Open by Andre Agassi (Book 1 Post 1)

When I found out that for our first book we had to choose from a list of memoirs–I was stoked as memoirs are my favorite type of book. As I scoured through the list of books we were given, there were a few that caught my eye, however, I remembered that there was a memoir I had really been meaning to read–Open by Andre Agassi. I immediately reached out to Professor Hansen to see if I could read it as a substitute and he gave me the green light. There were many reasons why I wanted to read this book. For one, I have played tennis since I was only eight years old and I wanted to read about what it would be like to become a professional tennis player. Also, my parents and grandparents were big Andre Agassi fans, and we would watch his matches together when I was a kid. Lastly, this book has been recommended to me by so many different people so I wanted to see what the hype was about. Before reading the book, I already knew it talked about Agassi’s struggles with anxiety and depression and the monumental amount of pressure that was put on him. So one thing I wanted to get out of this book was how he was able to overcome all of that and become one of the greatest tennis players to ever step foot on the court.

As for the content of the book, I was immediately blown away. In the second paragraph of the first chapter, Agassi confesses that he has hated the sport of tennis from when he was only seven years old. His father–a former Olympic boxer–would chase him around his house with his racket and force him to play tennis every day. His father had built a ball machine that would shoot out tennis balls at 110 miles per hour and would make him hit 2,500 tennis balls every day–which is absurd. Agassi proved to be resilient enough to fight through that and eventually turned professional at the age of 15. A couple of the things this book has taught so far are people are always dealing with things in the background so don’t be quick to judge them and don’t be afraid to be yourself. In terms of my impressions of Agassi as a writer and the style of the book, I have been pretty impressed. Agassi details the book so well it’s as if he has a photographic memory. And although the book seems to be dense, it is a pretty easy read. I don’t know if that’s because I’m interested in the subject matter or the fact that the language he uses is pretty straightforward, but whatever the case, I love it. I’m very grateful to be able to read this book and I’m looking forward to finishing this book in the next week and a half.