Not All Athletes Love What They Do

Do you ever wonder if the athlete that you are watching really wants to be out there playing whatever sport that has caught your attention? Most would answer “yes” without any doubt at all, but I’m not so sure anymore.

Andre Agassi is one player who has always been vocal about his hatred for the sport he plays. Both while he was playing professionally and after he retired, whether or not people believed him, he never stopped telling the world that he hated tennis, usually getting a response along the line of “No you don’t!” accompanied by a subtle chuckle. Little did they know, he was 110% serious.

I recently read Agassi’s autobiography, Open. I am usually not a fan of autobiographies but I had to read a sports related nonfiction book for my AP Language and Composition class so I thought, why not? From the moment that I read the prologue, I couldn’t put the thing down! It gave an inside look at many of Agassi’s famous tennis matches against some of the biggest names in the tennis community. In addition to that thrill and personalization, Agassi (and his editing staff) wrote his story in such a way that made it exciting and it wasn’t the type of autobiography that just seemed like it was fact after fact; explaining every minute detail of someone’s boring life. Like I said, I couldn’t put the book down. It is by far the best nonfiction book I have ever read.

But since it was written in such an honest and real style, Agassi opened up about his hatred for the sport he made his life. His problem was that he dropped out of school at a young age so if he failed at tennis, he had nothing else to go back to.  His father had drilled tennis into him from the time he was a little tot and since then, tennis had consumed his life. But it was his father’s passion for the sport that made him pursue it, not his own. This could be the case for many athletes out there; they were forced into playing the sport but they feel as though they would be betraying their fans if they admitted to the hatred they felt every time they went out to play.

Honestly, I think it shows Agassi’s talent to know that he excelled at something he hated so much. That is something not everyone would be able to do. I would want to know if a player I admired hated his job that makes up his life. I do not feel as though knowing that fact would make fans turn away from athletes, if nothing else it would make fan support him/her even more.