OUR FANHOUSE TOOLBAR INTEGRATES THE LATEST SPORTS NEWS INTO YOUR WEB BROWSER AND INSTALLS IN SECONDS.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE TOOLBAR HERE.

Tennis

Agassi's Admission Falls in Gray Zone

Posted Oct 28, 2009 12:20AM By Greg Couch (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Media Watch

Text SizeAAA
Andre AgassiImage is everything. That what's Andre Agassi told us from the start. It has been the headline to his career, his life.

He went from the punk kid, all image and no substance, to the grown man philanthropist, creating, running and also raising funds for a charter school for disadvantaged kids.

He grew up so well, cleaned up so nicely, and won a humanitarian award in September at the U.S. Open. Now he comes back with this:

Agassi writes in his autobiography that he regularly used crystal meth on tour in 1997 when he was 27 years old. He failed the tennis tour's drug test, and then lied his way out of it by saying he had accidentally taken a drink from a glass of his assistant who, he said, used to spike his own drinks with the drug.

Why, Andre? Why did you do it? Why did you feel the need to say it? What happens to your image now?

We should never criticize someone for telling the truth, but is this meant to cleanse his conscience, send a message to the kids in his school, or just to sell books?

Excerpts from his book will appear in Sports Illustrated and People magazines this week, and also in the Times of London. And Agassi will be on 60 Minutes, and make the rounds pumping his book, Open, which will be out soon.

"I can't speak to addiction," he told People, "but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem."

So was he worried how this would look?

"I was worried for a moment, but not for long," he said. "I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story."

In the Times, he talked about the euphoria of the first high -- "I never felt so alive, so hopeful" -- saying his assistant introduced him to the drug and told him he would feel like Superman.

It's hard to know what to do with this. It just lies there, tarnishing Agassi's image for no clear reason.

Disappointing, yes, because at this point I want to think of him as the grand spokesman for the game, the guy who went on to help kids who need it.

That's still how I'm going to think of him. And in some ways, 12 years ago seems like another lifetime for Andre Agassi.

Maybe it's Agassi I, and then Agassi II came after that. You can choose to put the crystal meth into the first life.

Honestly, I'm struggling here, possibly guilty of doing the same thing I have criticized others for doing: If you paint things in only two colors, black or white, then there's no room for this.

It's so easy to paint him in the black hat early in his career, and white hat later. Things just aren't that simple.

At the Open in September, Agassi was asked about his own turnaround and his words, without a script, were just so prophetic.

"When I look back, I'm not terribly thrilled at some of my decisions or filters or abilities to see anything in real context or understanding," he said. "But it's been a continual growth. I mean, I think there's a tendency with kids to treat them at different stages, especially when you grow up in the public eye, as if they're a finished product -- this is who you are; this is what you are – when, in fact, you're constantly in process.

"It's what life is. It's what the journey requires. It's what your evolution is, regardless of whether you like any particular intersection that you're in, or you understand the intersection you're in. There were a lot of moments I didn't understand, I was confused by, scared by. A lot of times I wanted to hide from facing it.

"But I'm still in process. So don't believe what you're seeing here, either, because unless I continually ask the most from myself, you know, it's a way of life. It's a choice of life."

Still, five years ago, John McEnroe said that he had unknowingly taken a form of steroids for six years. He wasn't shamed into it, but just said it.

And someone asked Agassi at the time what he had thought of McEnroe's admission.

"Well," he said, "you try to find the understanding in why some people choose to say the things that they do and in reference to those specific quotes or admissions [by McEnroe], I am not quite sure who that benefits."

That's the question here. Who benefits from Agassi's admission?

With so many of these admissions, they come out because they were about to come out, anyway, and the athlete rushes to be the one to spill beans. It looks better that way.

It's not like that with Agassi, who just wanted to share, or sell, his flaws.

In 1997, his career was going down. He married Brooke Shields, who is known to be a goody two-shoes. His coach was Brad Gilbert, who didn't want to talk about Agassi's admission Tuesday.

"I haven't seen it," he said, "and I want to read the book before I can make any comment."

Agassi was living a celebrity life, a life of image and not reality. He had bottomed out in his career by 1997, but then fought back, playing minor-league events in front of tiny crowds. He would win five more majors in an incredible turnaround. Maybe Agassi had bottomed out personally then, too, and felt it would be dishonest to tell his life story without this.

A man in his late 20s is responsible for his own decisions, and it took him far too long to grow up. But that was a long time ago, a different life ago. And now he's throwing dirt onto an image he spent so long cleaning.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com
Follow Us on Twitter Friend Us on Facebook

Tags: andre+agassi, brad+gilbert

Related Articles

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

GOT SOMETHING TO SAY?

Greg Couch

Greg CouchGreg Couch is a national columnist and award-winning tennis writer for FanHouse.com. A former ranked amateur tennis player, who dabbled in a few pro tournaments, he came to FanHouse after 12 years at the Chicago Sun-Times. "The best tennis writer in America," according to Jason Whitlock, national columnist and guest host of the Jim Rome radio show.