Life Lessons from Andre Agassi
Life Lessons from Andre Agassi
I LOVED Andre Agassi. Like...loved. Tennis was my jam for about five years in the 1980s — Dropped off at the tennis club at 6:00am (many days half asleep), with my Prince Pro, its massive head and length equal to my whole body. Carpool would pick me up at the club at 8:00, take me to school, and drop me back off at the club after school. On weekends, we would travel to tournaments around Kentucky, where I grew up.
I ranked as high as 30th in the state for my age group as I recall. I loved playing, walloping groundstrokes, pasting massive amounts of topspin on the ball, sporting my one set of fancy Fila sweats for tournaments, and befriending other players in lesson at lessons and tournaments...until I stopped loving it. Eventually, I burned out and wanted to hang out with my friends.
I've always felt a connection to tennis though. Even to this day I enjoy watching professional tennis because it takes me back to my childhood — remembering what it was like — strategize the next shot, how it felt to hit a serve out wide, a topspin forehand, or a backspin drop shot.
I particularly loved Agassi for three reasons:
He played from the baseline (like me) when so many players played serve and volley (I.e., blink-and-you-miss-the-entire-point) tennis
He favored a two-handed backhand (like me) when so many of the greats played one-handed backhands
He was the best returner of serve the game has ever seen (not like me)
Not only was Agassi’s biography Open a trip down memory lane for me revisiting his greatest matches, but it is also an adrenaline-fueled truth serum right to the jugular:
It’s a gripping story about one of the greatest to ever play tennis, forced into the game by his Iranian father, an obsessive former Olympic boxer, and Agassi’s journey to self-discovery, acceptance, and happiness.
It holds nothing back. The title, Open, aptly reflects the candor with which Agassi details the rollercoaster of his entire life, starting with the one million tennis balls, 100 mph missiles, fired at him during each year of his childhood from “the dragon,” (the souped-up family ball machine) to his first year of retirement and parenthood with his wife Steffi Graf.
It’s full of life lessons
Here are some Agassi’s lessons that resonate with me:
Losing fosters learning
“If I had beaten Pete more often, or if he’d come along in a different generation, I’d have a better record, and I might go down as a better player, but I’d be less.”
They were the best of their time, playing 34 times between 1989 and 2002. Archrival Pete Sampras held a 20-14 head-to-head edge, including a 4-1 record in Grand Slam finals. Together, they won a combined 22 major titles, a then-record 14 of them belonging to Sampras.
Agassi looked at opponents like Sampras as mirrors to see what he liked and disliked about himself. He saw losses, particularly to rivals, as opportunities to assess, recalculate, and improve.
Life is about choices
"I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything."
Agassi hated tennis. He played the first half of his career because his father made him, and tennis was all he knew. His life on and off the court was a façade full of tennis victories he didn’t care about, ugly losses that he fashioned for the fun of it, and a marriage to Brooke Shields (a marriage he didn’t want) that imploded. It was only when he began to play simply because he wanted to that true happiness came into his life and he made conscious choices about who he wanted to be.
Commit to something greater
“I found myself connected to something larger than my life. This was my connection with tennis.”
In 1996, Agassi was ranked the number one tennis player in the world. He was engaged to a supermodel. And was miserable. His life spiraled into drugs, divorce, a plummeting ranking, and profound sadness.
Agassi didn’t seem to find himself until he discovered something greater than tennis to commit to. He states in Open that he always felt tennis was kind of meaningless, questioning the point of being the best around at hitting a fuzzy little ball. But when he helped a friend send his kid to college that just felt right and sparked in Agassi. He realized that his tennis skills, money and fame could be used to benefit a greater cause – specifically underprivileged kids living in Las Vegas. In order to give them the best education possible, he set up the Agassi Academy College Prep Academy. Only when he realized this goal did he seem truly happy.
What’s broken about you is what makes you great
“You can’t spread who you are without being broken first. Sometimes, when you’ve been broken into pieces, you come back and give much more to people. You can see my scars and they’re key to me making a difference in other lives now. You can’t have any wounds in this game that don’t leave scars. They never quite heal but they make you who you are.”
One of Agassi’s deepest “scars” is his lack of education. Schooling was put on the back burner as his father prioritized tennis above all else. That scar fueled his tennis career as well as his post-tennis passion for educating thousands of children.
If you have great tennis stories, want to reminisce about Agassi, or want to explore these or other lessons from Agassi’s book and how they can apply to your life, give me a shout. I’d love to discuss further.