In the upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated, an excerpt from Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open, contains a startling confession: the tennis star used crystal meth during his career. This news comes courtesy of SI‘s Richard Deitsch on Twitter. (The tweet, curiously, has since been deleted and we’re trying to find out what the cause for the deletion was. Guessing he let the cat out of the bag prematurely?)
Without the full excerpt, it’s difficult to give the revelation much context, but another SI article made mention — without any specifics — that we should expect big things from the upcoming autobiography. The tease from Random House – Knopf doesn’t tell us much either:
“No one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis,” Agassi writes, “let alone make it my life.” In OPEN, he recalls for the first time a childhood without choices. Forced to embrace tennis, banished to a brutal tennis camp while still in grade school, catapulted to fame while still in his teens, Agassi grew up feeling isolated, alienated, detached. In OPEN he tells how he reconnected, how he overcame his fears, fought through his loneliness, found strength and purpose in the decision to devote his life to others — and in the love of one extraordinary woman.Agassi writes with uncommon candor about his father, his family, his best friends and first loves. He recounts the intimate details of his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He describes the grind of championship tennis, the physical toll and greater mental toll. He recalls his most painful moments in the arena — humiliating defeats, career-threatening injuries, ridicule from fans and media — but celebrates the maturity to which they all led. He also puts his fellow players, including legendary greats, under the microscope of his astounding memory. With precision and grace he recalls their quirks, gifts, foibles, and the demons with which they often struggled.
Agassi is already set to get the 60 Minutes treatment and the book drops on Nov. 9. With this latest leak/tease, people are looking for this book much more than they were just a day ago.
