A-Rod: Agassi’s Story One of Vengeance, of Rising From ‘Ultimate Depths’
It’s the very reason why Jim Bouton was shunned by many of his fellow Major Leaguers when he penned the myth-shattering “Ball Four” in 1970. The ex-Yankee had violated that long-standing unwritten locker room code: “What you see here, what you say here, what you do here, stays here.”
Whether they admit it or not, it’s a code most professional tennis players still live by today. And they don’t take it kindly when you betray it. Take Vince Spadea and his 2006 book “Break Point! The Secret Life of a Pro Tennis Player.” More than a few of his baselining brethren bristled upon its release, including James Blake.
“It’s something that I don’t understand. I would never do it,” said Blake, who the following year published a book of his own, “Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life.” “I understand if you want to tell your story, tell anything that’s happened in your life, but I would never bring other guys into it…We all know when there’s a reporter in the locker room.”
Added Blake, “We really do seem to have almost like a traveling collegial relationship, where we’re all friends, we all get along. It’s like a traveling office, where what happens on the road, we can talk about in the locker room, we can talk about it wherever. It really doesn’t have any place in a book.”
But while some have taken offense to portions of Andre Agassi’s much-acclaimed autobiography, “Open,” 14-time Slam champ Pete Sampras among them (Sampras said he was “a little surprised and a little disappointed”), for the most part, Agassi has been given the benefit of the doubt. At the SAP Open in San Jose, Andy Roddick said he wasn’t at all surprised by Agassi’s candor.
“No. I wasn’t,” he told Inside Tennis. “I feel like that was the tone for his whole book. I’ve talked to Andre a lot since the book came out because, selfishly, I wanted to hear it also. I really do think his whole message is that there are a lot of people who are in a rough place, and his story is almost one of vengeance, one of being able to come back from the ultimate depths. I mean crystal meth is a serious thing. To be able to come back from that and be No. 1, there’s an uplifting story there.”
As for Agassi’s somewhat shocking revelation that he hates tennis, Roddick’s not necessarily buying in.
“At eight and nine years old, when you’re training like you’re a professional already, that’s what you talk about at dinner, that’s what you talk about at breakfast, there’s probably a certain amount of animosity toward it,” Roddick explained. “But I don’t believe that Andre hates tennis. I’m sure when he was younger, at times he probably hated it. As a whole, I have a hard time believing that he hates it. But as an eight and nine-year-old, when you’re already training like a professional, that’s a big ask and could certainly create a variety of emotions, some which are probably very negative.”
Tags: Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Pete Sampras, SAP Open
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12.February.2010 | 4:05 pm
Still a tennis fan!
That’s a balanced and fair take from Andy.
Can we manage to point out though (repeatedly apparently is necessary) that the basic strategy of the book in terms of using the present tense is to convey what Agassi felt at that time – at that moment – not what he feels now, what he felt in other less pressure filled moments, what he felt in a calmer emotional phase etc (not much of the latter of course for a long time). So when he says in the book “I hate tennis” – he means at the time he is talking about. I bet he’s amazed how hard it’s been for people to absorb that pretty straightforward prose tactic.
So does Agassi hate tennis? Of course he doesn’t hate it NOW and he’s been saying that repeatedly. (Although I think he said too his relationship with it always remained conflicted.) But the book isn’t about now. It’s about then…and there’s no reason not to believe that.
18.February.2010 | 4:04 am
rachelle
When you read an autobiography, you speak necessarily about the others who were implicated, near you. We don’t leave alone in a island. When you talk about you, you talk about others necessarily. Your story does’nt true, does’nt completed if it does’nt inclued the others!
The most important thing is that Andre tells the truth about him, about the others! it permits people to understand things and change things into their own lives!
very good Still a tennis fan!
18.February.2010 | 4:05 am
rachelle
When you write an autobiography, you speak necessarily about the others who were implicated, near you. We don’t leave alone in a island. When you talk about you, you talk about others necessarily. Your story does’nt true, does’nt completed if it does’nt inclued the others!
The most important thing is that Andre tells the truth about him, about the others! it permits people to understand things and change things into their own lives!
very good Still a tennis fan!
18.February.2010 | 4:19 am
rachelle
Agassi’s Book is not about the uninteresting things in the tennis locker room!
It’s about his childhood, his fight against ‘ultimate dephts”. It’s also about Love, friendchip. Roddick who has read the book and talk with knows that!
The others tennis players who don’t read the book don’t know that!