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Open: An Autobiography |  | Author: Andre Agassi
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $28.95
Buy New: $12.99
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Rating:  351 reviews
Sales Rank: 342
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.6
ISBN: 0307268195
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.342092
EAN: 9780307268198
ASIN: 0307268195
Publication Date: November 9, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography.
Agassi’s incredibly rigorous training begins when he is just a child. By the age of thirteen, he is banished to a Florida tennis camp that feels like a prison camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. He dyes his hair, pierces his ears, dresses like a punk rocker. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning-fast return.
And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world’s best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target.
Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals from several generations—Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer—Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals a shattering loss of confidence. And he recounts his spectacular resurrection, a comeback climaxing with his epic run at the 1999 French Open and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one.
In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf. Inspired by her quiet strength, he fights through crippling pain from a deteriorating spine to remain a dangerous opponent in the twenty-first and final year of his career. Entering his last tournament in 2006, he’s hailed for completing a stunning metamorphosis, from nonconformist to elder statesman, from dropout to education advocate. And still he’s not done. At a U.S. Open for the ages, he makes a courageous last stand, then delivers one of the most stirring farewells ever heard in a sporting arena.
With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, Open will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi’s game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed, and power.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 351
 A Captivating Memoir March 9, 2010
Barbara Badham (petaluma, CA)
I do not have enough superlatives in my vocabulary to adequately describe this book. Just looking at the dust jacket tells you that this memoir is aptly named. On the front cover, Andre meets your gaze directly with eyes that tell you that he is vulnerable and wanting to hold nothing back. The photo on the back shows a sad little boy keeping his eye on the ball, perfecting his backhand but hating and fearing the sport into which his father drafted him. In the 388 pages in between, Andre bares his soul. It's all there--the drug and alcohol abuse, the wear and tear on his body, his lack of a high school education, his victories and defeats, the lie that he concocted when he tested positive for crystal meth, the story of his hair falling out, on and on, related with almost perfect recall. Andre was much more candid than you would expect a celebrity to be, if perhaps a little too hard on himself. I only sensed that he held back in talking about his romantic life, not wanting to dish out the dirt on Brooke Shields and describing his current wife Steffi Graf in nothing but glowing terms. But you can hardly fault him for that, right? (No pun intended.) Andre's story "ends" well, although at age 36 in this book he is still far from his final chapter. He is happily married, with the proverbial boy and girl to raise, retired from tennis, and founder of an educational foundation for underprivileged children that funds a school in his name. And not until the very end do we find out that Andre paired his eidetic memory with the elegant wordsmithing of a supremely talented ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer. He begins the book with a phrase that could just as easily conclude it: "I open my eyes and don't know where I am or who I am." While Andre's identity crisis is very real and perhaps the dominant theme of Open, by the book's conclusion the reader senses that he is well on his way to finding out and this gives me hope that he has at least one more book in him for us to look forward to. Game, set , and match--Agassi.
One of the best books I've read, hands down. Awesome. Loved it. March 8, 2010
CMA (Santa Rosa, CA USA)
I am not into tennis nor did I know anything more of Andre Agassi other than he was a tennis player when I began reading his online book reviews while searching for a good book to read. I was drawn to read Agassi's story by all the positive reviews and was not disappointed when I picked up the book and began reading. I couldn't put it down. Agassi says something we can all learn from. I have jotted down lines from "Open" to read and re-read, reminding myself that choosing your life changes everything. This was not just a story of a boy who had no choices, but of a man who powered through those youthful years and his career with amazing fortitude, with a vision in mind. He was surrounded by people who believed in him, his character and his strength, and from that love and support he selflessly chose to help better the future for others. I didn't want this book to end. It was sweet irony that Agassi's childhood passion was literature and poetry, and that he was finally able to put down his tennis racquet and allow us into his private life, encouraging us to choose our destinies by sharing his own personal story, through his passion for literature.
 Exciting autobiography March 8, 2010
Wannabee writer (Ecublens, Switzerland)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This autobiography can also interest those readers who are not tennis fans because the author writes a great deal about his parents, the people who helped make him into a tennis champion and about his relationships with the three important women in his life. Once you start reading, it is difficult to put the book down.
Know Nothing About Tennis but Loved it! March 7, 2010
Full House (CA USA)
Andre Agassi keeps it real, in a very good way. He seems to have an open soul. Whoever he had helping him do the mechanics of writing is a brilliant writer. Each sentence piqued my interest to read the next, as did the paragraphs and the pages. I enjoyed reading this book, and read it too fast.
Not one chapter bored me or made me wish to skip it. This book is very well-written.
I never liked tennis either, but the power and competition of the games he described really gathered me in. I know a lot about competitive sports, so I could relate to the heart-crushing defeats and the mind-blowing wins. How sport does become a metaphor and frame for life. One gets knocked down, and one gets up again.
Thank you, Mr. Agassi, for allowing us quite close into your world, to see how you grew despite emotional abuse, and how you truly did become the kind of person that makes a difference on the planet. I miss being in on the ups and downs of your life.
Agassi is astoundingly open March 7, 2010
M. Hendricks (Sandpoint, ID United States)
There's something about gut-level honesty. It has power to move us, to lift us and it can even to inspire us to tell the truth about our own lives. Agassi's book does all of this and more. I was riveted, and not by the sensational aspects. Through a Dickensian childhood into a turbulent life, the young prodigy was thrust into a life he didn't choose. Agassi's real triumph was that he learned what happens when you choose the life you have. Ultimately, this is a story of the redemptive power of love - for Stefanie, for those around him, but most of all for life - and Andre's determination to wrest that love out of what could have been a place of flash and ashes.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 351
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