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Open — Andre Agassi
Tennis and life, tennis is life
Reading this book, especially in the first chapters in which Agassi talks about his childhood, it doesn’t seem like a true story at all. It reads like one of those literary fiction novels whose protagonists live such strange lives that they can only have sprung from someone’s imagination.
A father so obsessed with tennis who forces all his children to practice and play until one of them becomes a champion? But what the hell is this?
It is true that sometimes reality is so incredible that it far surpasses fantasy.
Agassi’s story is interesting, beyond his particularly troubled youth and the great successes he had in his career (after all, he was one of the greatest tennis players in history). What makes it truly compelling is that it offers the reader, and especially the tennis fan like me, a window into the mind of a tennis player. In fact, we who love to watch this sport observe the players during their matches and suffer a little with them, but we have no idea what goes on in their minds. Not really. We can only make assumptions based on their actions, their looks, their body language. We hear and read their interviews, but even then, we don’t know what they are really thinking or whether it matches their words or not.
