Open is Andre Agassi’s memoir, ghostwritten by J.R. Moehringer, and it is one of those rare sports books that transcends its genre entirely. The book opens with a confession that sets the tone for everything that follows: Agassi hates tennis. He has hated it since childhood, when his father, a former Olympic boxer, built a ball machine he called “the dragon” and forced young Andre to hit thousands of balls a day.
From there, the book traces Agassi’s career from the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy (which he describes as a lonely, often brutal experience) through his rise as one of the most famous athletes in the world. He covers his early image as a long-haired rebel, his first marriage to Brooke Shields, his use of crystal meth and the lie he told to the ATP to avoid suspension, his physical decline, and the remarkable late-career comeback that saw him win multiple Grand Slams in his 30s.
Moehringer’s writing is sharp throughout. The match descriptions are tense and immediate even if you don’t follow tennis. But the best parts of the book are the quieter moments: Agassi sitting in hotel rooms before matches, paralyzed by anxiety, or trying to figure out who he is apart from a sport he never chose.
For founders and ambitious readers, the book is about the cost of pursuing excellence in something you didn’t choose, and what happens when external success doesn’t match internal experience. Agassi’s story is a reminder that discipline and achievement, without genuine purpose, can lead to a hollow kind of success. His eventual discovery of meaning through education philanthropy and his relationship with Steffi Graf provides a more hopeful second act.
The book is compulsively readable. It moves fast, the voice is consistent and authentic, and the emotional honesty sets it apart from the typical athlete memoir. Even if you have no interest in tennis, this is a book about identity, pressure, and what happens when you finally decide to live on your own terms rather than someone else’s.
