Andre Agassi Tennis was just a warm-up. The former star, who has played professionally for 20 years and has spent 101 weeks as number one in the world, says his sports awards can not compare what he has achieved there. “Felt really important tennis At that time,” he says. “But what can you do off the field is generational.” Agassi began a future after the masses roaring present and hastens competition from her tennis career half way when, at the age of 23 years, the Foundation for Education Andre Agassi brought to life. Therefore, 48-year-old you can find the last morning of June an exhibition game of mixed doubles under the Eiffel Tower, although against two children in a Longines Future Tennis Aces tournament, 40 players under 13 welcome from 20 countries worldwide. Between points, Agassi and his wife, the German athlete Steffi Graf, a kiss was shared. (Both Agassi and Graf ambassadors of Swiss watches, which supports Longines their foundations.) “It ‘s amazing to observe cultures the next generation of players that race that did not exist before and we push each other on different levels to see “he says looks Asia comes into the equation, as the game has done;. the most exciting tournament in Paris, there are players from Korea, Japan, India and China, but in the end, he says. “tennis is about. one on one is true all over the world” to learn more. Andre Agassi says are watching the tennis players are here at Roland Garros was in 1999 that the championships Grand Slam Agassi completed his eight-year collection, in the same year in which Graf won her sixth and final individual title in Paris . Agassi and Graf were the first tennis player in history career “Golden Slam” all four of the only Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams went on to win to get to have winners and Olympic singles majors, some sport. For Agassi, it was one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern tennis: he slipped in and then the number 1 in the world in 1995 in a ranking of 141 just two years, the number one in 1999. For those who rises above, the washed knew Agassi as “punk” with a mullet and acid jeans, its development was considerable. But the star who has everything in the tennis world affected was able to find a new motivation to keep moving and a way of Tennis for the transition out. In 2001 he opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a private school for needy children in his hometown of Las Vegas. since merged with an investment fund and the construction of more than 80 charter schools in the US financed “I knew I was 18 that inspire me a tennis match, not only for the sake of winning,” he says. “Give way to children through education has been my passion into a living farm.” Edit courts admits his acclaimed memoir in 2009, Open, Agassi Grand Slam after winning knew he had something very few people: “Win one does not feel as good as a loss feels bad” This sentiment would undoubtedly resonance with some of the-under-13 players who have spent their days training and competing against each other in Paris, losing the final for just a game, brushing tears to smile selfies gone, his disappointment is palpable. “Growing up playing any sport dreams to achieve, can be maintained in the context of need,” said Agassi. To see some of the children to Paris to be so hard on yourself if it does not bring back memories of his youth, out in the backyard with no one else to trust. “To really achieve the highest level, do not spend a third of your life for two-thirds of your life prepared. You have to have a realistic understanding of what your expectations are, and then focus on getting better, not winning or lose. “Now that Agassi, the judge will leave, he can channeled his competitive nature of the terrain where rewards are divided, and so are disappointments. But it was not always easy to play what he called “the loneliest of the sport.” In Open, the tennis star said his battle with depression, reveals how he used crystal meth and lying to the Association of Tennis Professionals tour after a drug test failed in 1997 and in detail his short-lived marriage to the ‘ American actress Brooke Shields. Particularly it striking, but Agassi intense hatred for the game has been dominated him. “Playing tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always,” he wrote. He describes in excruciating detail, he created the prison for him in his adult life, beginning with his father, who built a backyard patio behind the house on the outskirts of the desert of Las Vegas. An Armenian Christian who grew up poor in Iran, Mike Agassi, a former boxer was determined to collect a sample. He later attended a Andre Tennis Academy in Florida run by coach Nick Bollettieri, where “the constant pressure of fierce competition, the total of an adult […] lack of supervision makes us animals slowly”. In an interview with Time in Georges V Hotel in Paris that ghost is awakened by Agassi childhood to life when he describes the experiences that his trip turned into philanthropy. “As a child I never had a choice,” he says. Although she loved to learn, six hours a day of tennis made it almost inevitable that he would make a great tennis player instead of a successful student at the end. “I am an eighth-grade dropout,” says Agassi twice during our conversation of 30 minutes, well aware of what he died. So his goal was very soon “to provide the use of education as a choice of vehicles for children that reminds me of me” Throughout his career, Agassi has earned $31 million in prize money; he has continued to increase by a further $185 million for the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, in the hope that “brokenness” to fight the US educational system. Reaches 65,000 lives annually, he says, but does not feel it is far enough. His biggest disappointment is that it is real wave advocate for children-no representative association for children, their concerns. “Everyone comes to the table with their agenda, except what is best for the child,” he says. “There is a long waiting list of disadvantaged children who just do not have the chance to fight for their future.” On a personal level, think about what is best for their children Earl and Agassi has a son, Jaden Gil, 16, and a daughter, Jaz Elle, 14/2 high level of expectation with the love and acceptance of compensation Who are steadily. Both Graf and Agassi had overbearing fathers and developed a passion for baseball and his son, Agassi says it’s critical to know his children, “do not have a safe place to come, that I maintain and guide them in their dreams and goals.” At the same time, he says, if they want to be successful, they must be any other better. Agassi hate the game does not burn as fiercely as it did when it opened wrote. In fact, he said today that it is the game for the platform offered loves him. “My biggest connection on a tennis court has an impact on people for some take a break from her life-giving hours, give them an experience, hopefully a memory for a lifetime,” he says. Off the field, however, there is the possibility of something much bigger: to create change, influence the present and future generations of Americans. “There is no comparison to me. I wake up with much more purpose today than I did when I played tennis.” Agassi seems mastery of comebacks, finally, it was not only for the world of tennis.
I wake up now with more purpose. Andre Agassi on building a life after tennis
