Mais j'ai vu dans le tennis mag de ce mois ci (je suis outré d'ailleurs car la couverture représente Monfils et il y un petit carré avec Novak à coté, putain de chauvinisme), la prise de drogue récréative engendre juste une suspension de 3 mois alors pourquoi il serait encore embêté? Je parle de Gasquet hein.

Des critiques du livres :

November 22, 2009
Andre Agassi’s Hate of the Game
By SAM TANENHAUS


Even those not convinced that Andre Agassi was the best tennis player of his time will readily admit he outdid all others in attracting attention, beginning in the 1980s, when he was a teenage phenom from Las Vegas who blazed onto the pro tour in flamboyant, Nike-­sponsored plumage — stone-washed denim, skintight “Hot Lava” compression shorts, midnight-at-the-roulette-wheel shades — that blinded many to the granite consistency of his game: the compact, bludgeoning ground strokes, the lethal service return, the lightning reflexes.

Now, three years into his retirement, Agassi’s sterling accomplishments are again being obscured, this time by pre-publication revelations from his autobiography, “Open,” especially his admission that during one low period he found solace in crystal methamphetamine, supplied by his “assistant,” and later lied about it to tennis officials, thus avoiding a three-month suspension.

Given the current scandals involving steroids and human growth hormone, Agassi’s infraction seems minor, even quaint, characterized as it was by late-night binges that more likely retarded rather than “enhanced” his match-day performances.

The more arresting news is that “Open” is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete — bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily and star-spangled gratitude. Agassi’s announced theme is that the game he mastered was a prison he spent some 30 years trying to escape. His first cell was the backyard court his immigrant father, Mike, built behind the family’s ramshackle house in the parched outskirts of Las Vegas. Armenian, raised poor in Iran and employed as a “captain,” or usher, at a casino on the Strip, Mike Agassi was determined to groom a champion and subjected all four of his children to abusive training, yanking them out of school for extra practice time. The three eldest all crumbled under the pressure. The jackpot came with the fourth, who was blessed with preternatural hand-eye coordination, honed in daily sessions in which he swatted as many as 2,500 balls belched forth by a machine at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour, at angles so acute the 7-year-old Andre had to swing the instant the ball landed, lest it bounce over his head — the trick of hitting “on the rise” that eventually would freeze opponents, helpless as even their most blistering shots came screaming back.

All this was nurturing, at least compared with his next incarceration, at the Florida tennis academy, or “glorified prison camp,” operated by Nick Bollettieri, a sun-baked entrepreneur paid thousands of dollars by parents who shipped their children off for months, even years, of incessant drilling, lectures on motivational psychology and nights spent in barracks-like dorms. “The constant pressure, the cutthroat competition, the total lack of adult supervision — it slowly turns us into animals,” Agassi writes. This happened at a time when tennis promoters were eager to feed the public’s infatuation with under-age champions like Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert, not to mention half-forgotten casualties like Jimmy Arias and Andrea Jaeger — a phenomenon that recalls the unhealthy national “love affair” almost a century ago with screen virgin-goddesses like Mary Pickford and the Gish sisters. Agassi rebelled by drinking, brawling, body piercing and sporting “one pinky nail that’s two inches long and painted fire-engine red.”

Locked into a career dictated by talent and upbringing, he found escape off-court, surrounded by the entourage, or surrogate family, he assembled and in most instances paid for, in particular the company of two father figures — his physical trainer, Gil Reyes, and his coach, Brad Gilbert. Together they reconstructed Agassi’s body and his game, and made possible his extraordinary, late-career resurgence, when, at last finding joy in tennis, he briefly eclipsed his archrival, Pete Sampras, and staked his claim to being the era’s dominant player. The numerology of pelt accumulation favors Sampras, who won 14 Grand Slam titles, seven of them at Wimbledon, and held a 20-14 advantage in head-to-head matches. But in his prime Agassi possessed the more complete game, suited to every surface (clay, grass, hardcourt). He is one of only three men in the open era, and the only American man, to capture each of the four Grand Slam titles, compiling in one stretch (1999-2000) a record of 27-1 in successive majors — a ho-hum burst of excellence in the brave new world of Roger Federer, though it was the best streak in 30 years, dating back to Rod Laver’s full cycle of Grand Slam victories in 1969.

In the twilight of his 21-year career, upon being told he had just played his 1,000th match, Agassi discovered, somewhat to his dismay, that he could recall them all. At times in “Open” he seems bent on reprising the full catalog — wins and losses in Houston, Toronto and other tournament stops not even die-hard fans will care to visit.

There is no sexual boasting in “Open,” but there are full accounts of Agassi’s two marriages. His first, to Brooke Shields, rich tabloid nutriment at the time, lasted just two years, the classic bad pairing of jock and starlet, a kind of inverse Joe DiMaggio-­Marilyn Monroe, since Shields was his elder by five years, her career stalled, while Agassi was nearing his zenith on the pro tour and raking in surplus millions from his Nike contract. The wedding, scripted by Shields, is rendered in “Open” as bleak farce, from the ceremony in the ritzy coastal town of Carmel, Calif. — “with four helicopters full of paparazzi circling overhead” and the squat groom wearing elevator shoes, so as not to be dwarfed by his towering bride — through the day-after family barbecue, with the couple making their entrance astride horses and outfitted in cowboy wear.

Apart from having been pushed onto the stage as children, the glamorous couple had nothing in common. A Prince­ton graduate with a degree in French literature, Shields disliked tennis and also her husband’s pals. Agassi, for his part, was forever a beat behind the banter Shields enjoyed with her showbiz crowd; once, in a jealous fit, he stormed off the set of “Friends” when she was taping a segment, her big break. They failed to reconnect on vacations, planned by Shields, often on exotic islands meant to re­capture the ever-­receding memory of “The Blue Lagoon.”

Soon after his divorce in 1999, Agassi began wooing Steffi Graf, another former tennis prodigy, who, Agassi says, loathed the game as much as he did but surpassed him in disciplined, competitive fury. The two agreed not to build a court behind their home in Las Vegas, to spare their children. Instead, Agassi spent and raised millions to erect a youth center that grew into a charter “education complex” in the city’s most ravaged district, a superb act of philanthropy that gave underprivileged children, most of them African-Americans, the one advantage he himself had been denied.

Equally hard-won self-knowledge irradiates almost every page of “Open,” thanks in great part to Agassi’s inspired choice of collaborator, J. R. Moehringer, author of the memoir “The Tender Bar,” with its melody of remembered voices. Agassi says he read it in 2006, at his last U.S. Open, and then recruited Moehrin­ger to help him write his own book. The result is not just a first-rate sports memoir but a genuine bildungsroman, darkly funny yet also anguished and soulful. It confirms what Agassi’s admirers sensed from the outset, that this showboat, with his garish costumes and presumed fatuity, was not clamoring for attention but rather conducting a struggle to wrest some semblance of selfhood from the sport that threatened to devour him.

Et une du LATIMES :

latimes.com
BOOK REVIEW
'Open' by Andre Agassi
A literate and absorbing chronicle of the tennis star's lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off the court.

By David Davis

November 21, 2009


The photograph of Andre Agassi on the cover of "Open," his just-published autobiography, was taken by Martin Schoeller, an Annie Leibovitz disciple. The book begins with a quote from Vincent van Gogh; Barbra Streisand is thanked in the acknowledgments. The ghostwriter is J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who formerly worked for The Times.

In other words, "Open" is not your typical jock-autobio fare. This literate and absorbing book is, as the title baldly states, Agassi's confessional, a wrenching chronicle of his lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off the court.

The journey began not long after Agassi's truncated childhood. His father, Mike, a former boxer from Iran who settled in Las Vegas, was an overbearing sports parent. (Think Marv Marinovich.) An obsessed drillmaster, Mike tried to mold his kids into stars. Only the youngest made it big, although he had little choice in the matter.

"No one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis," Andre Agassi writes, because "what I want isn't relevant." A prodigy who traded volleys with Björn Borg at age 8, he came to dread the ball machine, nicknamed "the dragon," that his father concocted for endless hitting sessions.

In seventh grade, Agassi was shunted off to Florida to be tutored by controversial coach Nick Bollettieri. He'd dropped out of high school by age 14. The absurd scenes here describing Bollettieri's academy, which Agassi calls a "glorified prison camp," read like something from David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest."

When Agassi turned pro, he had plenty of game and a teenager's inarticulate bravado. He donned denim shorts, wore an earring, and added frosted highlights to his mullet. (It was the 1980s.) The media interpreted this as the "real" Andre, the rebel without much cause. One of his endorsements, which carried the unfortunate tag line "Image Is Everything," came to represent what many believed was his essential flaw.

By turns angry, fragile and apathetic, Agassi routinely lost important matches and seemed unable to handle pressure. Worse, he offered excuses for every defeat.

At the 1990 French Open, site of his first Grand Slam final, he wore a hairpiece to conceal his thinning hair. Concerned that the wig would fly off, he played tentatively and lost to an inferior opponent.

"Open" is rife with self-damning revelations. Agassi acknowledges using crystal meth throughout 1997 and then lying about a positive drug test to avoid punishment by tennis authorities. He confesses that he tanked certain matches.

After taking the court and winning without any underwear, he goes commando for the remainder of his career.

Agassi repeatedly notes that he "hates" tennis. It's telling that, for years, no one believed him -- after all, slamming a fuzzy ball was making him millions -- but the solitary existence on the circuit haunted him. "In tennis you're on an island," he writes. It is "the loneliest sport."

He credits a cobbled-together support system with saving him from a Jennifer Capriati-like flameout; at various times, the crew included coaches (for years, former top-ranked player Brad Gilbert), trainers (Gil Reyes) and friends (Streisand). According to Agassi, they enabled him to face his demons and, finally, to perform to his immense potential. Before retiring in 2006, he captured all four Grand Slam titles, and eight total Slams.

Agassi never managed to eclipse Pete Sampras, his Palos Verdes-raised rival and winner of 14 Slams. Agassi respected the grinding brilliance of Sampras, but abhorred his single-minded pursuit of tennis immortality. "I envy Pete," he writes. "I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration."

"Open" offers plenty of inside-the-locker-room intrigue, and its candor extends to Agassi's personal life. Of his marriage to actress Brooke Shields, he writes, "I have a thought no man should have on his wedding day: I wish I were leaving too. I wish I had a decoy groom to take my place."

Eventually, Agassi connected with his soul mate: tennis hall-of-famer Steffi Graf. They shared similar upbringings: Graf's father was as maniacal as Agassi's dad. The description of the fathers' initial meeting -- the two men nearly come to blows arguing about forehands and backhands -- would be amusing if it weren't so pitiable.

Agassi has publicly praised the contributions of the latest member of his team: Moehringer (who is uncredited in the book by his own choice). They met and agreed to work together after Agassi was entranced by Moehringer's acclaimed memoir, "The Tender Bar."

This was a wise choice, indicative of Agassi's hard-won maturity. Moehringer is a masterful storyteller, and both "The Tender Bar" and "Open" explore similar themes: the horrifying toll of parental neglect; the roller-coaster quest for self-identity; the all-too-human need to connect with others; the messy ways we cope with life's inevitable setbacks; the possibility of metamorphosis and redemption.

The latter resonates throughout "Open." As Agassi better understands his love-hate relationship with tennis and grudgingly embraces his stature, he undergoes a profound shift. The self-centeredness of "What do I have to do to be No. 1?" gives way to "What can I do to help others?"

The answer for Agassi, the high-school dropout, has been to finance and build a public charter school that serves low-income youth in Las Vegas. Like "Open" itself, it's an inspiring achievement.

Davis is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Apres 9 jours, le livre d'Agassi est n°1 des ventes aux US :

NORM: Agassi's memoir a No. 1 best-seller


Andre Agassi is No. 1 -- again.This time in the book publishing arena.



Nine days after the debut of his explosive memoir "Open," the book has claimed the top spot on the prestigious New York Times' nonfiction best-sellers list, for the week beginning Sunday, Nov. 29.

Agassi's collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning author J.R. Moehringer, revealed the stunning news to Vegas Confidential on Wednesday night during dinner at Botero Restaurant at Encore.

"For him to be No. 1 in a season with books by Mitch Albom, Sarah Palin, John Grisham, Ted Kennedy, Stephen King -- big books, big authors, all vying for people's book dollars -- he didn't hit No. 1 in a slow season," said Moehringer, who was on the telephone with Agassi when the eight-time Grand Slam winner got the news Wednesday afternoon from publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

"My reaction is that I'm so happy for Andre," Moehringer said.

"He got knocked around pretty good right before the book came out. How dare he write an honest memoir? This is vindication, the ultimate sign that things have turned around."

Sinon, Jérôme, c'est maintenu, la date de dédicaces d'Andre le 17 décembre à la FNAC montparnasse ?

Et si oui, tu comptes toujours y aller ?

Grande nouvelle, Agassi est attendu sur le plateau de "On n'est pas couchés", samedi prochain le 19 décembre sur France 2, pour la promotion de son livre!

Et une 2° télé est prévue en France, le mercredi 16 décembre, au grand journal de Canal +, dans la 2° partie de l'émission del'émission de Denisot!

Le pauvre, il ne doit pas savoir que dans cette émission, les invités n'ont pas le temps de dire la moindre phrase, mais bon...

Sinon, son bouquin est sorti en France le 10 décembre, non ? C'est pour ça qu'il n'y a plus personne sur ce forum, c'est que vous êtes tous plongés dedans jour et nuit, hein ?

Merci pour l info,sinon on y est tous plongé on essaye de traduire le bouquin de l anglais au français, en japanois, en chinois mandarin, en dialecte bolivien en hébreux en arabe en gaélique et en corse....


Ca demande pas mal de boulot car on fait un arbre grammatical de chaque phrase puis de chaque mot


Ca sera terminé quand les enfants d agassi seront grand parents je crois!

Euh, le livre est sorti en français, faut le racheter en français, maintenant!

Je vais essayer de choper au moins Ruquier, il va lui poser plein de questions sur la perruque je parie

Moi qui aime beaucoup l'émission de Ruquier, je vais pas rater ça!

ouais moi aussi j'aime bien Ruquier, mais je devrais me contenter des redif..... J'ai pas France 2 a LA^^