Sport

Agassi can't live with the lies anymore

November 10, 2009 Edition 1

HOWARD FENDRICH

WASHINGTON: Andre Agassi says his book is part of his atonement for saying and doing things he now wishes he hadn't. It turns out Agassi was lying throughout his career. To fans. To opponents. To tennis authorities. To first wife Brooke Shields. To friends, including Barbra Streisand. To the media. And, he says, to himself.

"I can't live with that anymore," Agassi said in a telephone interview with AP.

"These lies - some of them came, certainly, out of fear. A lot of them came out of real confusion. A lot of it was thinking out loud. A lot of it was just getting stuff wrong. And a lot of it started with lies to myself," Agassi said.

"When I retired from tennis, I had the opportunity, the time, the energy, to turn a real hard lens on myself."

His book "Open" allows Agassi to unburden himself of secrets he's carried for years. Secrets about using crystal meth, about evading punishment for a failed drug test, about wearing a hairpiece, about what he calls a long-standing hatred of tennis.

Agassi described the memoir, crafted by Pulitzer Prize winner JR Moehringer from recordings of the eight-times Grand Slam champion's taped recollections, as part of his "atonement for where I've been in my life."

As he retraces that life in present tense, Agassi sets out to explain himself and describe his journey from ninth-grade dropout to founder of a prep school in Las Vegas. He writes about his courtship of tennis star Steffi Graf, now his wife and the mother of their two children.

Along the way, he offers critical words for rivals such as Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Boris Becker; discusses "tanking" matches; and poignantly describes his childhood fear of his father.

Agassi recounts how, when he was a kid, his father would give him Excedrin before matches because it contained caffeine. Once, Agassi writes, his father gave him what Agassi believes to be speed.

He also writes at various points about using marijuana and alcohol. Speaking to AP, Agassi called crystal meth "a performance inhibitor" and said, "Everything I earned on the tennis court, I actually had to probably earn more than I needed to, because of many of the things I did to myself."

Asked whether he ever took performance-enhancing substances as a professional, Agassi - who retired in 2006 - replied, with a light chuckle, "No. No. The answer is 'No'."

He is not surprised by the negative reactions to some of the book's revelations. Martina Navratilova, for example, likened Agassi to baseball's Roger Clemens; Roger Federer referred to material in the book as "a bit of a pity."

Agassi understands such responses because, "You've got to remember: I spent many years angry and disappointed at myself."

He said he simply felt compelled to confess to using crystal meth "a lot" in 1997, failing a doping test that year, lying to the men's tennis tour about how the drug entered his system and avoiding punishment.

"How can you tell people to not hide from truth when you hide from it?" Agassi said in the interview. "While I know this story cuts against the grain of one's perceptions of me, it is the true me. And I believe in that authenticity."

He added: "I have no regrets about what's in there."

There are plenty of fascinating passages, aside from the "sensationalised" excerpts sold to magazines and newspapers as part of the publicity push.

He hopes people will read the entire book so they can appreciate what he called its "power."

"It's about me learning how to commit fully, despite the fear of failure," he said. "It's a person waking up in a life that they didn't choose, in a life that they maybe don't want, and not being sure how to take ownership of their own life, and figuring that out."

The book also is about tennis: