Review: Open by Andre Agassi and JR Moehringer

Reading the book, I felt on most pages that Agassi is eager to provoke controversy and ensure a blockbuster of a book. I don't know if this technique deserves some kudos: he did "provoke controversy and ensure a blockbuster of a book successfully"  without alluding to sex. But he delivered them at the expense of Pete Sampras and his repeated insistence that he hates tennis (although his arguments supporting this claim remains not solid to me). Other Agassi factoids:  

• No underwear while playing tennis.
• Snorted meth.
• Courted Steffi Graf with flowers
• Wore wigs, and was worrying about it on some matches.
• Hits Pete Sampras for being a bad tipper
• Mad jealous when Brooke Shields licked matt leblanc hands for a Friends episode (she was very excited to get the guesting job).
• also 'sufficiently' discussed affairs with celebrities.  

No one can deny however the book’s fantastic facility in describing the tennis games, drills, and struggles in-game. They are the best Ive ever read for tennis, even in comparison to the long newspaper articles that come up in SI or the sports sections, during good grandslam tournaments.

There is also the remarkable  illustration that sportsmen somehow are not very different from showmen who feels proud to put on a “good show.” There is a section where Agassi explained beautifully how he held hands with a beaten down opponent to marvel at the telecast and praises accorded to their game in the evening news.

Credit indeed must go to JR Moehringer (a collaborator) for making a cohesive book out of these courting-controversy factoids, and writing Awwwww-generating sentences, like this one of Agassi referring to his future wife Stafanie “Steffie” Graf

“She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good. Also, as if she was good, fundamentally, essentially, inherently good, brimming with moral rectitude and a kind of dignity that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Awwwww (to borrow from Jessica Zafra).