The moment I opened Andre Agassi's controversial book, Open: An Autobiography
, I was hooked on this brilliant retelling of the story of one of tennis' most colorful champions. The Golden Slam winner (7 grand slams and 1 Olympic gold medal) held nothing from his readers and instead offered an insider look at the lonely world--at least his world--of tennis.
The son of a tennis-obsessed, violent Iranian migrant, Agassi was practically forced into the sport at 8, his father believing all along that he would become world number 1 someday. Thus began his hatred for the sport that would make him one of its most successful players. We all know that tennis rides equally on the mental strength of its players and on their physical agility, and Agassi provided page after page of insight into the mental savagery that went on in every game, including the psychological maneuverings on- and off-court among players, their supporters, and the pesky press.
Much has been said in the media about the crystal meth and Agassi's lying to the ATP to escape a possible banning from the game that he never failed to mention he hated to anyone who was willing to listen. People derided his wild mohawk then, and the public made fun of the hair when it was announced that it was fake after all. The fear that the fake hair would fall during a rally even cost him what could have been his first French Open title.
However, the real story is what went on during the years of his fall from the top of the ranks to outside the 100 circuit because of depression. I remember somewhat following tennis back in my college days on the news. While Sampras won slam after slam, the supposed competition between Agassi and his fellow American helped make the sport very popular in the US in the '90s. I listened to news of his marriage to Brooke Shields and then found months later that Agassi had fallen so far below the rankings that it only made me believe that the actress caused his troubles. In Open, Agassi does not necessarily blame his first wife for his bad results, but it surely factored in the depression over the sport, his life and the treatment he suffered in the hands of the press. However, if ever their relationship had any redeeming value at all, it was that Shields convinced him to ditch the wig.
Months after their divorce, everything started to come together for Agassi. The humbling experience forced him to play in qualifying rounds and challenger circuits in order to be able to compete in more serious tournaments. Eventually, his efforts paid off and he managed to become the fifth man to complete a career Grand Slam and the oldest to be world number one at 32.
The best part, however, is reserved for his courtship of Steffi Graf whom he had already admired even before he won his first major title, how he set up practice sessions with her, followed her around the tennis circuit, and waited for her to call him back. To this reader, "fraulein forehands" represented the elusive but eventually attainable French Open title, and if the cosmos had played any part in their fates, both players won their last French Open titles on the same year.
The implications of Agassi's meth use might have had a bigger impact on tennis although it was just a recreational drug instead of a performance enhancer (I'm no expert on this). His fake wild hair was his way of hiding his confusion over who he was instead of being his way of rebelling against the norms of the sport. But I would dare a guess that what spurred him on to achieve greatness in the sport that he hated was his equal hatred for losing in it. I wonder how much he would have attained had he loved tennis.
(Suzanne Collins) - Not your ordinary young adult fiction, The Hunger Games is about the brutal tradition of sending youths to an annual tournament where victory is achieved through merciless killing of all other participants.
(Malcolm Gladwell) - The central idea for this book is that successful people do not reach their potential by themselves. Instead, Gladwell argues that success is often a result of a combination of right timing, help from family and community, and thousands of hours of preparation. In fact, to be truly primed for success, a person should have logged in at least 10,000 hours of preparation or practice in the field of their specialization, whether it is in technology, sports, or music. Moreover, a person's cultural background and family history plays a great role in one's success, which makes you realize that your background may either be a help or a hurdle towards reaching your potential.
(Audrey Niffeneger) - This might as well have been titled The Time Traveler, as it is mostly about the chrono-impaired man who jumps from one period to another within the span of his and his wife's lifetime. He meets her first when she is 9 and last when she is 80; he only lives to his early forties.
(Bill Bryson) - I'm still reading this tome, a chocful of compressed bits of information about how the universe and the earth came to be, and how the forces that shaped the cosmos for millions of years allowed you to be here in the first place.
(Ken Follet) - This is just a runner up, but for those who wish to have an idea of how those majestic cathedrals that date back to the medieval times were built, and how their builders went about their business of...well, building...this book is a good place to start.
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