Open, the Autobiography of

Andre Agassi

byJeph Maystruck/Aug 30, 2023/inAdvice, Books, Leadership, Stories

I love Andre’s honesty. You feel like you’re courtside reading this book. The amount of detail he remembers is remarkable. This book had me talking about the stories in it to multiple people after. It’s a classic when it comes to sports psychology. Definitely worth a read!

“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.”

The storytelling is second to none for a sports book.

He remembers every match, every point, every moment. It’s a fascinating peer into the world that is professional sports and the psychology of one of the greatest players to play tennis.

He was a fighter. He was down and out so many times but got back up and served another match. His dedication to a sport he wasn’t in love with was pretty incredible, and why I think anyone can learn something from this book.

He didn’t have the easiest upbringing

“My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day, I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls. He believes in math. Numbers, he says, don’t lie. A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.”

His dad made him practice until he couldn’t lift a racket anymore. Is that good practice? No, you get the sense that he hated parts of his childhood but it made him into the fighter he is today. Hard to fault his dad, he was just trying to make something of his boy.

I can tell you I probably won’t make my daughter or son hit a million balls in a year, but I guess they won’t be world tennis champions either. I think I’ll let them decide.

His rivalry with Sampras was kind of comical by the end. Always realizing that Sampras was likely the better player but Andre out worked him several times. The best part of their relationship had to be when they watched Pete tip a waiter and then went to the same waiter immediately after and pried to get them to reveal how much this tennis world champion tipped. It was less than 10%.

At least Andre could go to bed happy that night knowing that he was the more generous one out of the two.

“What you feel doesn’t matter in the end; it’s what you do that makes you brave.”

He hated Tennis, but still played.

The relationship Andre had with Tennis was peculiar to say the least. Early on in his career he didn’t like it, almost to the point of hatred, but also realizing he had no other talents. If he was going to make money doing something, Tennis was going to be that something.

It’s inspiring to know that you don’t have to fall in love with your craft or art or job for that matter. Sometimes life is telling you something, teaching you something. Sometimes, if you hold on long enough, if you struggle enough, the lesson reveals itself. And that’s what happened to Andre.

“To be inspired – that’s the secret.”

He never found meaning until he helped other people.

He didn’t really seem to find joy in life until he started his foundation and began to help people. He played tennis for more than a decade before he came to an understanding of why he was put on this earth.

If you don’t know your purpose, stop worrying and start working. Through his life the one thing you could count on was his work ethic. He worked as hard as his body would allow him to. That is inspiring.

When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable.
You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man.
-Brad Gilbert

The people closest to you matter the most

The people in his life meant a lot to him. He was only close with a few, as I guess it is when you’re ultra famous. He had a special relationship with his trainer, his coach, his manager. But how he talks about Gil makes me want to be a Gil to someone’s Andre eventually.

“How beautiful to dream. But dreams, I tell Gil, in one of our quiet moments are so damned tiring.”
He laughs.
“I can’t promise you that you won’t be tired”, he says. “But please know this. There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.” -Gil

What great advice to the younger generation, get tired. Work your butt off, do something you once thought was impossible. Because on the other side of impossible is the easy life you’ve always dreamed of.

“Gil’s philosophy in all things is to seek the pain, woo the pain, recognize that pain is life. If you’re heartbroken, Gil says, don’t hide from it. Wallow in it. We hurt, he says, so let’s hurt.”

He didn’t need drugs, or so he thought

He ends up doing Meth at one point, I believe it was inadvertently. But it goes to show you how easy it is to get mixed up with the wrong crowd doing the wrong thing. How he was found out by the Tennis governing body and what they did about it will remain a secret in the book, guess you’ll have to read it!

Why does a loss feel more bad than a win feels good?

“Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last long as the bad. Not even close.”

It’s not about winning. It’s about the competition. World champions don’t do it simply to win, no, they hate losing. As famously put by Billy Beane in Moneyball, “I HATE losing, I hate losing more than I like winning!”

World champions are just stubborn SOB’s that won’t give up. Think Rocky, Rudy or Captain Marvel, they all just won’t give up.

Moral of the story?

You don’t need to win majors, struggle with your mental health, and go off the deep-end into drugs to find meaning in life. Nope, you can just go help people. You’ll find what you’re looking for then.

It’s funny how someone can go from championship to championship but still not be fulfilled. Help people is in our biology, it’s a form of self care. The secret to life is to help people first, worry about yourself later.

Some of his other amazing quotes:

“Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.”

Keep going. Whatever path you’re on, keep moving, even if it’s a step at a time. Forward momentum is hard to stop. So keep going, find your Steffi

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