Inside Tennis: Okay, let’s start with a fool’s question. If you could go back and change one thing…
Andre Agassi: I would have changed my environment so that it would have allowed me to have an education, which would have kept me from a lot of angst. But I wouldn’t have had my wife, so that’s why it’s a fool’s question.
IT: You said you hated tennis. But people responded, saying hold on: through tennis you got so much — fame, fortune, position, plus it led to your marriage, family, the Academy. Where’s the appreciation man?
AA: I’m not saying woe is me. I’m saying this is me. There’s a big difference. I’m not suggesting that I didn’t have a lot of things. What I’m saying is what I wanted was something deeper inside that was missing. I wanted a connection to my life. I was very much aware of what I had. People have real problems in life, people don’t have jobs.
IT: When Billie Jean King first saw you when you were just six, she said wow, this kid’s got an “it” factor. You’ve been blessed with this engaging charisma: a Vegas/American kid who’s on an odyssey. What’s been the impact of Vegas on the journey?
AA: Vegas is a can-do city, a city where if you think it, you can do it. So, there is a level of bluff that I picked up from Vegas. For me, it was a bluff.
IT: The hair, your whole persona?
AA: Every time I faced a new section of my life where I didn’t believe in myself, I would fold or bluff my way through and be surprised at how I got through it.
IT: You tanked a big match against Michael Chang at the ‘96 Aussie Open?
AA: It’s not tanking. You don’t pre-determine, “I’m going to lose today.” It’s more hideous than that. You know physically or emotionally you can’t go through something you don’t believe in. You feel unprepared, unworthy in a way. So there is a lot of inner turmoil that makes the whole experience of losing a match like that just hideous.
IT: Speaking of Chang, he really got under your skin. In your book, you were pretty candid about a lot of people.
AA: The book is written in the present tense. My goal was to communicate in the heat of battle. There’s no judgment looking back on Chang, but I would be remiss not to speak of my innermost psyche. When somebody beats you and then thanks God for beating you, it absolutely gets into your kitchen.
IT: What pissed you off more — Courier going out for a kind of in-your-face jog after beating you in Paris, [as if to say playing you was a breeze] or Boris Becker [saying you were aloof and unliked in the locker room].
AA: Boris, absolutely. It was way too personal. But again, Boris and I went out to Oktoberfest, had a few beers and he said, “Man, you beat me eight times in a row, I had to get in your kitchen. And by the way, you should do this with Pete.”
IT: You say some pretty strong things about Jimmy Connors. (See sidebar.)
AA: I just spoke it how it was. Looking back, I realize that I spent about seven minutes of my life talking to Jimmy. A lot of that came when I was seven years old. So, I don’t know the guy. So, it’s only a judgment. But when you’re 18 , playing someone you looked up to when you were four and your dad strung racquets for him and then he blows you off and people are calling out that ‘you’re a punk, he’s a legend’ — that stuff stays with you, it’s formative. It added so profoundly to my angst and insecurities.
IT: So, your father made you hit 2,500 balls a day. In retrospect do you wish you had just said, “Dad, there’s no way, I quit.” Or was your dad really onto something in terms of the ball machine and…
AA: As it relates to being successful on court, no question. But, how do you define success as a parent? How do you define it for your child? My dad defines success differently than I do.
IT: But with him, that was, an abusive situation.
AA: I don’t think so.
IT: You don’t think so?
AA: No. I don’t think my father was abusive because, you have to remember, along with that came a fierce love and a man who was very proud of his son, which is a powerful emotion.
IT: I was on a plane once when your dad just stood up and announced, “My son’s Andre Agassi and he’s playing Davis Cup this weekend.”
AA: [Laughs.] I never heard that. He was so proud of me. He’d introduce me as the future No. 1 player in the world. It wasn’t about him, it was — it was about me. So, I didn’t feel abused by that. I felt loved. I just wish it was a little bit less. But sometimes I just wanted to disappear, you know?
IT: You poured out so much in this book, detailing so much of your feelings about your childhood and your relationship with your dad. Yet, he says he doesn’t need to read the book, he was there. But is there a part of you that says, “Come on Dad, take a little time and …?”
AA: No, No, The answer would be no. I’ve reconciled it in my own mind. He is very consistent and I understand his capacities, and I have him contained in my own mind.
IT: Actually your grandmother was incredibly tough on him and he in turn was tough on you. Now as you raise Jaz and Jaden do you think that the cycle has been broken?
AA: That side [of the family] was broken. But here’s my point. If my dad knew your pain, he would turn on a dime. He just never recognized that there was pain.
IT: When he first met Steffi’s dad, the two of them, who were both into boxing, almost came to blows. Steffi’s dad insisted your dad should have taught you a one-handed slice like Steffi’s and your dad said Steffi should have had a two-hander like yours. So which father was right? Who would have benefited more — you with a slice or Steffi with a two-hander?
AA: Steffi could hit the best slice backhand. It could neutralize a lot, but it didn’t always work offensively… [A two-hander] would have helped her on the second serve return, which is a huge shot in women’s tennis. So, that might be the deciding factor. Second serve return, she could have pounded it.
IT: When you were a kid, your dad told you, “Don’t think. You’re going to be No. 1, that’s the plan. That’s it. No thinking.” Then, years later, when you were getting to know Steffi and were caught in your head and stuck in your thoughts, she insisted “no, it’s all about feelings, stop thinking.”
AA: My father didn’t want me to think. Because he wanted me to do what he was saying. He thought and still thinks he has the answers to pretty much everything. Steffi wanted me to stop thinking so that I could feel my own answers, so that I could feel my own conclusions, so that I could just let it happen.
IT: Did you do that?
AA: At times I felt it more than I could do it. I wasn’t good at it, because I’m analytical by nature.
IT: You’re one of the more analytical ninth-grade dropouts I know. Speaking of Steffi, before your first wedding, Brooke Shields was stressing big time about losing weight so she would look good in her wedding dress, so for inspiration she famously put up a picture on the fridge, in a heart frame no less, of a trim lady — Steffi Graf. Incredible!
AA: You know, the universe talks to most people, but it screams at others. I just felt the universe screaming.
IT: There have been so many coincidences in your life. [see sidebar]
AA: If you took my life to a movie producer they would tell you, ‘ok, we’ve got to make this somewhat believable.’ So, goodbye and they wouldn’t even validate my parking ticket.
IT: Your dad saw a show on the TV show 20/20 on Bolliettieri’s and immediately decided to send you there. You saw a show on 20/20 on charter schools and you soon decided to start one in Vegas. And, we’re now talking at a theater on 2020 Addison Street in Berkeley.
AA: That’s incredible.
IT: You pointed out that the three key people in your life — Steffi, your dad and Gil — were not native English-speakers.
AA: They all communicate more physically in all different ways than they do [verbally]. It’s powerful, it’s ironic, it’s incredible.
IT: There was so much in the book on Brooke. It seemed like you had to get a lot of that out.
AA: That was five years of my life. Those five years marked the middle of a crazy time.
IT: Brooke just couldn’t connect with the tennis world and with you as a tennis player.
AA: Not any more than I could connect with her world. Those were the waters I navigated. There were some harsh truths, but I tried to turn a harder lens on myself.
IT: And your on-court career was in turmoil too. So Brad [Gilbert] issued a fateful ultimatum in a Stuttgart hotel, saying, “Hey man, we need to either turn this mother around or just quit.”
AA: I can’t recall how long I sat there. But I got lost in thought. I knew I couldn’t quit. I’ve never been a quitter. I had to push myself through this, I had to live it, I had to take ownership.
IT: The two most charismatic players in our era are you and Serena. Both of you were the youngest in a big, western tennis family with pushy dads and empowering moms. Like you, Serena actually had an intentionally bad practice shot, which would give her a breather from her dad’s intense practice drills. Both of you moved to Florida, hated school there and had a Bollettieri connection. Plus, both of you were No. 1 but lost it big time and had serious bouts with depression, played for the wrong reasons and saw your rankings go south to triple-digit-ville. Both of you just wrote revealing bios. In hers she won’t name her boyfriend who dumped her, in yours you won’t name “Slim,” the man who got you into drugs. And you both recently got entwined in huge controversies. She said she went into therapy, did you?
AA: Tennis is just not a life that allows you to do a whole lot of looking at yourself because you’re so exposed. You’re constantly under pressure, and once you start to open up, you’ve got to go through all that bad stuff to get to the good stuff.
IT: Serena looked at her suffering and went into talk therapy.
AA: I tried. But, when you start doing therapy and really start to get answers and hear yourself, you go backwards before you go forwards and in tennis you never have the time to go backward. So, we’d start to make progress and then it just wasn’t effective.
IT: So talk about the incredible pressure of being a top tennis star.
AA: Tennis is the loneliest sport. It has more pressure than any other sport. Even in boxing, you’re in there with somebody and you talk with your corner man. In tennis, we don’t talk with each other, we can’t touch each other, we can’t smell each other, we’re on islands out there.
IT: When we see Federer, he plays with such ease, an almost dreamy serenity.
AA: I never identified with somebody like that. I never knew if I believed it. And if it is believable, it’s certainly a different life than I’ve had. When you see those moments like when he lost to Nadal and he just broke down, you wonder what he’s suppressing.
IT: Did that make him more human?
AA: For sure, I certainly understood that emotion.
IT: What about Sampras? You said you lost a lot of titles because of him, but you also learned more because of Pete.
AA: He shined a light on what was so apparently obvious. I needed inspiration and the way that he went about his work made me feel very different. He made me feel like an alien. He made me look at myself pretty hard. He made me understand.
IT: He was so into tennis. Were you inspired by his focus?
AA: Yeah, I always thought tennis played too much a part in his life and not enough in mine.
IT: Okay, so permit me to play the hair card. Why was it so important to you for so long?
AA: I watched my brother lose his hair and when you see something as a youngster it leaves an indelible mark. It really was hard on him, so I had just a natural fear because it came with so much angst and torture. Then you look at how much was associated with it, the attention brought to it. It became my identity, in my own mind at least. I didn’t know what it meant and I was going through it on a world stage. It was way more important that it should have been.
IT: In a way it was fraudulent.
AA: When I got rid of it, it was a step toward the truth. My life has been fighting for truth.
