'I hated tennis': Andre Agassi breaks silence about pain behind his glory

Andre Agassi has opened up about his complicated relationship with the sport of tennis. The 55-year-old retired from the sport in 2006 after winning eight Grand Slam titles in his illustrious career. Agassi became world number one six times in his playing days and remained the top-ranked player in the world for more than 100 weeks in total.

Agassi recently appeared on the Served with Andy Roddick podcast, which was released on June 13th, where he spoke in detail about how difficult it was for him in the early phase of his career to continue playing tennis. Agassi stated that he never kept it a secret about the fact that he ‘hated’ tennis. Agassi was of the opinion that his hate towards the sport was because of seeing what it did to his ‘family’ and ‘relationships’.

“I have been known as a person that paints myself into corner and order and find my way out,” he said. “I mean let’s get to the heart of it. Because you are saying how do you make sense of it. I never chose tennis. From day one, news alert, most controversial thing in my book came on page on that I hated tennis. I am not making that up. I saw what it did to my family. I saw what it did to relationships. It just always meant too much. I always resented it. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t good at it.”

Agassi also spoke at length about how his anger towards the sport helped him get incredible results on the court. “You can be motivated through two things in your life: fear or love. And it was fear that was driving me,” said Agassi. “It was fear of my father, last youngest of four children. It was just fights, gets sent away from home. Nick Bolitary Tennis Academy, its like Lord of the Flies with forehands and backhands. I mean teenagers raising each other. Not adult supervision. This place in a hell. I want to burn it down. I mean like rebellion kicked in at the age of 13. Told my dad to piss off basically. When I tell you that I was living a real life of rebellion, and my anger is directed at tennis. Rage is an interesting thing and I chose to use my intuitiveness of my resentment of tennis and directed it at the easiest thing in front of me, the thing that was responsible for the misery of my whole life at that time, which I concluded was tennis at that time.”