Andre Agassi
Open

I don't like autobiographies, but after reading the first chapter on the bookstore's little couch, I had no doubts and purchased “Open” by Andre Agassi. There are several tens of millions of people who play better than I do with a racket in hand, (I was just a small-ranked player when the lowest category was C4), but having competed from a young age, suffered a severe wrist injury hitting a forehand, and having stopped and resumed for at least two decades. I believe all these things made me fully appreciate “Open” and understand better than a novice, or a weekend tennis player, what Agassi tries to describe in his work. I've competed in six sports at an agonistic level, and tennis is the most bastard; you'd like to hate it, but then, perhaps several years later, you find yourself wanting to chase a sound; that of a nice brushstroke on the strings in the center of the racket’s sweet spot. 

I swore three times never to touch my Heads again, each time with tears in my eyes. The first, when I lost a match I particularly cared about and was winning 6-0 4-0. In other sports it's rare for a match to turn in an instant, not here. Since childhood, they teach you to keep your opponent's head underwater, not allowing them to resurface because if doubt creeps into your mind, you'll find yourself under the shower in no time. The second time as a twelve-year-old when my mother made me feel the cost of the lessons after a lousy defeat and made me walk home: the longest 5 km of my life. Although I never told her, I forgave her after more than a decade when I realized that parents are blind and unable to accept the mediocrity/normality of their kids. The third when I realized I wouldn't become anyone; losing hurt too much since I was fighting tooth and nail without seeing tangible improvements. Every racket I broke as a rebellious teenager, I repaid by working summer jobs picking fruit.

It is a slippery sport that gives you nothing, and when Agassi says it's like being on an island, it’s a profound truth. You are alone; in this sport, you don’t have the physical contact to release tension: I've played basketball and soccer, and a good block or tackle helps dissipate it. In this rectangle, however, you keep everything inside because you often play at a distance of 15/20 meters from your opponent, and it can happen that not a single word is exchanged, apart from the score or disputes over line calls, for over 3 hours. So you talk to yourself, cheer yourself on, complain, torment yourself, and try with body language to piss off your opponent: a fist pump, a glance, a passing shot to the body.

If you lose against someone technically inferior, you can't blame the team, the coach who got the play wrong, etc. … You are alone, and you have a damn net that doesn't even allow you to hit the opponent with the ball. In volleyball, at least you can smash the ball into their forearms, fingers, or even face if they're not careful in defense. In this sport, you should not seek the perfection of a shot or move. Having the fastest serve, superior endurance is not enough because there’s no universally winning playing style. You have to adapt, like clay, to the opponent in front of you and play on their weaknesses more than on winning shots. As a youngster, you don't understand that. It’s like chess when you have to anticipate and imagine moves. You scan the player across the net during the warm-up, study them in the first games, and if they are slow, you choose drop shots and lateral movements, if they are tall, use backspin to make them bend their knees and counterattacks. If they are strong on the forehand, destroy them on the backhand and play their shot when they least expect it, maybe on important points. If they comfortably hit flat shots, vary and don't let them find rhythm with weightless balls with big rotations. If they come to the net, try to lower the shots without going for the passing shot, because not everyone can handle a volley at the shoes. Vary the service not only with power shots but with body and outside kicks.

Anyone who says tennis is a sport for ladies has never played it at a competitive level. Beyond the psychological aspect, it is a physically tremendous sport. Endurance and breath are important but not crucial, as rallies rarely last more than 30 seconds, and there are many breaks that, however, don't alleviate the fact that a match consists of sprints, stops, and accelerations on clay and concrete courts that test wrists, elbows, knees, hips, ankles, and shoulders, not to mention leg muscles. Moreover, it is an asymmetrical sport in which you tend to develop one side more than the other. Tennis players have strange, lopsided gaits. Calluses form on the hands and feet that you could light a fire with. It’s a game of endurance, technique, strategy, and mind.

Many speak of a golden age referring to current tennis, but besides the boundless talent of Federer, I see great athletes and very little flair. The fact that on all four surfaces, the top 4 always make it through is indicative: there is a sharp, insurmountable divide, perhaps only the healthy wrist of Del Potro could have cracked it.

With an overly normal physique, 1 meter and 75 (passed off as 1.80) for 70 kg and a disordered life, Andre Agassi managed to win 8 slams in the era of Sampras, Edberg, Becker; when there were "supporting actors" of the caliber of Chang, Stich, Courier, Rafter (my favorite), Muster, Ivanisevic, Enqvist, Henman, Kafelnikov, Kuerten, Moya, Ríos. When fading stars like Wilander, Lendl, McEnroe, and Connors were winding down. Agassi was a unique counterpuncher, able to play half-volley from the baseline and challenge the best serves on the circuit. At 18, with jean shorts and a mohawk haircut, actually a wig, he had already played a Grand Slam final, and two years after winning Wimbledon, he managed to descend to the 150th global position, almost reveling in his masochistic downfall. Mauled by the press and colleagues, with a divorce behind him from the star of Blue Lagoon (Brooke Shields), several injuries (wrist), and 3 slams to his name at 29 years, he restarted from challengers to become No. 1 again and win another 5 trophies. How the hell did he do it? Agassi.

The writing is pleasant, stimulating in its straightforward storytelling of feuds with colleagues and secrets never revealed before. In the description of his friendships (especially with athletic trainer Gil and Brad Gilbert) and loves, we better understand the complex mind of this sporting figure with boundless talent and more than fluctuating performance. Forced by a tennis-obsessed father to hit 2,500 balls a day from the age of 7, Agassi progressively hated this sport imposed like medicine that deprived him of an education, a childhood, and a social life. Trapped in an academy/prison, he unsuccessfully tried to get expelled with absurd behaviors, only to realize he was condemned to become a professional, having developed no other skills that could earn him anything. His greatest difficulty, as often happens to talented players, was finding the right motivations to stay focused on his profession and his game. Eccentric looks as a mask against his shyness for a hypersensitive character, capable of being loyal in friendship as well as in visceral hatred.

Andre's life was a real mess, and the autobiography succeeds in capturing the cynical, bastard, and irresistible essence of this sport without boring us with a colorless sequence of epic victories and bitter defeats. Over 20 years of ATP, most with a melancholic flavor; as if he never managed to enjoy his successes, accept his numerous defeats with Sampras, until meeting Stefanie Graf, who managed to give him that balance and normality he had always searched for in vain.

I doubt he wrote a single line, I didn't believe everything he claimed to be the pure truth (especially when he tends to justify defeats), but it is a magnificent book for a character who gave a modern and edgy image to tennis!