On Andre Agassi’s Open: Why Tennis Reflects the Way We Live
- CAROLINE DIDELOTAndre Agassi opens his memoir with a line that has stuck with me:
"It's no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice."
TENNIS IS MORE ORDINARY THAN IT LOOKS
In Open, Andre reminds us that despite the superhuman tennis we watch on TV, the people we're watching are more relatable than we think. That means the sport is too. It’s something built for sharing, not just spectating. Tennis is an opportunity to build a community with strangers.
From the perspective of Andre's book, there is a bias towards how players experience matches — they are living and breathing every single point. And to a degree, we are too. Everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what happens next, because, famously, anything can happen in tennis and comebacks are almost always part of the story. That is the beauty of tennis.
Next time you go watch tennis (ideally in person), look at the people in the stands. You will realize that tennis is unlike any other sport on the planet. For mere seconds (sometimes minutes, if you’re lucky), you and a crowd full of total strangers are silenced by the sound of two rackets and a tennis ball. No one dares to move, speak, itch, until the point is over. What other sport captures a crowd's attention in that way? Suddenly, we are all pulled into a community small enough for the amount of seats there are in the stands, and whether or not we're thinking the same things, or rooting for the same players, we are all enveloped by the same excitement and love for the game.
With the Cincinnati Open coming up, I can't help but remember this type of experience and sense of community. It was at an all time high when we attended the tournament, and it's one of the reasons we can't wait to go back.
We wrote about it in our Best of Ten Cincinnati Open Guide:
It was refreshing and thrilling to experience the crowds at the Cincinnati Open – where you could turn to your right or left and have in-depth conversations with attendees about players outside the Top 50, iconic tennis moments from 50 years ago, or just nuanced conversations about the sport in general.
We met so many people with whom we had nothing in common age or background-wise, and shared delightful conversations just because we loved the sport. Leaning over to Mary Sue, 62, on your right after a beautiful Musetti backhand and saying, "Poetry!" – a real sense of American tennis community that I had never experienced.
So to Andre's point, it's no surprise that tennis reflects the way we all move through life. Points become games become sets become tournaments, the same way seconds become minutes become the hours we remember. And just like he says, it's our choice what those hours become. Ours is usually made in the stands: who we choose to sit beside in the silence, and who we choose to share the roar with when it breaks.