Like the sound of champagne corks popping from bottles that have been vigorously shaken, the tennis balls rebound off the racquets so rapidly, and with such startling force, they’re often too fast for your eyes to focus on. In this thrilling match, two world-class champions—considered among the greatest tennis rivals of all time—are pushing themselves to their physical and psychological limits in a battle to smash world records, beat their fiercest opponent and leave a lasting legacy.

This was Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in the 1995 US Open, one of their many matches against each other from 1989 to 2002, a period when they were alternately ranked the top player in the world. Agassi wrote candidly about the legendary rivalry in his engaging autobiography, Open, in which he also revealed the sacrifices he made and the hardship he endured en route to the top of his game, describing his experience as “a wrenching, thrilling, horrible, astonishing whirl.”

That “whirl” began in the cradle. When Agassi was a baby, his over-zealous father, a former Olympic boxer, determined that one of his offspring should become a champion tennis player. He hung a mobile of tennis balls over his son’s cot and encouraged him to slap at them with a ping-pong paddle he had taped to Andre’s hand. “When I was three, he gave me a sawed-off racket and told me to hit whatever I wanted. I specialised in saltshakers. I liked serving them through glass windows. I aced the dog,” recounts Agassi in the book.

By the time Agassi was seven years old, his father had rigged up a terrifying machine called The Dragon, in the family’s backyard in Las Vegas, which pumped out balls at an alarming rate of 2,500 an hour and which the boy was made to face day after day, year in, year out. “It looks at first glance like the ball machine at every country club in America but— modified by my father—when The Dragon takes dead aim at me and fires a ball at 110 miles an hour, the sound makes a blood-curdling roar. I flinch every time,” remembers Agassi.

It’s hardly surprising there were times when the tennis champ claimed to hate the sport that propelled him to stardom and earned him millions. Yet, in hindsight, he’s careful to acknowledge the advantages his prodigious talent and unusual upbringing afforded him. Evidently, his greatest regret is that he missed out on the opportunity for a rounded academic education. Such was his dedication to his game that there was little enthusiasm or energy left over
for schooling.

“I was never prepared for school. I was constantly missing it and constantly tired when I was there. It simply didn’t matter. I didn’t know I was being deprived of something,” Agassi tells me when we meet in Las Vegas.

Agassi was sent to a boarding school in Florida when he was 13, which was a boot camp for young tennis players. The Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy was chosen by Agassi’s father after he saw a TV programme about it, which was actually an expose of Bollettieri’s character. “He was, in essence, running a sweatshop that employed child labour,” recalls Agassi. “It was a glorified prison camp.”

Classes took place a half-hour bus ride away at Bradenton Academy, where Agassi and his fellow students from Bollettieri’s spent just four hours a day on schoolwork, compared to other pupils from the local community who were there for the full seven-hour school day. “We were always behind on schoolwork. The system was rigged, guaranteed to produce bad students as quickly and efficiently as it produced good tennis players,” recalls Agassi, who dropped out of school in the ninth grade.

At 16, Agassi turned pro. In the following 20 years, he won more than 850 singles matches, including 60 ATP titles, eight Grand Slams and an Olympic gold medal in Atlanta in 1996.

In 2001, to the huge delight of tennis fans everywhere, Andre Agassi married fellow tennis superstar Steffi Graf; the couple had two children. As two of the highest-paid sports stars in the world, they could easily have spent the rest of their lives indulging in the rewards of their success following retirement from the professional tennis circuit. Instead, they chose to consistently devote a large chunk of their time and money to philanthropic ventures close to their hearts.

For Agassi, this meant building a shelter for boys and girls who were the victims of neglect and abuse—and then creating his own school with innovative initiatives that challenge America’s education system.

“With education there’s hope—there’s knowing that you have a future. I can’t say I’m regretful, exactly. I was pretty lucky to be good at something. So when I think about other kids who aren’t, what does that mean for them? It’s a question that’s conscionable in my mind,” says Agassi.

Agassi set up the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education in 1994 while he was still playing championship tennis. Once he retired in 2006, he set out to further develop the concept. Through its signature project, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a non-fee-paying charter school, the foundation strives to provide underprivileged youth in West Las Vegas—an area that endures some of the lowest levels of education funding in the US—with a high-quality education from kindergarten to the 12th grade. 

Charter schools occupy a position between the public and private school sectors in the US. They receive public funding yet operate independently of the public school system. These schools typically provide an alternative curriculum and a distinct environment for students. Agassi believes strongly that this system of education gives children something that everyone should have the opportunity to experience—and is something he would have liked for himself. “It’s a place where there are high expectations. When somebody expects a lot from you, it means they think a lot of you. There’s empowerment in that,” he explains.

“I’ve learned all the trappings of a broken system that perpetuates mediocrity and I’ve tried to figure out a way to impact more children. Not all charter schools are good, and mine wasn’t for a long time, but the best operators in charter schools—the top 15 per cent—by far and away outperform their public-school peers because they are more nimble, are able to operate independently and can incentivise excellence instead of mediocrity. They’re able to spend more time on tasks and have longer school days. They really care about those kids—that’s reflected on a daily basis.”

Agassi chose the charter school system because its independence allows him and his board to run the school the way they see fit. “It’s about finding the right people and holding everybody accountable, from the teachers to the students to the parents.”

Perhaps understandably, neither tennis nor any other kind of sport is the focus at the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. “Sport can be a great way to teach under the right governance. But under the wrong objectives, it’s truly a disadvantage in a child’s life. When they have unrealistic expectations put on them, when they have unrealistic expectations of themselves, when they see it as their only way out… They spend a third of their life not preparing for two-thirds of their life. That’s not what I really like to see.”

For the former champion who once played tennis with an intensity that, by his own admission, bordered on the obsessive, does he miss the adrenaline buzz? 

“It’s quite a challenge to balance all these things in my life: the foundation, home life, children, businesses. Relationships are really important to me—I have people I need to stay in touch with, ambassadorships to nurture—such as with Longines. Good things happen as a result of that. The choreography of all this takes energy. There’s a lot on my plate, which keeps my energy at a pace but without the drama that used to come with playing tennis.”

Asked why he feels the need to continuously drive the project, Agassi explains, “Because it beats the alternative. What’s the alternative? To not make a difference, not try to change lives for the better? You’ll have to introduce me to the person who doesn’t want to do that—so I know never to spend time around them. For me it’s what I prefer doing. Writing cheques I’ve done, donating I’ve done. I went from supporting groups to building the Boys and Girls Club to creating an organisation that has a national reputation. Now that it’s there, all I have to do is fund and facilitate it, and drive it so the resources are there. There’s the good old saying: ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’”

For the man who won so many tennis titles in his long and impressive career, Agassi is adamant his greatest achievements have been off the court. “Real success is coming back to your community and making a difference in it. When I start having teachers at my school that have been educated there and social work being done by former students, when we start seeing generational change, then that will be real success.”

This story originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of Hong Kong Tatler