Andre Agassi once opened up about why he felt therapy offered little benefit to him during his professional tennis career. The American shared that he was only able to candidly look back on his career after hanging up his racket.
Agassi retired from professional tennis at the 2006 US Open with eight Grand Slam titles under his belt. The American then reflected on his legendary career in his 2009 autobiography ‘Open,’ in which he came clean about his drug use and made an honest admission about “hating tennis.”
Despite shedding light on his struggles in his book, Andre Agassi revealed that he didn’t believe therapy helped him deal with his issues. In a 2009 interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, the former World No. 1 said that while he had attempted to work with a therapist, he didn’t think it was “logical” to bare his soul about his weaknesses in the competitive world of tennis.
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"I dabbled in that for a while, attempting to make sense. But you just can’t do it. It’s not logical in the life you live out there on tour, to open yourself in a way where you admit these weaknesses. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. You eat what you kill. It’s very conflicting to try to understand yourself in that world. That’s why I did the book now. I’ve had time to look back and make sense of it," Andre Agassi said.
However, Agassi has since changed his perspective about mental health in sports, emphasizing that it was "healthier" for athletes to develop an environment based on honesty and communication. The eight-time Grand Slam champion has also pointed out that it would be an "anomaly" if a player didn't struggle mentally while dealing with immense pressure in their career.
Andre Agassi: "I hear other athletes talk about how they feel about their sport, and I feel like an alien"
In the same interview, Andre Agassi said that he felt like an "alien" when he heard other athletes speak glowingly about the sports they played. The American even admitted that he felt other athletes were "lying" because of his own feelings about tennis.
Agassi, who has often spoken about how difficult his early years in the sport were for him, shared that it took him a long time to come to appreciate all that he had gained from tennis.
"I hear other athletes talk about how they feel about their sport, and I feel like an alien. I don’t know if they’re just positioning — straight up lying — for the sake of that upper edge, or if they really feel that way, or if they’re trying to make us believe it. I never identified with it. Tennis came with a greater cost to me until I was about 27 years old, and then I started to come to terms with what it was giving to me, once I chose it," Agassi said.
Andre Agassi did find a kindred spirit in his wife and fellow tennis player Steffi Graf, as she validated his feelings about hating tennis. Agassi said that he was inspired by how Graf was still able to find joy in the sport despite facing similar challenges.
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