Open: An Autobiography: Summary & Key Insights

My story truly begins with my father, Mike Agassi—a man whose ambition for me was volcanic. Growing up in Las Vegas, I inherited my father’s dream long before I knew if I had one of my own. He built a backyard tennis court and wielded his homemade ball machine, the 'dragon', as my constant opponent. I hit thousands of balls a day. Every miss, every hesitation was a failure in his eyes. My childhood wasn’t defined by cartoons or playdates but by sweat, exhaustion, and his deafening drive echoing over the fence: 'Hit harder!' I was taught to win before I understood joy, and so I fought against the very thing that chained me.

Even as a boy, I felt the rebellion rising. I didn’t want the sport, but I wanted his approval. Tennis was the only language between us, and it came with punishment. There’s a strange kind of love in that: you fear the thing that connects you to the person who matters most. That fear, that paradox, planted the first seeds of the man I would become—a competitor built on resistance.

At thirteen, I was sent away to Nick Bollettieri’s tennis academy in Florida, a place where potential was currency and youth didn’t exist. It was a tennis factory, pure and relentless. Bollettieri saw something in me—raw, unpredictable power—but he also saw my defiance. I despised the discipline, the confinement, the unending drills. I wanted to scream, to tear something apart, to run. And so I expressed myself through rebellion—neon clothes, wild hair, any escape from conformity. Those small acts of defiance were my survival tactics. I was trying to prove that I existed as more than a tennis player, even if I couldn’t yet articulate why.

That environment taught me how to win, but it also deepened my hatred of the sport. Every stroke felt mechanical, every victory hollow. And yet, strange as it sounds, that resentment became fuel. It pushed me to sharpen every angle, every instinct. Out of frustration came precision. Out of defiance came greatness.