Choosing Changes Everything: The Story of Andre Agassi's Relationship With Tennis
Andre Agassi grew up hating tennis. Actually, hate may be too soft of a description. Andre Agassi grew up despising tennis.
One of the greatest tennis players of all time. Hated what he did for the vast majority of his career. Let that sink in.
He held the world #1 ranking for 101 weeks.
Despised tennis.
He won 8 majors (US Open, Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon)
Despised tennis.
Career Grand Slam
Despised tennis.
Olympic Gold medalist.
Despised tennis.
One of the best to ever play, despised tennis.
Reading that may not be a surprise to you. After all, in our high performance culture that values outcomes over process, it may make sense that he hated, grit and grinded his way to being one of the best tennis players of all time.
It may not be that surprising to hear that a world class tennis player developed such a relationship with the sport of tennis that over the length of his illustrious career he actually ended up hating most of the journey along the way.
But before we affirm the standard cultural relationship with high performance, perhaps it would be wise to pause and question, “Is that really the best way to pursue a life long journey with sport?”
You may be arguing with me as you read this. Citing Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Vince Lombardi, Nike “Just Do It.” Trust me I get it. There should be a degree of suffering related to the pursuit of winning in whatever domain. We need to do hard things. It’s going to be painful. We’ve got to grit and grind - and be tough while doing it.
But sometimes I wonder, are we so numb to our default relationship with “the grind” that we’re not at all bewildered that from the age of 6 years old in his backyard training, to his retirement at 36 years old that Andre Agassi hated it? 30 years of success, ups and downs, flying all over the world, winning tournaments, training, building relationships, hearing the roar of the crowd. Hated all of it.
Is a pursuit really successful if every step of the way we don’t like it?
I’m not sure. Behind all of the perspectives gleaned from Andre Agassi’s journey is a powerful case study in something I’ve been working on for over 4 years. A mental model of sorts, from my years observing athletes, teams, and coaches. I call it the five modes of high performing personal leadership.
If you’re a subscriber of How To Flourish, no doubt you’ve seen this model. I’ve written on it a number of times. The idea is that we all operate in five distinct modes. They’re not fixed in us like a personality trait or character trait. We move in and out of them everyday as we relate to life, and relate to our high performance pursuits. Different experiences can trigger us, generating a significant emotional experience that thrusts us between this continuum. Generally speaking, the more intentional a person is with their beliefs, values, and story, the more they will move to the right side of this continuum more often.
That doesn’t mean they won’t have their moments. We’re complex human beings with complex emotions, and thoughts that can send us to the left of this chart in a moment’s notice. But we don’t have to stay there.
When we’re looking at it through the lens of a team, here’s how it typically breaks down.
A stealer finds a way to steal the collective experience and make everything about themselves. They operate out of scarcity, fiercely recruit other team members to join them, and withdraw their energy when things don’t go their own way.
A coaster operates from careless complacency. They’re apathetic, have lost (or never had) true drive or motivation to be great and have come to view the team experience as merely a social gathering. They’re not ruffling feathers, but they sure aren’t adding much either. They live to fulfill the minimum requirements of the team.
A riser is an emerging talent with a clear growth mindset. They want to achieve their full potential in the service of others. Often they are the best followers first, showcasing detailed discernment in who they follow and hitch their wagon to. While not fully in a leadership capacity, they have a different look in their eye, and every coach I know is excited to see life unfold for the risers on their team.
A server is where leadership really starts. Servant leadership is more than just lending a helping hand here and there, it’s learning the way of life that begins to think and behave in ways that conflict with our own self-interests. It’s the beginning of broadening our perspective to see beyond ourselves.
A broker is a master of influence and leading people. They serve as an intermediary between the people they lead and a life changing, transformative experience. They are arranging deals every day. The only titles they want are “Hope Broker”, “Transformation Broker” “Meaning Broker” “Service Broker.” Their commissions are not material, but the inner satisfaction of lives influenced and a life well lived.
We’re all operating somewhere between a Stealer and a Broker. It begins in our mind, influenced by our soul and will.
I’ve been spending years studying this model in real life as I teach it to groups I work with. The question often becomes, how do I move my mindset, my life, my will, more toward the life of a Broker?
Most people use this model as a tool to judge the people they do life with. The teammates, coworkers, spouse and siblings. It’s really easy to take a tool like this and begin to use it as the microscope for other people.
In reality, it’s best used not as a microscope for others, but as a mirror for ourselves.
The Five Questions of the Five Modes
I’ve come to believe that behind the five modes are really five essential questions. Questions have a way of driving our behavior more than we realize. When it comes to ambitious high performers like Andre Agassi, deep within them are questions that drive motivation. Am I enough? Will my training be enough? Have I done enough? Questions that get Andre up in the morning to train and beat his body into submission all for a sport he hates. There are essential questions that orient our entire internal operating system.
When we’re in each of the five modes of high performing personal leadership, we’re being driven by questions.
For the Stealer: “How can I Get?”
For the Coaster: “How Can I Avoid?”
For the Riser: “How Can I Improve?”
For the Server: “How Can I Serve?”
For the Broker: How Can I Leverage?”
The Stealer - How Can I Get?
Andre Agassi was born on April 29, 1970 to an Iranian immigrant, Emmanuel Agassi. Emmanuel moved to the United States, met Andre’s mom in Chicago, got married and moved to Las Vegas. Emmanuel, a former Olympian boxer raised Andre and his siblings with a heavy hand. Andre caught the brunt of it. From the day Andre was born, he was destined to be a tennis player, not because of some divine choosing, but because his Dad was crazy.
Here’s an excerpt from Andre’s book:
“I’m seven years old, talking to myself, because I'm scared, and because I'm the only person who listens to me. Under my breath I whisper: Just quit, Andre, just give up. Put down your racket and walk off this court right now. Go into the house and get something good to eat, play with your siblings. Sit with mom while she knits or does her jig saw puzzle. Doesn’t that sound nice? Wouldn’t that feel like heaven, Andre? To just quit? To never play tennis again?
But I can't. Not only would my father chase me around the house with my racket, but something in my gut, some deep, unseen muscle won’t let me. I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and I still keep playing, keep hitting all morning and all afternoon, because I have no choice. No matter how much I want to stop, I don’t. I keep begging myself to stop, and I keep playing, and this gap, this contradiction between what I want to do and what I actually do, feels like the core of my life.”
“No one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis, let alone make it my life. In fact, my mother thought I was born to be a preacher. She tells me however, that my father decided long before I was born that I would be a professional tennis player. When I was one year old, she adds, I proved my father right. Watching a ping-pong game, I moved only my eyes, never my head. My father called my mother.
Look, he said. See how he moves only his eyes? A natural.”
“She tells me that when I was still in the crib, my father hung a mobile of tennis balls over my head and encouraged me to slap them with a ping pong paddle he’d taped to my hand. When I was three he gave me a sawed-off racket and told me to hit wherever I wanted. I specialized in salt shakers. I liked serving them through glass windows.”
It becomes a little easier to understand why Andre Agassi hated tennis. If we were designing the STC path to pure high performance, the first phase would be a sense of exploration fueled by curiosity. Dabbling is great. In a world that forces you to go “all-in” early, my view would be to be curious about your interests, dabble for as long as you can, explore, before pushing the chips in. Some might call that indecisiveness, I call it playfulness.
Andre Agassi never got that chance. From the jump, tennis was shoved down his throat. We could probably spin the rest of this article off into the role of parents in youth sports but let’s just save that for another time. For now, let’s color in a little more of the picture of Andre Agassi’s stealer mode.
Here’s what I’m learning about the Stealer mode for all of us. We’re in this mode primarily out of a scarcity mindset. We’re under threat. We feel trapped. Our entire mind and body is in a fear response. So we do what we feel like we need to do to survive. We form and reinforce the pattern in our thinking that only looks out for ourselves.
How can I get? The hell out of here? In a better situation? More attention and love? Security and stability? People to treat me better? People to value me? To feel confident about who I am? More money? The trophy?
The central question when a human is in stealer mode is, “How can I get?”
When we’re in stealer mode, we are not concerned about the quips of “servant leadership.” We’re not concerned with anyone else at all really. It’s all about self-preservation. Getting out of being trapped.
For the greater part of Andre Agassi’s youth he operated in a stealer mode. If we gather the full picture we see it’s deeply tied to his relationship with his Dad and his forced relationship with tennis as a child prodigy.
The Coaster - How Can I Avoid?
There’s an interesting human dynamic that goes on in high performers. A constant struggle between what we can get and what we can avoid along the way.
Another excerpt from Agassi’s book:
“The road to number one goes over Hoover Dam. When I’m almost eight years old my father says the time has come to move from backyard sessions with the dragon to actual tournaments.
Every weekend the whole family piles into the car and drives, either north on U.S. 95 toward Reno or south through Henderson and Hoover Dam, across the desert to Phoenix or Scottsdale or Tucson. The last place I want to be other than a tennis court is in a car with my father.
I win my first seven tournaments in the ten-and-under bracket. My father has no reaction.”
It’s hard to fully put into focus how successful Andre Agassi was as a child tennis player. He was one of the most advanced youth athletes the world has ever seen. Routinely defeating elite players many years older than him. Playing at some of the top country clubs in the southwestern part of the United States and beating highly talented full grown adult members.
But while he was racking up victories his drive and motivation were completely gone. The strained relationship with tennis and his father caused him to rebel and act out. Eventually he was forced / found a way to get out of his house and his father’s watchful eye. He moved to Bradenton, Florida to attend the Bollettieri Tennis Academy (which eventually became IMG Academy).
At Bollettieri Academy, Agassi began to train like a true professional, while still being a kid. More from his book:
“People like to call Bollettieri Academy a boot camp, but it’s really a glorified prison camp. And not all that glorified. We eat gruel - beige meats and gelatinous stews and gray soup slop poured over rice - and sleep in rickety bunks that line the plywood walls of our military style barracks. We rise at dawn and go to bed soon after dinner. We rarely leave, and we have scant contact with the outside world. Like most prisoners we do nothing but sleep and work and our main rock pile is drills. Serve drills, net drills, backhand drills, forehand drills with the occasional match play to establish the pecking order, strong to weak.
When we’re not drilling we’re studying the psychology of tennis. We take classes on mental toughness, positive thinking, and visualization. We’re taught to close our eyes and picture ourselves winning Wimbledon, hoisting that gold trophy above our heads.”
For someone who truly loved tennis this place sounds like it would have been amazing. Instead, for Agassi it was another place to wander aimlessly, rebel against authority and avoid.
We avoid what we hate. We endure what we hate. For Agassi, avoiding his Dad forced him to go across the country to a tennis school only to find more of what he hates - more tennis.
Over time, his rebellious spirit began to clash with Nick Bollettieri himself, all the while he slowly climbed the national rankings in tennis on the verge of being able to go professional. After clashing publicly with Nick and his Dad, Agassi was able to drop out of the Bollettieri Academy and turned pro at 16 years old.
Somehow his avoidance of his Dad, and any real structure in the game of tennis, along with winning in tennis produced - more tennis.
We often like to think that success will free us of the things we want to avoid internally but rarely that is the case, in fact succuss often moves what we’re avoiding closer to our face.
After turning pro at 16, Agassi sets off into a professional career of success and constant misunderstanding with the media. He wears clothes that don’t fit the tennis world as an act of rebellion. He’s off putting with the media and tennis officials making enemies along the way - all while winning.
More success - more avoiding the deeper relationship with tennis. Winning doesn’t solve everything. When we avoid things we’re buying on credit. The bill will always be due at a later date and with interest.
The Riser - How Can I Get Better?
In the early goings of Agassi’s pro career things seemed fantastic. After going pro in 1986 he steadily gained experience and climbed the world rankings. By the end of 1986 he’s ranked in the top 100 in the world at an age most teenagers are saving for their first car. A few years later, he won his first grand slam tournament in 1992 at Wimbledon. Three years later he becomes the #1 player in the world in 1995.
Turns professional at 16. #1 Ranked player in the world at 25. And doing it with his rebellious style and personality.
“At heart, I’m doing nothing more than being myself, and since I don’t know who that is, my attempts to figure it out are scattershot and awkward - and of course, contradictory. I’m doing nothing more than I did at the Bollettieri Academy. Bucking authority, experimenting with identity, and sending a message to my father, thrashing against the lack of choice in my life. But I’m doing it on a grander stage.”
For the early part of Agassi’s pro-career things seem to progress up and to the right. He’s winning tournaments. He’s having some success. He’s clashing with the media, but in a weird way it seems like he likes it. He’s well ahead of schedule in his twenties. He’s on the track to becoming one of the greatest players of all time.
But there’s a problem when we’re avoiding. There’s always a balance due when we avoid. The debt gets larger. The conversation gets harder. The conflict becomes more intense. When we avoid the nagging things in our lives, it rarely, if ever solves itself.
For Andre Agassi the deeper wounds with the sport of tennis. The lack of joy in the game. The feeling of utter meaningless activity he feels while participating in the intense life of a professional tennis player begins to take a toll on him.
Agassi said this of the game of tennis early in his career.
“Part of my discomfort with tennis has always been a nagging sense that it’s meaningless. Now I’m about to learn the true meaning of meaningless.”
I’ve come to believe most high performers don’t want to admit they can resonate with Agassi’s discomfort around their pursuits and the nagging sense of meaninglessness associated with climbing the ladder, building their empires, pursuing success defined by a crowd of average people.
What do we do when the activities associated with our lives start to feel meaningless?
The feeling of meaning is deeply attached to our understanding of purpose. If the purpose is solely to win tennis tournaments, life can begin to feel meaningless - especially when you don’t love the sport.
For Agassi, when things began to slide, he was forced to transition his thinking. Even though he was already one of the best in the world, it wasn’t until he began losing, he truly started thinking like a Riser. He started asking the question a Riser is fixated on.
“How can I get better?”
After falling all the way to #141 in the world rankings after a string of multiple years of brutal losses, off the court personal problems and a period of turmoil in his marriage, he began to rebuild his team around him.
If you’re truly concerned with how you can get better - it begins with who you surround yourself with.
Agassi began working with a new coach, Brad Gilbert. Gilbert went to work not just on Agassi’s footwork and form, but with his mind. Great coaches see past mechanical issues and into the real issues mentally and emotionally.
If you’re truly concerned with how you can get better - it begins with your inner life.
Agassi went under a full reconstructive “mind surgery” with Brad as the skilled surgeon.
“Brad says my overall problem, the problem that threatens to end my career prematurely - the problem that feels like my father’s legacy - is perfectionism.
You always try to be perfect he says, and you always fall short and it f—- with your head. Your confidence is shot, and perfectionism is the reason. You try to hit a winner on every ball.
When you chase perfectionism, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that makes you a tennis player. Or a human being for that matter. It’s the other times.”
Could it be the thing Agassi was avoiding was his deep-seeded attachment to perfectionism that was rooted in his father's way of training him back when he was 6-7 years old?
“Adopting Brad’s concepts is like learning to write with my left hand. He calls his philosophy Brad Tennis, I call it Braditude. Whatever the hell it’s called, it’s hard. I feel like I’m back in school, not comprehending, longing to be somewhere else.
He tries to sell me on the joy of winning ugly, the virtue of winning ugly, but I only know how to lose ugly. And think ugly.”
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about The Riser Mode, it’s that when a person is in this mode, they begin to make better choices.
Choosing is the start to living in a flourishing state. It’s the beginning of productive change in our lives.
We begin to choose better people to influence our inner life.
We begin to choose better perspectives and mindsets.
We begin to choose a different relationship with our lives and our ambitions.
We begin to choose better actions and behaviors.
Choosing is the hingepoint on the entire continuum.
Stealers and Coasters choose to neglect their inner reality. Throwing their hands up and abdicating responsibility over what is unraveling in their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
Risers begin the transformation process with the power of a choice.
How can I get better? A riser asks. By starting to choose a new way of living. By understanding we have a choice here.
For Agassi this was the pivotal moment in his journey.
“Part of my discomfort with tennis has always been a nagging sense that it’s meaningless.”
It’s not our experiences that determine who we are. It’s the meaning we assign to our experiences that determines who we are. The meaning assigned to that experience.
We get to choose the meaning we assign to our experiences.
The Server - How Can I Serve?
Of course Agassi climbs out of the #141 world ranking. His work with Brad on his mind and his work with his strength coach Gil Reyes began to create an entirely new tennis player.
But the internal work with himself is when he began to access a different mode. The Server mode is the basis for all servant leadership. It is an orientation toward how our lives can impact other people.
It’s not about doing grand things and posting on Instagram that you volunteered for this or donated to that. What I've noticed about the Server mode is that the most powerful servers in the world start small.
It always starts small. The simple exercise of sitting with your thoughts.
For Agassi, confronting the meaningless of tennis and life began with the mental exercise about using tennis for something greater. Something beyond just competing and winning. Something beyond the statistical accolades, trophies, and tournament winnings - well, maybe tournament winnings could be used or leveraged.
In a conversation with his older brother, Agassi began to form the dream in his mind about starting a charter school.
“So in 1997 I huddle again with Perry, and we hit on the idea of adding education to our work. Then we decide to make education our work. But how? We briefly consider opening a private school, but the bureaucratic and financial obstacles are too much so we decide to form a charter school. I’ll give millions of my own money to launch the school, but we’ll need to raise many more millions. We’ll issue a $40 million bond, then pay it off by parlaying and trading on my fame. At last my fame will have a purpose. All those famous people I’ve met at parties - I’ll ask them to give their time and talent to my school, to visit the children, and to perform at an annual fund-raiser, which we’re calling the Grand Slam for Children.”
So with that one decision, tennis becomes a vehicle for purpose. The school begins to go in motion. Agassi begins to orient his entire career around how the school can be advanced.
“Along with Stefanie’s health and our budding family, my thoughts are never far from my school, which is due to open this fall with two hundred students grades three through five - though we have plans to expand quickly to include kindergarten through twelfth grade. In two years we’ll have the middle school built. In another two years, the high school.
Many days when I feel run-down or low, I drive to the neighborhood and watch the school take shape. Of all my contradictions, this is the most amazing and most amusing - a boy who despised and feared school becomes a man inspired and re-energized by the sight of his own school being built.”
“I’m playing for the school, therefore I’m playing my best.”
Maybe part of the reason life feels meaningless is that we only do things to benefit ourselves. As Agassi begins to transform and live in the Server mode, the central question of how can I serve isn’t just about the short dopamine, feel good vibes you get for helping someone, in reality it becomes an entirely different way of life.
The server flow state of pursuing something that will truly benefit others. It lifts us when we feel run down. It provides the image of a hopeful future to work toward. It gives something the trophy raising on the courts of Wimbledon can’t provide, it allows our lives in the service of others to feel purposeful.
The way of the server can sometimes present itself as loss or sacrifice - in reality the server benefits as well. They transform on the inside as they connect to meaning and purpose.
The Broker - How Can I Leverage?
One of the most powerful things in life is leverage. With appropriate leverage, we can use an iron bar to lift hundreds of pounds. With leverage a powerful person can be blackmailed by someone in obscurity. Leverage has a few definitions.
“The power to influence a person or situation to achieve a particular outcome.”
“To use something to maximum advantage”
When it comes to the modes of high performing personal leadership, leverage is the ability to take your position of strength (finances, network, skill, mastery, influence) and use it for other people.
In essence, the Broker mode is about how we can leverage our lives for others. It’s the antithesis of the stealer. When we’re in this mode we ride the benefits of many choices. We begin to see the big picture. We look through the lens of not scarcity but abundant supplies.
In doing so, everything about our lives falls in line with purpose to the highest degree.
As Andre Agassi’s career came to a close and retirement rumours began to swirl - it wasn’t his love for tennis that kept him going, it was the way tennis provided for his school.
“Reporters want to know why I keep going. I explain that this is what I do for a living. I have a family and a school to support. Many people benefit from every tennis ball I hit. (One month after the US Open Stefanie and I host the ninth annual Grand Slam for Children, which collected $6 million. All told, we’ve raised $40 million for my foundation.)
“Maybe they’re confused because I don’t tell them the full story, or don't explain my full motivation. I can’t since I’m slowly becoming more aware, myself. I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always CHOOSE it. No matter what your life is, choosing changes everything.”
Agassi goes from a relationship with tennis in which when he hits a tennis ball he’s the only one who benefits from it. To “Many people benefit from every tennis ball I hit.”
It’s the same game. The dimensions of the court are the same. It’s his same body on one side. His same hand holding the racquet. He’s playing the same tournaments. The same cities. The same flights around the world.
But everything is different. He’s different. His mindset is different. His perspective is different.
Why?
Because choosing changes everything.
We’ve all got responsibilities. Opportunities that were once exciting but turned mundane and unglorious somewhere along the way. There’s a monotony associated with life. But through a different lens, through the deployment of our choice the same monotony can turn into meaningful, purposeful living - yet nothing in the environment changed. We changed.
A broker has mastered the art of choice. They do everything by choice. Even the hard things. They willingly suffer in order to gain, not for themselves but to gain in order to have something to leverage for other people.
If you want more purpose in your life - stop making your high performance pursuit only about you.
You don’t need to start a charter school but you do need to realize the whole point of the game is to have something to leverage. Not because you want to prove you're a “good person” but because it actually will benefit you to play for something bigger than yourself.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about the Brokers I've encountered in life - they’re satisfied.
No matter how much we want to spin it in our high performance journey’s, personal success just isn’t all that satisfying. We think achievement will change our lives, but maybe it’s because our culture has misvalued personal, self-centered achievement. It doesn’t pay what we think it does. It doesn’t deliver.
The game of life has been designed in such a way that purpose must include other people. It must include leveraging, for other people.
How can you leverage what you have for other people? Who benefits from your success?
Who benefits from you achieving your dream? Is it really just you holding the trophy and everyone watching you and clapping for you? That vision will always lead to the feeling of meaninglessness.
Instead, a vision where what you do benefits and opens doors for other people. Where your achievements really only become the vehicle to enhancing other people’s opportunities. That is a vision that will uplift you on tiring days.
Who are you doing all this for?
What is the end game of your pursuit?
What is the point of all this?
You can choose, you know?
Choosing changes everything.
