He was an interesting figure on and off the court and his autobiography is a reflection of this. He won 8 grand slam titles becoming one of a select few players to win at least one of each. And then there’s this repellent riff: “Agassi looks scrawny and faggy and, with his shaved skull and beretish hat and black shoes and socks and patchy goatee, like somebody just released from reform school.Andre Agassi was one of the most popular and successful tennis players of recent times. and the tiny-strided pigeon-toed walk of a schoolkid whose underwear’s ridden up.” The descriptions are colorful but often childish. Agassi’s “hairy tummy,” says the star’s hold on women is “a phenomenon of deep mystery to most of the males I know,” and calls him a “runty, squishy-faced guy with a weird-shaped skull. Agassi’s girlfriend at the time, “is rather a lot taller than Agassi, and considerably less hairy, and that seeing them standing together in person is rather like seeing Sigourney Weaver on the arm of Danny DeVito.” Wallace skewers Mr. Agassi’s dominance of opponents, he writes, “chills me, as if I’m watching the devil play.” Wallace writes that Brooke Shields, Mr. Agassi is “about as cute as a Port Authority whore.” Mr.
“I loathe Agassi with a passion,” he writes in his 1996 Esquire essay, “The String Theory.” Mr. Wallace might have been difficult to win over for another reason: He hated Andre Agassi.
Moehringer and Agassi didn’t want to suffer a similar fate. Austin’s tell-no-secrets book and laments the sports autobiography as a failed genre. Moehringer was particularly worried about one of them, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” in which Wallace savages Ms. Moehringer had long admired Wallace, the author of “Infinite Jest” (a novel set largely at a tennis academy) and five influential essays on tennis.
Moehringer collaborated on “Open” (2009), one of the best sports memoirs ever published, they sat down and talked about David Foster Wallace. Before tennis great Andre Agassi and writer J.R.
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