Andre Agassi is an eight-time Grand Slam champion, who also won the Davis Cup with the U.S. team on three occasions. He is considered by many as the best service returner of all time and one of the greatest tennis players to ever play the sport. However, his academic career was not as glorious as his tennis career. Agassi quit school at the age of 14 in order to focus on his playing career. Before having done so, Agassi’s favorite subject was English. His teachers told him to pursue a career in literature, but he decided otherwise. In his late 30s, he wrote his autobiography, which required him to dig deep inside of himself to find what was left of his basic literacy skills. He was aided greatly by American journalist and novelist J. R. Moehringer, a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. They combined their skills and knowledge to create Open.
The most important theme of Agassi’s autobiography is how minor parental abuse affects a child’s self-identity. The son of a professional boxer and tennis maniac was never going to have an easy childhood. His father’s obsession with tennis had started too late for him to pursue a career, therefore he was dedicating to making his son into what he wished he could be. Andre was forced to train incredibly hard, and he hit approximately 3,000 balls every day. His mother, on the other hand, ignored her husband’s cruel actions and outbursts of rage. She was used to it, having already been married to him for countless years. Andre grew up with a father that was so obsessed with making his son into a tennis pro, that he had forgotten Andre was also human. At the age of 13, Andre had enough. He started to rebel against his father. On the court, he wore denim shorts and boasted cou...
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...e, and voice, Agassi’s Open is on par with countless other fantastic novels. Evidently, Open could not be entirely written solely by Agassi and his middle school education. The majority of the credit regarding plot structure should probably be given to co-author J. R. Moehringer. Nevertheless, this is the Agassi’s autobiography, which means that he obviously contributed the most to the creation of his book. In my opinion, the book succeeds at getting its themes across to its readers. Open is fairly easy to read, but requires a minimal amount of background information about tennis to be understood to its maximum. As a tennis fanatic, I recommend this book to anyone seeking knowledge about an athlete’s life on the court as well as off the court.
Works cited:
"J.R. Moehringer." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
"Open." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
There can be no question that sport and athletes seem to be considered less than worthy subjects for writers of serious fiction, an odd fact considering how deeply ingrained in North American culture sport is, and how obviously and passionately North Americans care about it as participants and spectators. In this society of diverse peoples of greatly varying interests, tastes, and beliefs, no experience is as universal as playing or watching sports, and so it is simply perplexing how little adult fiction is written on the subject, not to mention how lightly regarded that little which is written seems to be. It should all be quite to the contrary; that our fascination and familiarity with sport makes it a most advantageous subject for the skilled writer of fiction is amply demonstrated by Mark Harris.
In David Foster Wallace’s essay, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” he argues that the true talent of star athletes is to completely engross themselves in playing the game. While worshipping the “abstractions like power and grace and control” of Tracy Austin, he notes the contradicting quality, her inability to articulate such abstracts (143). He continues by writing, as people’s expectation while reading the autobiography of a successful athlete is to take a peek at the secrets of their god given gifts, whereas the expectations are rarely met, making spectators, such as himself, disappointed. As a matter of fact, Wallace suspects that the exceptional talent of athletes may be brought out by their apathetic and ignorant nature when it
Years of playing the game and not improving, Gawande incidentally finds himself play tennis with a young man who is a tennis couch. The young man gives Gawande a tip about keeping his feet under his body when hitting the ball. At first he is uncertain, stating, “My serve had always been the best part of my game….. With a few minutes of tinkering, he’d added at least ten miles an hour to my serve. I was serving harder than I ever had in my life” (Gawande, 2011, p.3).
Born in 1956 in Mexico City, Juan Villoro is the author of many well known books such as “El Testigo” which was recognized and was honored with the Herralde Prize, and other books like “La Casa Pierde” and “Efectos Personales”. Juan Villoro stands out with his style of writing using impressive array of topics with insight, dark humor, irony, and the social and cultural functions of spectator sports like boxing and soccer. With his interest in sports, he enjoys writing about the deep passion that is represented in the sport, with his story “Lightweight Champ”, a short story about a professional Mexican boxer and his journalist/drug addicted childhood friend who came from poverty in the early years in Mexico. Juan becomes very interested in investigating why what happens in sports, giving people interest in what their reading, making them think about lets loose superstitions, systems of belief, hopes, disappointments and so on. The story “Lightweight Champ” talks about how guilt was the motivation to Ignacio Barrientos’s success in his career as a professional boxer, yet no one knew his past, that gave me that stride and edge in the ring other than a few people, including the speaker of the story. Guilt is a feeling where can last a moment or a lifetime, leaving an unphysical effect on yourself, and finding a way to deal with it, so it does not eat us up inside.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. is a man of trust, courage, grace and honor. Although many of these attriobutes I share with Arthur, his high level of moral values and self reliance I aspire to achieve. Arthur was of African American decent and being born on July 10, 1943 in Richmond, Virginia he had to face many racial struggles and hardships. On the contrary, I was born and raised in somerset, New Jersey, in the 1990’s so my racial struggles were close to non-existent. Being of Italian- American decent, if I had lived in the time of Arthur Ashe I still would not have faced racial struggles as greatly as African Americans did in that time.
Sports play a large part of an athletic student’s life, weighing heavily on one’s identity. In his essay, “Cut”, Bob Greene relays how he and several others are cut from their middle school sports team because “[they weren’t] good enough” (Greene 58). Because of this cut, Greene and his peers end up pushing harder than ever in other areas of their life. He notes, “an inordinately large proportion of successful men share… the memory
He had a rough time growing up , but he knew he had to keep proving them all wrong. Fighting through his troubles in life, Pat only did not become a great basketball player but a great writer. This memoir, remembering all the extravagant memories he had in college with his friends, yet he did have hard times but pushed through it. Not complaining he didn’t just push himself, but he also pushed his teammates into becoming something greater. In the end, he will forever remember all his fights and great memories he had with his special teammates at Cidal college, it led him into becoming a great leader at the end of
The book I chose to read for this assignment was Pressure Is A Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes, by Billy Jean King. The book chronicles the lessons Billy Jean King, a tennis legend and advocate for gender equality, learned from family, friends, and mentors growing up, as well as her efforts to help the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s. King writes that the lessons she learned as a child and young adult really paved the way for her success on and off the tennis court. The advice and life tips Billy Jean provides not only give the reader insight as to what kind of person she is and why she has been so successful in her endeavors, but also serve as inspiration to live life to the fullest.
There are five main goals or objectives for the USTA organization to become better. The first goal is to increase participation in tennis so as to achieve the Vision. Increase USTA membership, make multicultural participation, and develop tennis programs accesible at all levels. The second goal is to build upon success at the US Open. Use the US Open as a promotional tool for the sport and help Americans reach the highest level of professional tennis. The third goal is to market tennis to the playing and non-tennis playing public. Enhance public awarness and perception of tennis and the image of the USTA. Provide educational materials and technical resources, and other tennis information to the tennis community.
Rick Reilly, in his ESPN column (2007), contends that sports competitions are more than simple games, instead, they are events capable of bringing people together in unique ways. He reinforces his contention by integrating inspirational anecdotal evidence, bold syntax, and unvarnished diction. Reilly’s purpose is to point out the importance and humanity of sports in order to convince a college professor and readers of sports magazines that sports writing is indeed an advanced and valuable profession. He assumes a humorous tone (“...most important- sports is the place where beer tastes best”) for an audience of sports magazine readers, but more specifically, a professor that told him that he was “better than sports.”
In “Return to Return”, French Edward, who is a brain-damaged tennis player, and Baby Levaster, who is his unofficial manager, are the most unstable pair. French Edward is considered the happiest and the prettiest man on the court. Edward and Levaster first became familiar with each other when they were high school athletes. And their life has changed since a local tennis coach, Dr. James Word, begins working with Edward. The novel’s title signs one of the writer’s primary themes. The main character French Edward, in his role as The Tennis Handsome, acts as a standard for all other characters. The title also reinforces meaning of “to return serve”. It is a tennis phrase demonstrating the move of hitting the ball back to the opponent; the constant
The movie “Basketball Diaries” is based on a series of journal entries written by Jim Carroll during the early years of his life, these entries would later on be published as a novel. Growing up in the slums of New York City, Carroll was exposed to many instances of drugs abuse and as a result of his life being filled with stress such as him living in an unstable household without a father, and losing his best friend he began to engage in substance abuse. As a teenager, Carroll was willing to go to extreme lengths just to fit in with his peers. He was an avid basketball player who seemed to be devoted to the sport and was knowledgeable when it came to teaching others what he knew about the sport. Based on the opening scenes of the movie, one can tell that Carroll was a very impressionable teenager. Like many teenagers, Carroll was left open to the influences of his environment and so he was misguided because instead of trying to steer him on the right path, the older folks led him to what would inevitably become his destruction. This paper will provide background information of the ...
Lauer L., Gould D., Roman N., Pierce M. (2010). Parental Behaviors That Affect Junior Tennis Player Development. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 487-496.
When communities encourage competitiveness and assertiveness out of women, it may consequently give women the upper hand in the argument culture. This environment is shown in the article “Be Angry” written by Claudia Rankine, a professor and a poet, about Serena Williams and her story of overcoming problems that Williams faced as a minority. Serena Williams is a professional tennis player who was surrounded by other women that are either helping her improve or competing against her. This type of environment leads to Williams becoming more aggressive, but because of her race she is called a “angry nigger exterior” for arguing back to the referee for a call that was unjust (Rankine). Then when Caroline Wozniacki comes along, she acquired Williams “attributes while leaving her “angry nigger exterior” behind” (Rankine). From this, we can see that these two athletes were able to fight back because their environment did not suppress them to be passive or submissive. Wozniacki even got the title best female tennis player of all time because of it. This has also been theorized by Yaling Deng and other scholars in the article “Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity” and they said, “With the development of society, increasingly more women participate in social competition. Such social changes may affect the development of social gender roles, thereby affecting emotional responses” (Deng 10). The environment alters the emotional response that may occur, therefore proving that in an environment where males are encouraged to be more assertive and aggressive, they would give the males the upper hand. While in an environment where females are the ones who are encouraged to be assertive and aggressive in a competitive
In this video, a man by the name of Hennessy Youngman focuses mainly on “cultivating an ‘angry nigger exterior’” as a mode of success (2014, p. 23). Hennessy’s use of anger as a mode to gain notoriety feeds into the trope of the “angry black,” a stereotype we constantly see applied to Serena Williams.