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Book Review: OPEN by Andre Agassi

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I want to preface this review with this statement: I know nothing about tennis, have never watched a match, and although have heard the name "Andre Agassi" thrown around before, knew nothing about him.
This autobiography was fabulous. Even the "Acknowledgements" were good.
Yeah, it's that good.
This book is just shy of 400 pages, and is the story of the famous tennis player, Andre Agassi, from young childhood, hitting 1 million balls a year out of a contraption called The Dragon, through his rough years as an adolescent, a young adulthood with a millionaire paycheck, his brief marriage with actress Brook Shields, and most importantly, his friends and present wife, Stefanie Graff.
His writing is very fast paced, because although there is a lot of tennis throughout the book, keeping you up to speed as well. Many tennis terms I didn't know I had to look up, but it also didn't matter that I know them. One could read it just fine because the story is more about the people in his life; his deep relationships with his coaches, best friend and father-figure trainer Gil, and his wife. His biggest accomplishments, although grand in tennis, are those relationships and his foundation and charter school in Las Vegas.
Although I will probably never watch a tennis match in my life unless the kids are playing it, I really liked this book, and would recommend it to anyone who loves a good autobiography or memoir.

Comments

kylee said…
This book is on the top of my to-read list. I know nothing about tennis either, it just sounded like an interesting read. I'm glad to hear the good reviews!
May 21, 2010 at 11:58 AM
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