Andre Agassi on rebellious youth: “I didn’t play Wimbledon because I felt like I was playing in a giant dollhouse”

Andre Agassi knows all about the pressures and demands at the elite end of professional tennis. Making it as a pro requires immense sacrifice, time and dedication - he had to do all of that when he was still just a teenager.

Agassi turned professional aged 16 and gave the next 20 years of his life to the sport. His career highlights include eight Gran Slam titles, a week in the top spot of the ATP world rankings and five years after his retirement in 2011, being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Agassi reaches the end of the road

Agassi called time on his career after losing to Benjamin Becker at the 2006 US Open. His stats make impressive reading: a 870-274 record, 60 titles, including four victories at the Australian Open, two at the US Open, and one each at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

But in spite of all of that, plus the $31 million in prize money that he amassed over the best part of two decades, Agassi was never completely happy - he felt he caught up in a life which didn’t represent who he was - not that he even really knew himself.

He poured out his feelings in his autobiography: “I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and still I keep playing...”

A self-confessed rebel, Andre has openly discussed his relationship with the sport and the inner conflicts it caused. He confessed to Andy Roddick’s Served Media podcast that his “teenage rebellion” was the reason why he missed several Wimbledon tournaments at the start of his career.

Agassi versus the world - teenage rebel at Wimbledon

“Now I’m pro and in this man’s world, with this teenage rebellion and then everybody’s sticking microphones in my face, asking me who I am, asking me to make sense of why I am wearing jean shorts - I’m wearing jean shorts because it’s a big f*** you to the whole world. That’s how I felt at the time - it’s a reality right?” he reasoned.

“So there’s this push-pull that was always going on in my decision making. I didn’t play Wimbledon because I felt that I was playing in a giant doll’s house - Bambi on Ice, like grass, I mean you could tell me to smoke this stuff and I understand it but to play on it?!

“How do you play on this surface you can’t even stand on?” he asked, describing the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club‘s famous grass courts. “I didn’t even get to practice, they treat you like a stranger at your own tournament. ‘You’re not seeded, you can’t go over there’. I’m 16 years old, anti-establishment, anti-everybody, and I’m in a man’s world trying to pay bills, so I’m travelling the world with my brother just being begrudged in the locker room”.

Agassi’s record at Wimbledon

Agassi made 14 appearances at Wimbledon from his inauspicious debut in 1986 which ended in a three-set defeat to Henri Leconte in the First Round. His next appearance in SW19 was in 1991 when he reached the quarter finals.

It was a case of third time lucky as he beat Goran Ivanisevic to lift the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 1992. It would be his only triumph in south London - he reached the semi-finals in 1995, 2000 and 2001 and was dumped out in the third round in his final appearance in 2006.

“Everything was just compounding, compounding, so my whole life has been about... I didn’t play Australia because I wanted something normal, and that’s called Christmas, and New Year’s” he confided to Roddick. “That’s how simple it was. As little I could play and get away with it... I was through. I hated my life. I hated it because I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t choose it. Was there a contradiction with the good that came with it? Yeah, when I bought a house for my parents. You have these these contradictions that I had to reconcile but I couldn’t reconcile it until I went full circle, which meant getting to the end of myself, staring across that abyss, it meant feeling so useless that a gust of wind would blow you off the edge”.

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