Part of his preparation for matches would be to say things out loud that would make him feel brave, like “control what you can control.”
In Open: An Autobiography, Agassi's excellent 2010 book, the tennis legend leads off telling about his epic 5-setter at the 2006 U.S. Open against Marcos Baghdatis, in which both of them go through severe physical turmoil.
When he was a boy, his violent Armenian father would demand Andre hit 2,500 balls a day and one million balls a year on their backyard Vegas desert court to help make him unbeatable. And he would foam at the mouth if young Andre hit the ball into the net, training him with a net raised an extra six inches. His father set him up to hit with Jimmy Connors when Andre was four, and Connors said the boy was “sure to become very good.”
Not only did little Andre hit against Connors, but he got to hit with his idol Bjorn Borg and Ilie Nastase, who was a real jerk to him. His father bet a large sum of money with the former NFL great Jim Brown to battle Andre, and Andre crushed Brown 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.
His father escaped from Iran and landed in Chicago via Ellis Island. He changed his name to Mike and was a boxer who instilled in Andre to counterpunch. If someone’s strong suit was their forehand, keep hitting it to their forehand so they come to hate their forehand. The same for a serve or any other strength.
His father screwed up the tennis chances of Andre’s other siblings by holding on too long as their coach, so he sends the boy away to Florida, to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, whose owner seems 250 years old to Andre because of his love of tanning. He quickly finds out that the place is like a Lord of the Rings jungle prison. One inmate is Jim Courier, who likes to play drums his parents sent him. One reason Agassi had his famous pierced ears was because jewelry was not allowed by the creepy heads of Bradenton Academy, where the tennis kids bussed to school while at Bolletierri. He also got a pink mohawk. Eventually Agassi amazingly coerces Nick to let him drop out of school to take correspondence courses. Andre is so excited that, at 14, he will never have to learn anything ever again! Even more amazingly, Nick eventually becomes Andre’s coach and, dare say, friend.
In Agassi’s second tournament as a pro, when he was still just 16, he played John McEnroe, “which feels like playing John Lennon. The man is a legend … although I’ve often rooted against him, because his arch rival, Borg, was my idol.” McEnroe won soundly, 6-3, 6-3. But the star gives a glowing endorsement of the kid after the match and that gets the tennis world aware of the possible new star.
Agassi was a bit intimidated the first time he headed to New York for the U.S. Open, in 1986. He lost in the first round and proceeded to go on a terrible losing streak. He felt he was often better than the players he was losing to but instead of raising his game like he did with better players, he was pressing, “not letting things flow,” which “is one of the deadliest things you can do in tennis.”
At one point he walked across the street after losing in Washington D.C. and “berated the trees” in Rock Creek Park. He then gave all his racquets to a group of homeless men in the park. At this point he was truly set to quit tennis, but there was a message on his machine back at the hotel that tells his a player has dropped out of a North Carolina tournament and they would pay him $2,000 just to show up. It was there that he started to catch fire, soon winning matches against Michael Chang, Luke Jensen, and Pat Cash. He eventually lost to world #1 Ivan Lendl in Vermont in the semis (after he also witnessed Lendl walking around the locker room before the match with nothing but tennis shoes on). Lendl, ever the jerk, told the press that all Agassi had was a “haircut and a forehand.”
That's my summary of the book's first third (see Part 2). As you can tell, it's juicy stuff. And besides a haircut and a forehand, Agassi sure can spin a yarn.
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