Andre Agassi‘s long, double-segment interview for 60 Minutes produced the revelation that the star did crystal meth for most all of ’97. Although he refused to say exactly how often he did meth, he conceded he did it “way too many” times, asserted that it was “a chemically induced re-connection to life” and that — when the ATP let him off the hook (after he failed a drug test he lied about) it was a “second chance” and a life-changing “form of atonement” that very much prompted him to make the most of his life.
A harsh, unyielding critique by Martina Navratilova produced the most riveting moment of the program: a poignant plea from an emotional Andre for compassion, not condemnation.
Interviewer Katie Couric, herself a tennis player, did not ask if he made his revelations to sell books. But Agassi asserted he could not write his bio, a book called Open, and not reveal a key turning point in his life. The program addressed the now famous (“easy for us to laugh”) disintegration of his then-secret hairpiece on the eve of the ’90 French Open and featured everything from vintage clips of the child Agassi playing tennis and being interviewed to shots of his own son, as a toddler, squealing ‘daddy’ in glee after the retiring Andre came off the court at the ’06 U.S. Open.
Andre minced few words when reflecting on his abusive dad, and admitted he was stuck in a marriage (to Brooke Shields) that he had no business being in. Plus, Steffi Graf, his wife of nine years, giggled as she revealed that Agassi said — on their first date no less — that he wanted to have children.
Toward the end of the interview, Agassi reveals that on one of his first dates with Graf, he informed her that he hated tennis and he told her that because “I was falling in love with her [and] you can’t do that under false pretenses.” Too bad this great man, this man who boldly transformed his once hobbled life, nonetheless chose to play his career under false premises. But, at least, he has now revealed what appears to be most of the truths and he has used his considerable struggles (demons that proved to be far more imposing than “the dragon” ball machine his dad imposed on him as a child) to do – as much as any other athlete in history —remarkably good works that have helped and inspired so many near and far.
Here are some key excerpts.
ON HATING TENNIS
“I was just flat out scared. [I] just didn’t know what people would do if they heard the way I felt…Hating tennis was a deep part of my life for a long, long time.”
ON WHY HIS DAD DROVE HIM SO HARD
“[It was] because he drove himself hard. Tennis was a passion he had from when he was a little boy himself and he saw it as the quickest road to the American dream for his kids. Something he wanted for his family.”
ON WHY HE NEVER TOLD HIS DAD HE HATED TENNIS
“I needed to do it for the family. Possibly an unnecessary burden for a child, but one I definitely carried. [If I told him I didn’t want to do it he would have told me] you don’t have to love it. You’re going to do it. This is what we do. This is what you are going to do. You were born to be a tennis player. You are going to be the best in the world and that’s the end of it.”
ON TENNIS
“It always came with a level of anxiety; it always came with a level of pressure. None of it really made sense to me. So I don’t ever remember not hating it.”
ON HIS DAD’S ATTITUDE TO EDUCATION
“Unnecessary. Unnecessary. Takes up too much of the day, because we should be hitting tennis balls…He just never thought a whole lot of it and neither did I.”
ON HIS HAIR
“I was living a fraud; I was just living in a hell. ”
ON HIS HAIRPIECE FALLING APART IN THE SHOWER THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ’90 FRENCH OPEN FINAL
“The first time I ever really prayed for anything as it related to a result, I was not praying for not for the win, but for my hair to stay on. I kept envisioning what this would be like if my hair just flew off and landed…like, what would I do? Would I go over and kill it. Would I quickly put it back on? Would I take it home and name it? I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do, which I was I was moving less and less. When the match was over I won, because my hair had stayed on. One of the trials and tribulations of my journey.”
ON HIS ’95 U.S. OPEN LOSS TO SAMPRAS
“I hit a big wall. I lost interest, I lost desire, I lost inspiration is what I really lost that day.”
ON BEING IN A MARRIAGE TO BROOKE SHIELDS THAT HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE IN
“I also was in a life I didn’t want to be in. So my life was filled with things I didn’t want, things I didn’t choose. Part of it was an inability to find a place for anything really.”
ON HIS DECESION TO TAKE CRYSTAL METH
“My decision was, why not. It can’t feel any worse. There was a sadness initially, followed by the energy and a chemically induced re-connection to life. I was looking for anything to make me get off the couch, to make me re-engage in life…Of course [I didn’t think of the ramifications]…how do you think about that. I knew what I was doing, but tennis wasn’t a concern to me because I didn’t care about tennis. My own body wasn’t that much of a concern to me because I didn’t think that highly of myself.”
ON HOW MANY TIMES HE DID CRYSTAL METH
“It was a foggy time in my life for a lot of reasons. The simple answer is I don’t know, I did it way too many…I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it. What I can tell you is I did it for the good part of 1997, the better part of the year, starting in the early in the year and ending deeper into the year. It was way more than it should have been.”
ON TURNING HIS LIFE AROUND
“[I said] I’m going to choose this [tennis]. I don’t have to. I can quit right now. My dad’s not choosing it, this is my choice and my choice alone. And I made the decision right then and there, that I’m going to choose to fight this battle, I’m going to choose tennis … First time in my life [I felt it was my choice]: 27-years old, ranked No. 141 in the world and in a marriage I shouldn’t be in.”
ON LYING TO THE ATP ON HIS DRUG USE
“In life, most bad decisions lead to more bad decisions and this one did and I wrote a letter filled with lies, because I was ashamed, embarrassed and panicked. I was panicked. I wrote that I ingested the drug accidentally [once] at the time of the testing.”
ON THE ATP ACCEPTING HIS ‘THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK’ EXCUSE
“Very few people make mistakes that big and get a second chance and I got a second chance and it wasn’t lost on me, that every day after that was some form of atonement…and I am committed to making the most of my life.”
ON THE SWIFT AND HARSH REACTION TO HIS USING CRYSTAL METH
“It doesn’t surprise me. I think everybody has a reason to be angered and to be disappointed.”
ON MARTINA NAVRATILOVA’S HARSH REACTION THAT ANDRE NOT ONLY DID IT, BUT WORSE YET, LIED ABOUT AND THAT HE WAS LIKE ROGER CLEMENS
“That’s what you don’t want to hear. But when somebody takes a performance inhibitor, a recreational drug…[versus a performance enhancing drug], the one thing I would hope is not that there are not rules that need to be followed, but along with that would come some compassion, that maybe this person doesn’t need condemnation, maybe this person could stand a little help. And I had a problem and there might be many other athletes out there that test positive for recreational drugs that have a problem, so I would ask for some compassion.”
ON BEING HONEST ABOUT HIS DRUG USE
“It wasn’t an option for me to write a book about my life and leave out one of the central points of it, one of the turning points of it. And it certainly wasn’t an option for me to call a book called Open and not be.”
ON PEOPLE POSSIBLY SAYING HE IS UNGRATEFUL AND A BIT OF A WHINER
“Regardless of how somebody else might perceive the life I lived…the fact that … I found a way to get through is a hopeful, inspirational story.”
ON WINNING THE ’99 FRENCH OPEN
“It gave me that hope, that belief that ‘geez’ I’m really doing it. It gave me my career in Paris and I just kept rolling with it.”
ON STEFFI COMING INTO HIS LIFE
“I realized that tennis gave me her and that in itself eased…the scorecard was getting more balanced. It gave me reasons to appreciate it.”
ON EDUCATING KIDS
“It’s my life’s work and you can say that maybe because of my lack of education I feel the void of it.”
Agassi also told the Sydney Morning Herald that he was never under the influence of the drug while playing tournaments, “because it would have been a disaster. It’s hideous; it’s not the way you feel but what you’re incapable of. Your heart rate runs high enough as it is but to have that kind of heart rate and to tell yourself to calm down and hit a second serve is literally impossible.”
“Then there’s the dehydration factor, the fact you can’t drink a lot of water, you don’t want to eat, you just wanna burn, you wanna burn, you wanna burn. You’d be lucky to last a set; it would not be physically possible to play a match without real health problems.”
Andre again said he was not surprised to the reaction to his book. “I wasn’t surprised by the reaction to his book. You have to remember I lived years feeling angry at myself and disappointed at myself, so the reaction doesn’t surprise me.”
“It took me years to process and it will take other people time to process the shock and to work through the anger and disappointment, but in the end I think calmer heads will rule the day as it relates to the fact that this is the true me — there is nothing about this that isn’t true.”
“It might not be the perception people want of me, and it’s not the perception I want of myself, but it is my true self and in the end that’s what we’re left with.”
Agassi still so “If my story can help one person let alone millions of people who wake up in a life they didn’t choose, wake up in a marriage they didn’t want…if it can help a teenager about to step into the pitfalls I stepped into — then that’s an easy price to pay if the price is some judgments, or some loss of reputation or some false image.”
Agassi’s prime regret was lying to the ATP: “I’m ashamed of it and…had I owned up I would have learned faster and it would have helped me more. I should have owned up. There’s no justification for lying but you’re in a whirl and emotionally and logically you cannot even process what it means.
“In the years after it, I thought to myself, ‘Do you own up now?’ When do you tell the truth? This can’t be a press release, this can’t be an interview — it took me 400 pages to place this in the context of my life.”
The AP’s Howard Fendrich contended, “It turns out Agassi was lying all along. To fans. To opponents. To tennis authorities. To first wife Brooke Shields. To friends, including Barbra Streisand. To the media. And, he says, to himself.
“I can’t live with that anymore,” Agassi told the AP that “These lies — some of them came, certainly, out of fear. A lot of them came out of real confusion. A lot of it was thinking out loud. A lot of it was just getting stuff wrong. And a lot of it started with lies to myself,” Agassi said. “When I retired…I had the opportunity…to turn a real hard lens on myself…[my book is an] atonement for where I’ve been in my life…You’ve got to remember: I spent many years angry and disappointed at myself.”
“How can you tell people to not hide from truth when you hide from it?” Agassi noted. “While I know this story cuts against the grain of one’s perceptions of me, it is the true me. And I believe in that authenticity.”
In the end, Agassi told Fendrich, “It’s about me learning how to commit fully, despite the fear of failure,” he said. “It’s a person waking up in a life that they didn’t choose, in a life that they maybe don’t want, and not being sure how to take ownership of their own life, and figuring that out.”
