| |
  Barney Ronay: Is it all right for Agassi to hate tennis? |
| |
|  Related Tweets
 Related Headlines
 Full news story |
The real problem with Andre Agassi coming out as a tennis-hater is that it casts a pall over the thrills he gave youThis week Andre Agassi caused a stir by revealing he once took crystal meth - or "gack" - with a man called "Slim".
This led to a failed drugs test, which Agassi explained away by saying he had mistakenly drunk one of Slim's own gack-laced smoothies.
There has been some surprise that the authorities were taken in by this story, but perhaps it's not that implausible.
Top sports people often out-source their nutrition.
I once did an interview with Chris Hoy during which he had a man employed solely to appear at his elbow and supply him with regular cereal-based energy bars.Looking back, it's not impossible to imagine a scenario where Hoy's bars might also have been accidentally spiked with gack, leading to censure, disgrace and perhaps a more interesting interview where he didn't talk about having goals and being focused but instead made a sneery face and danced too fast for about 40 minutes.There has been a suggestion that Agassi's fans might feel betrayed by his drug-taking, but this is unlikely.
Much more disturbing was the simultaneous revelation that he "always hated tennis".
Of course, in real life it's no secret that everybody hates their job.
You might say there are bits of it you like: facing fresh challenges, closing a deal or placing a finger over one nostril and aggressively "vacating" the other one into the swordfish bisque ordered by the drunken party of six in the pinstripes.
But generally we assume people who like their jobs are either unhappy in some inconsolable way, or perhaps the kind of Christians who are just generally well-disposed towards everything, and who at first fool you into thinking they actually like you and maybe you're going to be great friends, until you realise it doesn't count because they have no choice, so you just feel cheated and hostile instead.Still, a top-class sportsman hating his job seems strangely jarring, particularly when it's Agassi, who remains my all-time favourite tennis player, even in his brief early period when teenage girls were meant to fancy him, before he went overnight from having a swirling honey-roasted bouffant mullet to being careworn and bald.
On court he looked like a blow struck for pure talent, a shambling, pigeon-toed riposte to the two-metre tennis ogre with his marmalising right arm.
Those rifled returns.
The breathtaking angles.
Where does he get off, you feel, hating tennis - when his tennis looks like that?This might be less odd in other sports.
For example, nobody with any real involvement in football actually "enjoys" it, not in the simple way you enjoy eating an ice cream or playing a dinked cross-court stop-volley.
There are many sore points.
Playing football is exhilarating, but also frightening and painful.
Watching a match you have any interest in is usually unpleasant, often a source of much impotent rage.
Cricket is a joy to play but has complications.
We expect a reined-in asceticism from our players.
If they enjoy it too much we accuse them of self-indulgence or underachievement or only wanting to play Twenty20 and be rich and happy.But the real problem with Agassi's coming out as a tennis-hater is that it casts a retrospective pall.
All those years spent thrilling to his earnest flamboyance: suddenly I feel less like a fan and more like Agassi's pushy and interfering parent, unsmiling behind my mirrored shades.
Because tennis does have its dark side.
It's one of those activities, like finding fame as a creepy falsetto child star, or qualifying as a commercial solicitor, that it's possible to get deep into without ever really wanting to do it.
And maybe they're always going to hate it a bit, these career tennis obsessives, with their compulsive, yo-yoing fascination, as fraught with desperate highs as any gack-laced Slim-issue goji berry special.
|
|
|
| Recent related news |
| |
NYTimes.com
2 hours ago - Sports | Tour Official Expects No Pursuit of Agassi
In his autobiography, Andre Agassi admits using crystal meth in 1997 and then lying to tennis... »related headlines & tweets» |
guardian.co.uk
4 hours ago - Sports | Barney Ronay: Should Blatter go into hiding?
Maybe the Fifa president should take himself out of circulation for a while and have a damn good... »related headlines & tweets» |
Independent
4 hours ago - Sports | Agassi got away with lies - some people do, says ATP
Adam Helfant, the executive chairman and president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, said... »related headlines & tweets» |
Globe and Mail
3 days ago - Front Page | Review: Open, by Andre Agassi
Contradictions abound in Andre Agassi: He's a pyromaniac rebel who loves Celine Dion, he hate tennis... »related headlines & tweets» |
guardian.co.uk
4 days ago - Sports | Rafael Nadal on his difficult year
Rafael Nadal talks about the personal and physical problems that have disrupted his season as he... »related headlines & tweets» |
| |
guardian.co.uk
5 days ago - Sports | Ireland's rather sketchy plan B | The Fiver | Barney Ronay
Subscribe here for your own daily copy delivered to your inboxWE'RE ON OUR WAY TO EXTRA TIME, FEAT.... »related headlines & tweets» |
Brisbane Times
1 week ago - Sports | Newk serves up some love for Agassi
Among the piles of hate mail Andre Agassi might receive for revealing he took drugs and threw a match... »related headlines & tweets» |
celebrifi
2 weeks ago - Celebrities | Agassi describes hate for tennis, admits he was living a lie: PHOTO
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009 | 8:03 p.m. - It turns out Andre Agassi was lying all along. To fans. To... »related headlines & tweets» |
Straits Times
3 weeks ago - Sports | My dad made me hate tennis: Agassi
WASHINGTON: Andre Agassi may have made millions playing tennis and become a global marketing icon... »related headlines & tweets» |
Sify
3 weeks ago - Sports | 'I hate tennis': Agassi's book adds to his tale
's life has been spent in the public eye — the various highs and lows, on and off the... »related headlines & tweets» |
| |
|
Tweet the News!
Facebook
E-mail
Twitter
Mixx
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
Top News RSS Feed | News for my Website | Archive | Advertise | Help | Contact us | Bookmark
