"Open" confirms that "image is everything" - Agassi really is as meatheaded as he appears

I've been watching tennis for over 30 years. It's the only sport about which I can speak with any valid authority. So don't try to argue with me when I say that Andre Agassi should have been the greatest tennis player of his generation, and that if he performed to his maximum potential, if he worked his ass off and exploited all the genetic gifts his parents gave him, he would have been mentioned in the handful of greatest players of all time. Up there with Budge and Borg and Tilden and Kramer, supplanting Sampras, not better than Laver or Federer but mentioned in the same breath. David Foster Wallace wrote the single best piece of sports writing ever in which he described Federer's transcendent game, better than Updike's piece about a lyric little bandbox. You should read it, and the footnotes. While you're at it, read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men; forgo the movie.

You've heard that Agassi was the best counter-puncher of all time. But you likely don't know why. Not really. I'll tell you. He had great power off both sides, and he had amazing foot speed. But what made Agassi special is that he could do two things better than anyone I've ever seen:

1. His ability to hit the ball on the rise was super-human. His ability to see the ball is probably Ted Williamsesque. Hitting the ball on the rise, or "taking the ball early," means getting your racquet on the ball immediately after it bounces, and before it reaches its vertical apex after the bounce. I was surprisingly decent at this at the high school level because I worked on my timing to compensate for my miserable depth perception, lack of power, and plodding foot speed. But Agassi could take the ball on the rise when it was served by Sampras. You can't time a pro serve, not against the best in the world who know how to mix up their pace like Pedro Martinez. Agassi simply had better vision, hand-eye coordination, and reflexes than anyone I've ever seen. This allowed him to crowd the baseline, or stand closer to the court than normal humans, and thus gave him angles that weren't available to mortals, and added extra pace to his shots. Agassi feasted on second serves, which sacrifice pace for accuracy by adding topspin, which in turn makes the ball kick higher. Standing closer to the service box made the ball kick into Agassi's wheelhouse and allowed him to hit outright winners off of second serves. Except for Sampras, whose second serve deserves its own 1,000 word analysis.

2. He held the ball on the racquet longer than anyone I've ever seen. I have no empirical data to support this assertion. But if you watched him enough, you could see that he could change his mind mid-stroke and take the ball cross-court instead of down the line, or hit a lob instead of a sizzling line drive, without changing his swing or even his grip. Opponents simply never knew what was going to come back at them after they hit the ball to Agassi's side of the net. But they knew that anything could happen, and that scared them.

These two skills in combination made his return game insanely dangerous, neutralizing all but the best service games. And this allowed him to completely disguise his shots during a point. He didn't have to drop the head of his racquet to lob or open his hips for a cross-court shot like normal players. You simply could not predict where the ball was going based on his pre-shot set-up, or even his mid-shot stroke. And he had several lobs in his arsenal, some of which made his lob as good as a passing shot. No one should have been able to come to the net against him.

I watched tennis religiously from 1988 to 1992, trying to pick things up to make my game better. I briefly adopted a foot-crossing tic on my serve a la Edberg (the most graceful player ever) but it didn't work for me (the least graceful player ever). Becker's deep knee-bend and back arch actually made my serve better (until I screwed up my back). As did Lendl's looping forehand and Graf's slice backhand. But I was physically incapable of doing the things Agassi did on the court.

Throw in Agassi's speed and power, and he should have been unbeatable. And he's American. With a gigantic chip on his shoulder. Swagger like Mick Jagger. Right up my alley, right?

I never liked Agassi though. The hair. The earring. Image is everything. Barbra Streisand. The Prince painted to look like a Donnay. Refusing to play Wimbledon. The periodic lack of dedication to his craft. And most importantly, the colossal choke-inducing mental weakness.

Even things about Agassi that I should like weren't quite right. Nike made cool kicks for him, but he wore the pink-and-black ones instead of the orange-and-navy ones. He liked to party but he drank margaritas. He collects cars, but they're all white and cheesy (e.g., mid-80's Vette, Hummer, '76 Eldorado convertible, Vector W8, Jeep Wrangler).

Simply put, he's a meathead. A preposterously gifted meathead, but a meathead nonetheless. And lazy too. I recently thought my opinion was too harsh. We actually have a lot in common. Like wasted talent. If I ever gave a shit in high school I might have gone to a real college with national street cred. If I ever gave a shit in college I might have gone to top-notch graduate schools. We both had failed marriages. We smoked pot (somehow Agassi's potheadedness gets much less press than his methheadedness, but he apparently smoked his fair shair at the Bolletieri Academy). We suffer from hair loss. Eventually we got our acts together and became successful at our chosen professions.

So I looked forward to his autobiography, Open. I thought it would illuminate the source of his failures in Grand Slam finals. Like his inexcusable loss to Andres Gomes in the 1990 French Open Final, which I watched with the same awe-struck gape-mouthed stupor as the final seconds of the Super Bowl following the 1990 NFL season. Or his loss in the 1990 U.S. Open Final in which Sampras won his first slam and all but played tinkle with Agassi. Or his collapse in the 1991 French Open to Jim Courier where he was up 2 sets to 1. I thought it would explain why he would work his way to a top 10 ranking, then plummet, then get back into the top 10, then plummet again, then surge again.

And I guess it did. But the answer is completely unsatisfying: as I suspected, the guy's a lazy meathead. He's like Nuke LaLoosh come to life, complte with the million dollar arm and 5 cent head.

It turns out that Agassi was, like most people, a scared and insecure kid who was overwhelmed by life. His dad forced him into tennis, a sport that he hates to this day, actually hates, and was incapable of showing him love or affection or approval. He was lousy at school and dropped out after 9th grade, so he's also insecure about his brain power. All that he had was this amazing, borderline supernatural, ability to do something that he hates, with no desire to excel at it and nothing to fall back on. So he didn't work hard at tennis or conditioning and he melted down in big games.

Agassi's book doesn't paint a sympathetic figure though. He continued to melt down throughout his career, even into his 30's when he should have mastered the mental part of the game. He finally decided to get into shape towards the end of his career but only after surrounding himself with an entourage that supported his childish psyche (it's amazing to learn how many people, both on and off his payroll, it took to keep his mental and physical act together; it's also amazing that he doesn't seem to appreciate what a pampered schmuck he was, or how lucky he was to find so many people willing to make large personal sacrifices for his success). He wore a toupe, and blames his loss in the 1990 French Final on a toupe malfunction. He listens to Barry Manilow and Michael Bolton. Seriously. He said that shit like it's a legitimate musical preference.

What I found most frustrating was some time in his 30's, Agassi realized that Sampras treats tennis like a job, and that Sampras "does it with brio and dedication." Incredible! The guy was a pro athlete for just about half his life at this point, and he just realized that hard work and dedication pay off?! He never understood that giving a shit yields better results?! And that tennis was his job!? I shook my head for a good 15 seconds after I read that sentence.

The only thing I can personally relate to is his relationship with Brooke Shields. She told him the words she wanted to hear for her proposal, and that if he ever expected to propose he better damn well use those words. He had one closet for his stuff in their entire house. Their wedding was supposed to look like a fairy tale. Upon learning that they were going to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela, she went out and bought matching safari outfits. It sounds like he wasn't really sure that he wanted to propose but was bullied and confused and the next thing he knew he was talking to caterers and wedding planners. Sound familiar? Like a guy you know who should have a radio show with The Teej? TR and Marlin are slowly nodding yes.

Agassi confirmed a number of my suspicions: Chang is a Bible-beating dork; Sampras is a tool and he's cheap; Jimmy Connors is a world-class asshole; Courier is a prick; Nadal is the fastest tennis player ever; Brooke Shields is lousy in bed (I made that up ... but if you read between the lines you can see it). The only person that received kind words from Agassi, outside of his family and circle of sycophants/employees, was Pat Rafter, confirming my suspicion that Rafter was the classiest tennis player of his era.

Some other worthwhile stuff came out of Agassi's book. It explains a series of insanely intense matches with Boris Becker, including the 1995 U.S. Open Semifinal match in which their hatred for each other was palpable, even on TV. It's also clear that Agassi found happiness in his second marriage, and I have to applaud him in that regard. Divorce puts you through an emotional wringer no matter how amicable it may be. So for some reason I have to root for other divorced guys (unless they're philanderers or wifebeaters) and I'm glad things are working out for him on the homefront. Agassi also found a sense of purpose, namely his school for poor kids in his home town of Las Vegas, which propelled him through the final two or three years of his career.

There's no reason to read Open unless you're really into tennis. You know he wore a rug. You know he used meth regularly for a while. You know he failed a drug test and lied his way out of a suspension. That's all the salacious stuff, nothing else really.

You probably read the book already if you're an Agassi fan. If you're like me, if you followed Agassi's entire career as a neutral observer and can't figure out for the life of you why he didn't win at least four more Slams, Open isn't completely satisfying. It confirms that Agassi suffers from deep psychological insecurity and mental fragility, and that he's not too bright. Amazingly, his preposterous reflexes are discussed once, in passing, in one paragraph on page 28, in which he describes hitting balls from a Lobster as a kid. His natural abilities deserve more full treatment, at least their own chapter. Wallace's article (supra) does a better job describing them than Agassi does.

What I took away is that Agassi was a tremendously gifted athlete who didn't want his gifts but was forced to use them, who was exploited to a degree, who purposely self-destructed several times in response but eventually made peace with his lot in life, and, despite his meatheadedness, despite all his efforts to the contrary, managed to find happiness and purpose within and outside of his talents. We should all be so lucky.