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Focus on the man Agassi has become

Tawdry tales from tennis legend’s past just a snapshot of his life

So rather than ask Agassi “Why now? Why us?”, tennis should probably pipe down a touch, make sure its drug testing is air-tight, and tell the man it’s good to see he made it through the fires in one piece.

The point isn’t to condone Agassi’s bad behavior or anyone else’s. It’s just to suggest that even the spin cycle Agassi has started now is as old as sports books too, and maybe we can all save ourselves some genuine shock or disgust or heartache if we break the pattern — “We thought we knew him! Turns out we really don’t!” — and realize something touchy-feely that Agassi often says is actually right:

At some point it makes sense to re-direct the focus from the mistakes a person makes and at least consider where that person has ended up.

It’s an important distinction because it’s the difference between viewing anyone’s life as a snapshot — that year he wore a hairpiece and tanked matches and did meth — and recognizing that all of us are more accurately understood as a sum of all our parts. Most people’s life stories — not just Agassi’s — don’t stay static over time. You are both the idiot you were at 20 and the hopefully wiser person that emerges at 40.

That’s Agassi’s overarching point: Redemption is possible. Change and epiphanies are too. And while people have spent a lot of time trying to guess his motives behind the book, I don’t doubt his search for catharsis is sincere after covering him most of his career. Yes, he got paid a multi-million dollar advance for this book and the idea that he felt he had to deliver the goods is no doubt true on some level. There’s also speculation he’s come clean because he someday wants to run for elected office. I’d believe that, too.

But it’s still hard to believe that he did this for money. For one thing, he and Graf have plenty. The other thing is a memory of the night Agassi lost his final match at the 2006 U.S. Open, then sat in the interview room afterward and embarked on a mesmerizing look back on his career. At one point someone asked the 36-year-old Agassi what he would say now to that crass bleached-blonde kid he was at 16, and Agassi smiled poignantly and said: “I’d tell him, ‘I understand you. But I sure as hell don’t want to be you.’”

That still seems like the authentic Agassi to me.

Johnette Howard is a New York-based writer who has worked for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and Newsday. She is the author of, "The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova" (Broadway Books).


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