Script.
Sam: Andre Agassi is one of the greatest tennis players in American history, he’s also the author of a remarkable new memoir called “open”. Andre Agassi visited the NYT and he and I talked about his anchor career and his unusual collaboration with memoirist J R. Moehringer.
Sam: Let me ask you about how clear you are not only about your dislike of tennis for most of your life but about the exploitative aspect of it. Nick Bolletieri, your own father. How much of that was going on when you were a young player coming off?
Andre: Well, you kind of felt like it was a sport that was coming into a big business time, you know, my father saw a wheel barrow push out in the courts in the finals at the Allan King tournament which is my hometown full of silver dollars. It was like he got drunk with the visual of the son sparkling on these things and I just you know, from that day forward I was going to be number one in the world there’s no question about it ‘cause you can make a lot of money and I think a lot of people felt like you know a lot of eastern Europeans, a lot of Russians, you know, they feel like it’s the quickest way to the American dream.
Sam: Well, and then when he sent you off to the notorious you called “glorified” prison of Nick Nick Bolletieri’s tennis academy, there, all the love was gone, it’s just the toughness, that is one of the most heroine descriptions I’ve ever seen of what a young athlete went through, tell us a little bit about it.
Andre: Well, listen, the first, the toughest part about Nick Bolletieri’s straight off was just leaving home and raising yourself, not raising yourself, raising other children like lord of the flies.
Sam: You said lord of the flies, you were unsupervised
Andre: Yeah yeah, we were unsupervised, we got strict rules and we got punished to step out of line, but then you got the regimen, and you get the fatigue of four hours a day of school and six hours a day of tennis and so school took the back seat and as a result, you end up, it’s a great system created, designed to create great tennis players and unsuccessful you know scholars. And so I never had the opportunity to educate myself formally, you know, and yet I loved learning so I always had this other conflict that was existing in me, I wanted to know the truth I was trying to understand myself, but I had no environment to do that.
Sam: In the book you say that when you went off to the Brayton’s Tennis Academy there was an educational price, that you were treated like you were entitled but the one thing you were entitled in education you never got. then you’ve compensated after while you were still playing with a remarkable chart of school
Andre: That was one of the things that started to get me to really love the game you know it’s not a love-hate relationship with the game, it’s a hate-love relationship, but the scale started to get balanced when it started to give me something, gave me my school, gave me the chance to do it and then tennis gave me my wife and after tennis gave me my wife it was like OK, things are really getting balanced, but as far as education goes, I know what is like not to have it, and I know that I didn’t have options in my life, and as a result I woke up in a life that I found myself in. And I think there’s a lot of people, especially children and luring come neighborhoods who have schools, broken school system who don’t have a proper education and so they will not have choices in their lives so when you don’t have choices in your life tomorrow will look like today, it’s a horrifying thought.
Sam: Let’s talk about one more teammate, your very brilliant co-writer in this book.. tell us how you found him ‘cause we’re surprised…
Andre: Well, in the last three months of my career, a friend sent me this book called “the tender bar” written by J. R. Moehringer and that was one of the few things that gave me an escape from the pressures and the pain, and the anticipation of retirement.
Sam: And you found him up
Andre: I rushed through the pages and I called him and I said I want to meet you , I want you to know what you’ve done for me, and in what he did for me, I realized the power, the real power that exists in someone else’s story, I mean, and I wondered what my story was, I know the stories of my life, what would my story be through a Pulitzer’s eyes through literally lands, what it would look like, and we set on a journey together where I tell you what, the greatest thing that I got out of this was not just making sense of my life but J. R. as a friend and real appreciation and love of just how much power there is in books
Sam: And you wanted his name in the cover but he wouldn’t ccc.
Andre: I wanted his name on the cover because we labored together this, thousands of hours that I could’ve never done, he studied Freud and Psychology books and we go through the routines of trying to figure out you know who I was, why I had this contradictions, how can I possibly hate school and love learning how can I possibly hate tennis, hate what I do and actually succeed at it, what is the message in your life, what are people… there’s a human story and without him I never could have got to it.
Sam: Thanks, Andre Agassi.
Extra Work: Trip to Costa Rica.
Script.
My wife and I
recently made a trip to CR.
We travelled in a
group for the first time in 40 years
Luckily everyone in
the group got along with one another.
We spent a good
deal of time in the rain forest.
Parts of CR get 20
or more ft of rain each year.
We saw 3 types of
monkeys
The howling monkeys
sounded like a cross between a lion and a seal.
We took several
river trips.
One boat ride was
through a mangrove forest.
Mangrove trees have
external roots that take in oxygen
The roots also
serve as supports
We saw a tree
dwelling iguanas
The bird population
of CR is fantastic.
I got a neck ache
from watching through the binoculars.
We got prety close
to a couple of crocodiles
We were more
interested in them than them in us.
We were given a
tour of a pineapple plantation
We ate pineapple
picked right from the field
I cannot describe
how delicious it was
Some of the fruit
in CR we had never heard of.
Surprisingly the
food was not too spicy
The roads in CR are
not the best in the world.
Our bus had one
flat tire and one blow out, but that could’ve happened anywhere
I would recommend
CR to anyone who appreciates nature.
Script.
Hi, I’m Eben Freeman, with Taylor restaurant in NYC. Pisco Sour: Around war time is when Pisco really grew in popularity on the west coast. Even though it’s really unheard of here on the east coast. But now it’s back. It’s one of the world classic drinks, and it’s basically a sour with a few modifications to it. So we start out with the big shaker set. We’re going to use an egg in this drink, so we’re going to need some room for this to go around. So I’m using a 28-ounce shaker tin with an eighteen ounce cheater tin, in order to get the most space I can to make this around. We’re going to start out with two ounces of spirit and one ounce of lime juice. Again, in the restaurant we do a lot of this so we keep this squeezed, so you at home can make a better one than I do by squeezing your juice right when you need it. Could have half an ounce of simple syrup in there and now comes the egg. People get very scared when you start putting eggs in drinks, but really you shouldn’t worry as long as your eggs are fresh. You don’t stand much of a chance of getting sick. Use an egg separator that you might want to pick up. It just makes a little bit easier and cleaner to separate your eggs. Fix it over the end of your tin. And just crack your egg, put the whole thing in there. As you see, what happens is the white gets separated from the yolk. Now that you’ve got the yolk in here, and just discard it. You simply shake it first without any ice in the tin. I also like to use big ice while I’m doing this, tends to agitate that mixture and really whip that egg white right up. Here’s a Hawthorne strainer. Strain that into a coupe glass. Now if you whipped your egg whites well and your proportions are correct, you get a nice head on there with almost a convex meniscus on the top. When making this drink, it’s really key that you we get that froth on top because the next ingredient to add is really meant for the nose, not to be on the drink. A properly made Pisco sour has angostura bitters just on the foam so that it doesn’t actually drop into the drink. There’s different ways in doing this and adding it in. One nice way to do it is just to put drops of angostura onto the surface of the drink, perhaps three drops like that. And then take a stick and drag it trough as the pastry chef does with sauces and create little hearts in there. That’s a little known drink, but it’s actually a world classic: Pisco Sour.
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