Sporting highs and lows, and those revealing little secrets that allow us to connect
Tennis is the loneliest of sports, according to former great Andre Agassi PICTURE: PIXABAY
There are many ingredients to a good book; and perhaps none have as high a ceiling and low a floor as the memoir or autobiography.
They come in all shapes and sizes, and quality varies tremendously from the very good to the unreadably bad. Sports biographies are in a league of their own, and must be chosen with great care.
The sensible thing for the sports star to do is to capitalise on their success at the height of it, as careers can be short and after retirement, out of the glare of the stadium lights, the world moves on and their prowess and contribution can be forgotten or glossed over. This phenomenon brings with it the problem of stories written far too early, before the everything worth doing has been done.
There are many biographies, for example, of the footballer Wayne Rooney, but his first official one, My Story So Far, was published in 2006 when he was a mere 20 years old — merely in the infancy of his career. Less noteworthy athletes have similarly gone for an early start on their literary side-career, leading to a flood of largely worthless stock filling up the bargain shelves.
Other sportspeople pen their books in their final (hopefully succcessful) season and the timing works out nicely with a post-retirement launch that can tick all the right boxes.
Most of the best sports biographies do more than go back over the key moments of a career — the triumphs and disasters, the emotions involved; they let you in on a few little secrets. They tell you things you never would have known or expected, and every now and again, you get one that entirely changes how you view the person, their craft and what makes them tick.
Brian Cody’s great autobiography, ‘Cody’, was published in 2009 of course — as his greatest side were at the peak of their powers, scooping a record-equalling four-in-a-row in the All-Ireland final. We all know what happened the following year, but there was still more than a decade of highs and lows still to come for Cody; there was still plenty of his story to be told, and perhaps one day it will be.
Still, he had achieved enough by 2009 both as a former player and manager to merit telling his tale so far, assisted by Martin Breheny.
The book is essential reading for any Kilkenny person or sports fan. It contains many lessons in living and in leadership too for anyone even with only a passing interest in hurling.
Mostly what speaks from the pages is his all-consuming passion for GAA, Kilkenny and particularly, his club James Stephens. It is clear what drives him. Cody is of course one of the great enigmas of the game, however, and that aura of the unknowable lingers after the final full stop. He does not delve deeply into his childhood or family; it is about his first decade at the helm of the Cats. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it is fascinating .
Cody’s success may be unique in the sport, but from reading other books, I feel it is reasonable to suggest that the amount of success a sportsperson has had may have little bearing on the quality of their book.
A recent reading of Sonny Bill Williams biography, You Can’t Stop the Sun from Shining, proved immensely disappointing.
Williams had an incredible career, playing multiple sports at the highest levels and for clubs all over the world. He won two Rugby Union World Cups with the All Blacks and played in a third. He also won a Rugby League World Cup with New Zealand, and represented his country in the Rio Olympics, playing Rugby Sevens.
Not content with that, he decided to dabble in boxing, and ended up crowned New Zealand's heavyweight champion. His stunning diversity of abilities, athleticism and success must make a case for him to be one of the greatest-ever athletes.
By all rights, it should have been a fascinating book. Instead, while it goes over his career and looks back at some of the challenges he has overcome, it feels tepid. It attempts to ‘correct the record’ of some of the less perfect aspects of Williams’ career, when he was subjected to unfair media scrutiny or public criticism.
It scratches the surface of his life, but with respect to both him and ghostwriter Alan Duff, there was little in the book that showed who Williams really is beyond what anyone who followed his career would already know.
Contrast that with ‘Open’, tennis player André Agassi’s immense memoir published in 2009. It’s a seriously moving book, and hard to put down, regardless of whether or not you are a big follower of tennis. Full disclosure — I am not. My interest in the sport extends to watching a few matches each year, and having last picked up a racket well over a decade ago, really only ever having played socially in my teenage years.
For someone to have achieved the level of success that he did, you would expect Agassi to be an obsessive, all-consuming tennis fan. But Agassi hates tennis. He says this, on page one of his book as he wakes up, in the very twilight of his career, wracked with pain and preparing for what is potentially his final competitive match. I loathe tennis, he confides.
He hates it as a child, aged eight, hitting thousands of balls a week. As an adult at the end of it all. It’s a refrain that echoes repeatedly throughout his book; he meets someone — a childhood friend, a mentor, a celebrity fan — and when he gets to know them, he lets his guard down and confesses his secret. It’s usually interpreted as a joke, but he is deadly serious.
Under constant pressure from an overbearing and domineering father, he spends hours every day, missing school and other activities, returning serves and working on his game. All the time hating it all. It’s hard to reconcile this with his passion on the court, the titles he won, the legions of fans and the lifestyle that tennis provided, the millions of dollars he won.
Tennis, he says, is the loneliest of sports. It’s a sentiment that might seem quite jarring for anyone who plays socially, but it’s an interesting point. There are no team mates, no backup. Not even a coach or manager in the corner as in boxing. He feels lonely out there, and when it’s going wrong, there is nobody to turn to or to offer a comforting hand or embrace.
Agassi’s battles with his opponents are well documented from a young age, his rivalry with fellow great Pete Sampras.
But it is his battles with himself — with his own demons — that come to define him, and that are so fascinating to the reader. The oppressive voice of his father looms on every page and with every ball he hits, haunting him as he struggles to make his way in the world and find a sense of peace.
His public persona — of a flamboyant, at times outrageous and fiery character with a thick head of long hair — could not be more at odds with his true self. He is shy, crippled with self-doubt and, is in fact bald - wearing a hairpiece to conceal the fact from all but a few people in his close inner circle. He lies to himself and others, and falls short - again and again.
It is only when he begins to abandon his conceits and embrace his limitations that he begins to flourish. He wins his first slam - Wimbledon in 1992 - but seems to struggle to live up to his early promise. He falls to his lowest-ever rankings and his relationships fall apart. Even though we know how it ends, sometimes it feels like it will be impossible to rise again after each despair.
When things start to come right, it is all the more sweet. It’s an enthralling read and offers and wonderful insight into sport and the human condition.
