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Agassi's American dream built on toughest of love

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  • Agassi's American dream built on toughest of love

    The Times (London), UK
    February 28, 2015 Saturday

    Agassi's American dream built on toughest of love

    by Matthew Syed


    Andre Agassi has spent most of his life trying to come to terms with
    his childhood. He started playing tennis in his cot, a mobile of balls
    hung above his head, a ping-pong bat taped to his hand, his dad
    standing above encouraging little Andre to hit, hit, hit.

    When he was old enough to walk, he played in the yard against the
    so-called Dragon, a mechanical device custommade by his father to spit
    tennis balls from a steep angle at more than 100mph in the Las Vegas
    haze. Agassi estimates that he hit one million balls per year
    throughout his childhood, his dad screaming every time he missed.

    At the age of 13, he was packed off to boarding school to play yet
    more tennis at the Bollettieri academy in Florida. "It was more like a
    prison than a tennis academy," he says. "It was on an old tomato farm
    and the courts stretched one after the other into the distance. We
    only went to school for four hours a day. The rest of the time we
    played tennis."

    To meet Agassi in the flesh is to feel the contradictions in one of
    the most revelatory of modern sporting lives. He hated tennis, but
    loved it, too. He begrudged his upbringing, but acknowledges that it
    laid the foundations for everything he has achieved in life. He
    resented his dad, but has gradually come to recognise that for all the
    pain, mistakes and shouting matches, this complex man, still railing
    against the world at the age of 84, acted out of love.

    "He is an extraordinary and complex man," Agassi says. "I have spent a
    lifetime trying to understand him. His mum was a Russian Armenian who
    moved to Tehran after the Armenian genocide in 1915. Dad grew up in
    Tehran as a Christian and he had some pretty horrible experiences.
    They were very poor. I think that taught him to fight. He took up
    boxing, won two golden gloves and competed in two Olympic Games for
    Iran.

    "When he came to America, he had one ambition: 'I will spend my life
    trying to create an environment where my kids can have the one thing I
    never had, money'. He conditioned us to leave our heritage behind. His
    attitude was: 'We are Americans. We are going to live the American
    dream.' He didn't want us to learn [Persian]. We changed our name from
    Aghassian to Agassi. He didn't want anyone to think we were Muslim."

    The parental urge for betterment, for leaving a former world behind,
    will strike a chord with many second generation immigrants. So will the
    vision of a tortured dad, who felt that everyone was against him,
    seeking to ensure that his children had every opportunity to succeed.
    But the sheer intensity of what Agassi endured will seem extreme, even
    to immigrant eyes. He was pushed, cajoled, urged and goaded, every
    spare hour, of every day.

    "The irony is that I had it pretty easy," Agassi says. "It was my
    three older siblings who really felt the heat of my father's ambition.
    I was the baby. Thank god he had the sense to save me from himself.
    That is why he sent me away at 13 to the tennis academy. Our
    relationship was on the brink of self destruction. He just couldn't
    stop himself pushing, pushing, pushing."

    The experience has shaped Agassi's attitude profoundly to his own
    children from his marriage to Steffi Graf: Jaden, 13, and Jaz, 11. "I
    didn't want to make the same mistakes," he says. "Even when the
    children were very young, I didn't define their ambitions for them. I
    try to let them decide what they are passionate about. But once they
    define it, I hold them to a standard of commitment. Their dreams
    become my dreams and I won't allow them to stop caring just because
    they have had a disappointment or two.

    "I am not saying it is easy to get the balance right. My daughter used
    to ride horses and she flew off a couple of years ago, and the horse
    stomped around a foot from her head. And it changed her on a dime. She
    didn't want to get back on her horse. And that was kind of an
    interesting one for me. I don't know if I handled it right. I didn't
    push her to carry on, but that was because I didn't want to see her on
    the back of a 1,200lb animal.

    "My son had a tough experience, too. He is very into baseball and he
    was hit by the ball and broke his palate last year. I would have
    understood if that had affected him. But he went out the next day and
    on the very first pitch, he hit it to deep right. That took character.
    I celebrated that. That is what I try to do with my kids: to give them
    context. I don't tell them what to do, but I encourage them to keep
    going at the things they love, even when the going gets tough."

    Perhaps it is the experience of mentoring his children that has
    triggered a reinterpretation of his upbringing. In recent years he has
    come not merely to respect, but to admire his father, a man so
    vigilant to insults, so proud, so driven by an inner turmoil that he
    never fully resolved, that he would step out of his car and offer to
    fight anyone who cut him up on the Vegas strip.

    "It is only recently that I have realised how difficult life has been
    for him," he says. "Even my tennis career was tough on him. He watched
    me play live on average once a year. I never knew when that time would
    be. It might be in Palm Springs. It might be in LA. But he never
    missed a single match on TV, wherever I was playing in the world. He
    would record it and watch it 50 times. He lived and died with it.
    Watching me lose, watching me suffer. He was suffering, too.

    "What I can say for certain is that my dad was motivated for all the
    right reasons. He was not acting out of betterment for himself; he was
    acting out of love for me. Whether he was right or wrong, whether he
    made good or bad judgment calls, I know he just wanted his boy to live
    the American Dream. All that work, all that pressure, all that angst:
    he was pushing me to have the success that was denied to him. And that
    realisation goes a long way."

    Today, they are reconciled. They have a relationship that works, at
    least in away that they can both live with. Agassi would love to
    shower his father with gifts, but he has to be conscious of his dad's
    pride. "To say this man has lifeforce is an understatement," he says.
    "He worked until he was 80. He just kept going. He only accepts gifts
    from me today if he is convinced they aren't costing me much. He
    wouldn't accept a thing if he felt it was a sacrifice for me."

    Today, Agassi lives in a small community a few miles from the Vegas
    strip and divides his time between his family and his charitable
    foundation. The school that bears his name - he donated a reported $35
    million (about £23 million) to create it - has segued into a new
    business venture with a social conscience, funding Charter schools
    across the United States. He is busy, but has found a balance, both in
    his professional life and the personal relationships that matter most.

    Perhaps the deepest irony about the fragile rapport he has found with
    his father is that it was most imperilled by the book that lifted the
    lid on their relationship. When Agassi brought out his tell-all
    autobiography in 2010, he was terrified that his father would take
    offence. "I called him up before publication and said, 'Dad, you
    haven't read the book. You haven't even let me talk to you about the
    book. Can I at least walk you through how I have portrayed you, so you
    are clear about why I did it?' "He just said: 'I am 80 years old. Why
    would I give a s*** about what people think about me? I know what I
    did and why I did it. And I would do the same all over again.' I sort
    of smiled because that was my dad all over: strong, proud, never
    prepared to admit a weakness.

    "But then he suddenly said: 'Actually, there is one thing I would do
    different.' "I had to pull over to the side of the road. I couldn't
    believe he was going to admit a mistake. 'What would you have done
    different, dad?' I asked. He said: 'I wouldn't let you play tennis.
    You would be playing baseball or golf if I had my time over. You would
    have made a lot more money.' " ? Andre Agassi gave this interview as
    part of the launch of his BILT by Agassi and Reyes fitness range,
    which is available at selected David Lloyd Leisure clubs. More
    information at http://dl-f.it/ BILT like father like son Sir Alex
    Ferguson and Darren Ferguson Darren banned his dad from watching
    Peterborough United play while he was in his second spell in charge at
    London Road. He claimed that, despite all his father had achieved in
    the game, he was a jinx, but Sir Alex saw Darren's Peterborough win
    1-0 against Rochdale in August 2014 and the curse was lifted.

    Peter Coe and Lord Coe Peter famously told his son: "You ran like an
    idiot," and chastised him publicly after the 800 metres final of the
    1980 Moscow Olympics, where Coe ran badly and lost to Steve Ovett, his
    close rival. Peter was Seb's coach and although his methods were
    controversial he clearly got the best out of his son, who understood
    his father's precise nature in their pursuit of excellence.

    Floyd Mayweather Sr and Floyd Mayweather Jr Mayweather Sr taught his
    son how to throw punches at a young age, but never expected his son to
    be throwing them at him. Their relationship has had its ups and downs
    since 1993, when Mayweather Sr was jailed for drug trafficking. Over
    the past 20 years Mayweather Jr has fired his dad as his coach,
    evicted him from a home that he owned and repossessed a car he was
    driving.

    'What I can say is that my dad was motivated for all the right reasons'


    From: Baghdasarian
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