He died at 90 Mike Agassi, Andre’s dad, which became famous after the release of Open, the autobiography of the US champion. Obsessive, brutal, severe and rigorous to and often beyond the right limit. Mike was a sports fanatic and had participated as a boxer at the London Olympics in 1948 and at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952.
Having achieved these results was not enough for him, he dreamed of a tennis champion son and dedicated his life to achieve the result. After hitting on Rita, Philly and Tam, Andre was his last hope.
And Mike didn’t want to let her escape. For this he began to familiarize the newborn Andre with the racket already in the cradle, even going so far as to tie one to his wrist.
The fate of the future champion was sealed, he would grow up on bread and yellow balls. It wasn’t enough for Mike to do as all parents usually do, that is, to enroll his son in a course. No, Andre had to train him personally and to do it without problems he built a field of tennis in a piece of land behind their house.
Andre’s nightmare began to materialize. Back from school, he had to eat quickly and do the homework in even less time, there was a sweat and Mike certainly wouldn’t have given him a chance. And so Andre he spent afternoons, months, years answering a forehand, to train on the backhand, to try to improve the serve.
A difficult childhood and adolescence, even spent in the company of a “dragon”. Yes, why Mike Agassi he had tried and built a ball-shooting machine to train Andre in response. In his autobiography, the champion recalls that hellish experience as follows: “Dad said that if I hit 2,500 balls a day, I would hit 17,500 a week, about a million a year. He believed in mathematics and was convinced that a child who hit a million balls a year would be unbeatable. “
It must be said that the results proved Mike right and his unwavering determination to turn a child into the first tennis player to win a Grande Slam. It should be emphasized, however, how much all this has destroyed Andre, who has always declared that he hates tennis, that he suffered a lot and blessed his last match. «I hate tennis, I hate it with all my heart», writes Andre in the Open, «and yet I keep playing, I keep dribbling all morning, all afternoon, because I have no choice».
Mike, however, has never regretted …
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