Agassi: 'I was in a low place'

Former champion ... Andre Agassi presenting the Australian Open trophy this month. Source: AP

Andre Agassi never liked tennis. He never enjoyed it. Ever. It was always a job to him.

One of the game's legends and deepest thinkers is philosophical about his time in the sport, admitting, though he was never meant to play tennis, it taught him many lessons about his own life.

Here are five such life lessons he shared with news.com.au in a sit-down interview on Australia Day, including a look at Lleyton Hewitt's demise and some insight into what makes much-maligned youngster Bernard Tomic tick.

Know your limitations

Andre Agassi the tennis legend was many things as a player, but supremely athletic was not one of them.

"I couldn't compete with the top four today. It's a different game. It's not the game I played," he said.

"I would hit a great backhand to (Novak) Djokovic and would start to move to a part of the court, and he would be 15 feet behind the baseline. That means I can't move into the court.

"Now I'd have to match him from a movement perspective. Movement is the one thing all these guys have in common. You need to have to be able to cover more real estate [than ever before]."

Agassi watches in awe as the players of today grind one another into submission, but he says athleticism - or a lack thereof - isn't necessarily a death sentence.

A man renowned for his crippling injuries, Agassi says the key to tennis, as in life, is to know your weaknesses, so that you can take advantage of your strengths.

"The strength of my game was to hit an effective shot and to slowly squeeze an opponent in submission," he added.

"There are some people like (Roger) Federer who, when they lose an edge of movement, they have options. There are others who are much more affected when they lose a half step.

"Movement was such a key component of Lleyton Hewitt's game. It was never his game to go offensive. A half step for him was a bigger liability."

Don't judge a book by its cover

From one Australian player to another, Agassi took a backwards step when I asked him about Bernard Tomic - a promising young athlete whose potential is often overshadowed by petulance in the eyes of the public.

"There are so many things in any person's mind and heart - tennis player or not," he said.

"We're all complicated internally and some of us have an easier or harder time making sense of it - whatever the reasons.

"I hear his name under the umbrella of someone who's not won over positive favour - that's disappointing to hear. I don't know the reasons for his struggles. I have a great deal of belief in the human spirit - and speculating on someone's inner workings is a losing proposition."

Agassi earned a reputation during his younger years on the circuit as a rebel, a lair, a player who defied convention and said what he wanted, dressed how he pleased and played with an anti-establishment attitude.

He admits that wasn't really the case, though; he was rebelling against himself.

"I wasn't expressing who I was - I was exploring who I was," he added.

So is it possible that Tomic can sort out whatever it is that casts him in the role of the pariah? Is there a way through his public spats with Hewitt and Davis Cup captain Pat Rafter? Can he shed the badboy brat image?

"Of course he can - it's possible he turns it around," Agassi said.

"Is it possible it comes from a deeper, darker place? It's possible he goes down as an under achiever. It would be complete speculation. But I lived it, I knew what I felt, I understood what people saw."

Find a reason

Agassi revealed in his autobiography, Open, that he tested positive for methamphetamine in 1997.

It was around this time, when he was 27, that his career had reached a nadir. He was down and out, ranked 141st in the world and had not won a grand slam in over two years.

Then, something happened.

"I had an epiphany. I was in Stuttgart. My coach locked me in his hotel room, opened up a couple of beers and said: 'we have a big decision to make'," he said. "At 27 I was in a spiral. I was in a really low place. I hated it (tennis) at that moment.

"I looked out the window at the people on the street and wondered: 'Where are they going? What are they doing? Do they like what they do, do they hate what they do?'

"That's when I gave myself permission to quit, but when I did that I thought: 'What if I go find myself for my own reasons?'

"Around this point my foundation had really kicked in and that became my reason for playing. And that got me out of my own way.

"I felt connected to something much larger than me. Tennis just happened to be a tool and a vehicle."

Do something for yourself

It was during this process that Agassi realised he was finally playing the game for himself. Not because he loved it - "I wasn't born to be a tennis player, I was made to be a tennis player" - but because he chose it.

Agassi is infamously the product of an over-zealous father, not an uncommon thing in the sport of tennis. You need to look no further then Jelena Dokic or the Williams sisters or even Tomic to see the Father Syndrome in action.

"I saw what tennis did to my family and my siblings growing up, with my father," he said.

"I would be sent to camps - it was like Lord of the Flies with forehands. My perspective of life came from winning and losing and I took my rebellion, which was so deep for so long.

"I never wanted it. It didn't mean it didn't come with good. I kept doing it because my Dad wanted it and told me from a young age that what's I was going to do.

"And the money was important to him and then me, and I tried to take care of everybody in my life."

Then, when Agassi had his epiphany and gave himself permission to quit, he found his reason, and in-so-doing, chose to do something for himself. He'd give tennis another crack - for Andre Agassi.

"I thought, what I don't play for anything, my dad, - but for my reason? All of a sudden tennis became a challenge for me," he said.

Growth is more important than success

When I asked Agassi whether, with all his baggage and expectation, he ever loved tennis, simply for the joy of the game itself, his answer surprised me.

"No, no," he said. "There were too many years of [that baggage]."

Perhaps the lesson from his experience is that his growth as a person off the court was far more important to him than the considerable success he experienced on it.

"When you have a dysfunctional relationship with anyone or anything, and you have it for a certain period of time, you can never get to that point where that, in and of itself, is now a healthy thing in your mind," he added.

"I always needed my reason - I never got to the point where I just wanted to play."

Andre Agassi was in Melbourne to promote the Open Up series with Jacob's Creek at the Australian Open.

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