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Why did Andre Agassi hate tennis?

Source: The Guardian

Oct 29, 2009

Summary

He is not the only star to claim to detest the sport that made him rich and famous

"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have." So writes Andre Agassi in his new autobiography, Open, published this week. It is 2006 and one of the world's most feted sports stars has just woken up in a New York hotel room, poised to play his last tournament.

But why would a great sportsman hate his sport? Why wouldn't he love everything about it and all it brings to his life – travel, glamour, money, mass adoration, endless free tennis rackets and barley water, not to mention the surely sustaining thought that he is doing something for a living that makes many of us sick with envy?

"But it becomes more than a job, it takes over your life," says former British tennis professional Barry Cowan, perhaps best known for taking Agassi's nemesis, Pete Sampras, to five sets in Wimbledon in 2001. "If you're at the top of tennis, you're on tour 30-plus weeks of the year – and when you're doing that, everything revolves around

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