I read Open: An Autobiography – Andre Agassi’s autobiography – out of curiosity and a desire to mix things up; I don’t think I’ve ever read a sports autobiography before. I did not expect to love it, but I did – it had me gripped, and I finished it relatively quickly despite rushing around.
It’s a story about how much you can achieve when you are both pulled and pushed, but at what cost. It’s a story about the value of coaching – about how finding people who would push him with kindness helped him achieve more than the people who hounded him into terror. It’s a story about building a team, your team, and about how much of sport is not just physical toughness but mental.
It’s also a story about expectations – from his father and how they drove him forward (but also made him miserable), and about the expectations of the public, especially when you grow up in public, and being unable to meet them. Which makes sense – I learned about it from Gretchen Rubin’s blog.
Anyway, I loved it and I really recommend it, even if you’re not a fan of tennis – it turns out, neither is he.