a Slam.” Dismissing Agassi became a sport within a sport.
After all, the public had a perfect bead on the showy upstart. This wasn’t a guy of championship mettle, insisted columnist Mike Lupica. When Andre was facing Connors, a fan yelled, “He’s a punk. You’re a legend.” Connors himself offered what Andre claimed was “a fresh piece of libel, served up as analysis…He says, ‘I enjoy playing guys who could be my children. Maybe he’s one of them. I spent a lot of time in Vegas.’”
After his loss to Gomez, Andre imagines reporters are thinking, “Mr. Hot Lava is a mess.” The boy who says “[i] spent my childhood in an isolation chamber, my teen years in a torture chamber” is reeling. Of course, skipping out on Wimbledon for three straight years didn’t exactly bolster his image. But that was nothing compared to the constant airing of his Canon ads with their disastrous, glitz-over-substance,”Image is Everything” mantra. Andre recalled that writers likened the pithy slogan, “to my inner nature, my essential being…and [they] predict it’s going to be my epitaph. They say…I have no substance because I haven’t won a Slam…I’m just a pitchman…caring only about money.”
Now fans taunt him and he admits he’s become a borderline paranoid who’s “developed a mean streak…[and] lashes out at linesmen, opponents, and reporters — even fans. I feel justified, because the world is…trying to screw me. I’m becoming my father.” Agassi deals with stress by lighting fires, like the small bonfire he set in a Munich hotel. Ultimately, he was but a man-child adrift without a strong foundation or clear vision of career or self.
His favorite image came from an Italian painting he saw in the Louvre of a man on a precipice and Andre’s life mirrored the disintegrating hairpiece he used to cover his bald patches. Still, amidst all the chaos, at least Agassi knew what he wasn’t: “I’m not my clothes…I’m not anything the public thinks. I am not a showman because I come from Vegas…I’m not an enfant terrible…because you can’t be something you can’t pronounce. And, for heaven’s sake, I’m not a punk rocker. I listen to soft, cheesy pop, like Barry Manilow and Michael Bolton.” Still, everyone knew one thing. Agassi still was not a Slam champ.
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In ‘92, Andre’s universe turned on its axis when the baseliner fell to his knees on his off-surface, Wimbledon’s grass, knowing that, at last, “after 22 years and 22 million swings” his triumph over Goran Ivanisevic gave him his coveted treasure — his first Slam. Sure, when Andre called his dad, he sensed an unspoken paternal pride. But all his father could muster was a critique: “You had no business losing the fourth set.”
But never mind; overnight Wimbledon did its magic. Agassi noted that, “After two years of calling me a choke artist, a rebel without a cause, they lionize me.” But this being young Andre, all the good vibes turned into a bummer, as he injured his wrist and then suffered three hairy (or not so hairy) losses. Both Bollettieri and his longtime girlfriend Wendi Stewart left him as did much of his hair, which he said was “the crux of my public image, and my self-image, and it’s been a sham.” And it was a hassle, too, as he used elaborate hairpieces to hide his follicular failings. But opponents would rub his head, setting off panic attacks, and there was the tragicomedy before the ‘91 French Open final, when the disintegration of his hairpiece sent his brother out into the Paris night on a goose chase, asking anyone and everyone (including Chris Evert) if they had any bobby pins.
So after much soul-searching, Andre had a ceremonial sheering. In eleven minutes his consuming hair hassles vanished. Liberation! Nonetheless, Andre regressed to his familiar world of “rage, endless consuming rage” and holed up in his Vegas bachelor pad, he called “a glorified playpen”, where he boozes, sleeps, and eats junk food while rationalizing that “rock bottom can be very cozy, because at least you are at rest.”
Andre’s self-destructive indulgence peaks in ‘97, when he both does meth and then lies to the ATP about it. Agassi is now consumed by a dubious mission. He admits, “I get and undeniable satisfaction from harming myself…After decades of merely dabbling in masochism, I’m making it my mission.” Ecstasy, Loss, silence, peaks and valleys. The icon is cheered and booed by thousands, “but nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those 10 minutes before you fall asleep.” On the one hand, he confides “I don’t want to…unravel the skeins of my psyche. I’ve given up on understanding myself. I have no interest in self-analysis…[and] the long, losing struggle with myself.” But then he admits he ‘s preoccupied with “the search for self, the endless monologue in my head, depression.” It gets so bad that in one fit of rage, he smashes all his trophies: including the Davis Cup, U.S. Open and Wimbledon trophies.
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But Agassi — magnetic, charismatic and vulnerable — is blessed with a redeeming gift: the uncanny ability to attract guides and gurus — gals, girls and Graf. His brother, Phil, was his first confidante. His childhood buddy, Perry Rogers, became his agent, and the little-known John Parenti was an unconventional spiritual guide who insisted fear was Andre’s fuel.
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But it was a college fitness trainer who looked like Charles Atlas who became the father Andre never had, as Andre became the son Gil Reyes never had. The two were kindred spirits.
Never mind that Reyes dressed for Andre’s matches as if they were “blind dates or a mafia hit,” his fitness regime and spiritual presence turned Agassi’s life around. Okay, like Andre’s dad, he yelled at Agassi, but he yelled love. Guide and savior, Gil insisted Andre “seek the pain, woo the pain, recognize that pain is life.” As for your body, to know what it wants, you have to be part engineer, part mathematician, part artist, part mystic.” Reyes saw Andre as Lancelot while, time and again, in grueling matches the tireless Agassi “drew on funds long deposited in the ‘Bank of Gil.’”
“Sentry, monitor, backstop, witness,” writes Andre, “I want him to do what he always does. Stand guard.” So Gil was always there through marriage(s) and divorce, at Andre’s most devastating defeats(including his “uber loss” to Sampras at the ‘95 U.S. Open) and his greatest triumphs — including the Olympic Gold that had eluded his dad and his signature late night U.S. Open win over James Blake.
Reyes always insisted that Agassi stand on his shoulders. So not surprisingly, Andre echoed that same sentiment when he offered his heart-wrenching Ashe Stadium retirement speech, telling fans that he had stood on their shoulders.
Andre’s relationship with Brad Gilbert was not entirely pretty. He spoke of his coach’s “Braditude” and how his very “Bradness” could get in the way of his being heard. But Gilbert’s transformative insights twice saved Agassi’s career.
At first, he insisted Andre embrace the joy of wining ugly, by not being such a hard-headed perfectionist, but by being “like gravity” and playing percentage ball, by attacking his foes weaknesses, by not giving Sampras so much respect and by going to his equity shot, his down the line backhand.
[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]
Then, even more dramatically, when Andre’s fortunes were tumbling and he freely tanked matches, “Beej” put his foot down, insisting that they would not leave their German hotel room until they made a decision. Channeling his inner-Madden, Gilbert insisted, “We ain’t continuing like this. You’re better than this…You either need to quit — or start over. But you can’t go on embarrassing yourself…you need to go back to the beginning…to pull out of everything and regroup. I’m talking square one.”
Andre agreed with Brad and he agreed with Babs, too. He and Barbra Streisand knew they were good for each other and their handful of dates in ‘93 and numerous (“what’s it all about?”) phone marathons convinced them that they had much in common; that they were both “tortured perfectionists who hated doing something at which they excelled” and they would simply ignore their 28-year age gap.
Of course, the press found the May-October duo more than a delicious morsel and Andre conceded, “The public outcry only added spice…[making] our friendship feel forbidden, taboo — another piece of my overall rebellion. Dating Barbra Streisand is like wearing Hot Lava.”
But things soon cooled when Andre began faxing a witty, sophisticated model-actress with a Princeton degree in French Lit, who like him had an abrasive stage parent. As he fell for Brooke Shields, he stopped calling Streisand. The actress quickly introduced the wide-eyed Agassi to a whole new world of pretend from Hollywood to Broadway. Unfortunately, there’s very little pretend in the unsparing world of tennis that Shields refused to fully embrace. Instead, she seemed preoccupied with her glitzy A-list peeps, clean closets and (who cares?) surface chats about “things.”
In contrast, Andre’s soulmate, Steffi Graf, insisted he reflect on feelings, dwell on feelings, nourish his feelings. After all “feeling was the goal.”
At first the enigmatic, distant and seemingly unattainable, Graf was nothing but head-over-heels obsession for the deeply smitten romantic. “I’ve had a crush on Steffi since I first saw her…I was thunderstruck, dazzled by her understated grace, her effortless beauty. She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good.…[as if]she was fundamentally, essentially, inherently good, brimming with moral rectitude and a kind of dignity that doesn’t exist anymore. I thought I saw, for half a second, a halo above her head.” Eventually Agassi and his posse orchestrated the most elaborate caper imaginable (complete with intel, recon and rehearsals) in order for Romeo to get a date with Juliet, his “goddess” who in his eyes, was poetry in motion. When Agassi — who feels “being with the right women is the highest form of happiness” — finally gets to practice with Steffi at Wimbledon, he confides, “I’m a suitor, but also a fan. I’ve wondered for so long what Graf’s forehand feels like.”
****
As horrific as Agassi’s descents were, his ascent — his upward learning curve — was even more notable, an astonishing ride. This August, and again in October, I asked him how the heck he did it: what was the key, the core of his change. But it just wasn’t that simple. There was no singular awakening, no epiphany. His growth to nuanced wisdom was a bloom opening slowly, a tapestry of many a fiber, subtle and obvious. Sure he would come up short in his rivalry with Sampras and fall to Federer in the ‘05 U.S. Open final. Still, his autumn years were sublime. Playing until he was 36, he collected eight Slams, became the oldest No. 1 ever, a tour spokesman, Davis Cup workhorse, beloved elder and with some (‘he ain’t no saint’) exceptions, an all-around good guy. He changed, in part because he drew weary of all the “deliberately bad decisions [that] were made in a dark place far below the surface…[and] the idea of stagnating, of remaining Andre the rest of my life, that’s what I found truly depressing.” Most of all, Agassi learned from an array of experiences: loss and triumph, the sorrow of suffering, the intimate wisdom of loved ones: from parenting and his incredible work to create and fund his academy, as well as from the truths of literature and the insights of the wisest sages among us.
For instance, after falling to No. 141 in ‘97, he bravely committed to playing lowly tournaments, which one know-it-all official said was “like Springsteen playing a corner bar.” Here on modest backcourts, ‘TMA’ (“The Mighty Andre”) was his own ball boy, kept score by flipping plastic numbers while “how-cruel-than-they-get” fans yelled, “How the mighty have fallen.” But now Andre was determined to use his humiliation, to build on it, to learn.
Of course, Andre also grew by all but perfecting his trade: by becoming a master. In particular, he called the soft volley winner that turned the ‘99 French Open in his favor (when Andrei Medvedev was just six points from victory) the turning point in a critical match and “perhaps the turning point in my life.” For it catapulted him to the pivotal Roland Garros title he long craved, gave him “the Holy Grail” (the career Grand Slam which just five other men had achieved) and provided a certain undeniable cachet as an elite athlete, a gravitas as a man and a confidence as the suitor-in-waiting of the sleek blonde who, just the day before, had won the women’s title, the only other person in the history of the world who, like him, had won all four Slams and an Olympic gold.
Andre-watchers these days are struck by a single pervasive quality- his empathy — a trait that first came to the fore when he witnessed the agonizing pain Gil Reyes’ 12-year-old daughter had endured after a second neck operation. Inspired by her courage, he noted that “pain is the price of being human” and pointed to C.S. Lewis’ assertion that “pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world…We are like blocks of stone…The blows of His chisel…are what make us perfect.” Ultimately, Andre concluded, we are here “to fight through the pain, and, when possible to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see.” No wonder the guy opened a $40 million inner-city academy for voiceless kids: a great deed.
And great deeds, upon occasion, allow us to encounter great souls. When Agassi met Nelson Mandela in Cape Town, he sensed that the singular man was “Gandhi-like and void of bitterness. His eyes…were filled with wisdom…[that] said he’d figured something out, something essential.” Mandela seemed to talking to the once reckless rebel when, with a hint of Buddhism, he spoke of compassion and mindfulness, asserting that “We must all care for one another — this is our task. But also we must care for ourselves, which means we must be careful in our decisions, careful in our relationships, careful in our statements. We must manage our lives artfully, in order to avoid becoming victims.”
Determined not to be a victim of his own lack of schooling, Andre, like Ashe before him, eclectically drew wisdom from both lowbrow pop stars (Elvis, Sinatra, Annie Lenox, Barry Manilow) and highbrow cultural icons (Homer, Whitman, Van Gough and C.S. Lewis). One of his favorite passages, a segment of the James Agee novel, ‘A Death in the Family,’ expresses the poignant insights of a woman reflecting on her own, deep mourning: “This is simply what living is: I never realized before what it is…now I am more nearly a grown member of the human race; she thought she had never before had a chance to realize the strength human beings have to endure; she loved and revered all those who had ever suffered, even those who had failed to endure.” Agassi mused, “I love and revere those who suffer…God wants us to grow up and love is how we do it.”
Well, Mr. “Image is Everything” certainly grew up.
Almost inexplicably, the confused kid — consumed by self-hatred and destruction — became subsumed with a new mind-set, that was not only empathetic towards the world, but more important, accepting of self. He told the first graduating class at his academy that “life is a tennis match between polar opposites, winning and losing, love and hate, open and closed…Recognize the polar opposites within yourself, and if you can’t embrace them, or reconcile them, at least accept them and move on. The only thing you cannot do is ignore them.”
As much as the boy Andre worked to master his backhand, the man Agassi struggled to grasp the power of paradox, to embrace his contradictions and use them to fuel change — to become a new man, caring and giving, free of boyish bravado and indulgences. Aware and calm, he no longer was a stranger to himself. Yes, he concedes that his lack of education was a crime in which he was complicit. But now he is a thinker; ideas matter. Awareness and intent have impact. The boy who was constantly at war with himself, is now a man of peace.
Mandela once told Andre that there is a clarity and nobility in being a journeyer. And Andre’s journey, more than any other in this game, has revealed (and celebrated) the necessity, the beauty, and transformative nobility of change.
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11-08-2009, 05:36 PM
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