Former professional tennis player Andre Agassi was interviewed for Time Magazine late last year and he talked about his charity foundation, new snack product, and his "hate-love" relationship with tennis.
Self-study activity:
Needless to say that this is a difficult activity even for strong intermediate students and that it would be more suitable for advanced ones. Anyway, the interview can help us to get acquainted with situations where the difficulty of the language is beyond us but we can still manage to grasp some general ideas. Remember that the questions in the task are guidelines that should help us not to get lost and follow the conversation.
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 The necklace Andre is wearing was made for him by his daughter.
2 Andre seems to interested in educational issues.
3 Andre was lucky as a child and had an education.
4 Andre wrote a book called Open.
5 Tennis had a bad influence on Andre's family life.
6 Andre enjoys watching tennis now more than ever.
7 Andre was professional at 16.
8 Andre was already wealthy as a child.
Hi, I’m Belinda Luscombe from Time. The man I’m with today needs no introduction. Andre Agassi, welcome.
Thank you.
Thanks for being here.
Yeah.
Now, we’re here to talk about your foundation and your snack food.
Yes.
But first I’m fascinated by your necklace. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
My son made it for me when he was five. He was doing an arts and craft project and said, dad would you help me? And I said, sure what can I do? He goes, tell me how to spell something, and I go, what? And he goes, daddy rocks. So I helped him spell it out and I haven’t taken it off since.
So you are now getting into snack foods, which seems like an unusual direction for you.
Well, not, I wouldn’t say I’m getting into snack foods. What I would say is I’m extending my reach in, in ways of helping public education. I mean, I was approached by V-20 to do a, a for-profit venture that I had no interest in. And I said, wait a second, wouldn’t this be one heck of an opportunity to get the country involved? And giving to their future.
Do you actually eat applesauce?
I don’t, personally. Now careful.
It’s pretty good.
I don’t, personally. I wanted to make sure that…
That’s not bad!
Yeah, I wanted to make sure that it was a step in the right direction from an alternative perspective, meaning healthier than other things on the shelf.
Since you started your foundation you have focused in more and more and more on education. Why did that issue speak to you?
Because it was the only way I’ve eventually realized you can make systematic change, given the tools, was… what I realized needed to happen. These kids needed a future of their choosing. They need to have choice in their life, and the only way to have a choice is to have an education. I, I didn’t have a choice in my life. I, I didn’t have education. I was lucky and found myself good at tennis. But without that, I don’t know where I’d be. Then I look at the circumstances of these other kids. Without education, I know exactly where they’ll be, we’ll be building prisons instead of schools.
Is this a reflection of your own particular feeling about how you want to invest your money?
If you wanna treat a problem, I think philanthropy or even the government can treat some problems, but if you gonna cure it, I think that’s one thing we can still do in this country. We can think outside the box. We can bring the right players to the, to the table to create a win for everybody. And it’s, it’s, it’s social-minded investing, and that is key. And trust me, we wouldn’t have twenty-seven schools right now if this wasn’t a huge win for the operators. It’s a win across the board which is what makes it so exciting.
You famously wrote in your book Open that you have tennis, but you were very good at tennis, so I guess the question is do you hate philanthropy as well?
No, no. Actually philanthropy got me to not hate tennis. I, I don’t describe my relationship with tennis as a love-hate. It was, it, it started off, not my choice. It started off effecting my siblings, it’s, my relationship with my father. It started off with me being sent away of the academy at thirteen, feeling abandoned, and started off with me taking this rebellion that I was starting to express, and finding myself on a world stage, and, and being labeled, and you know, so it just kept growing into something that I was more, and more disconnected with. It felt like I was living in somebody else’s life. I would always be better off in a team sport, and tennis wasn’t a team sport, it was… it’s lonely, but I could create my own team. I could, in a sense, find myself showing up to work for somebody else. What I felt when I started my school, and when I started to use my fame, use my resources to make a difference in children’s lives, in a sense I felt like I finally had my team.
Do you watch tennis, still?
I do. I enjoy watching it probably more now than ever.
The money part doesn’t seem that hard to you. What do you say when you go to these kids at your school and you know, that is, that is a very hard path for them, like how do you speak to somebody who is, is in a very different position from you?
The same way I, I speak to the kids at Harvard. To be at Harvard you gotta be an absolute perfectionist. You have to live with unbearable amounts of pressure, whether you put it on yourself, or whether it’s put on for you. I was sixteen years old, and I was professional. Some people will say, well done, congratulations. I’m going, what do you mean? Now I gotta survive. Now I gotta… and then, all of a sudden, I’m getting to the finals of these grand slams, and a lot of people would say, hey, well done. I’m going, wait a second. I’m, I’m on the verge of being the greatest underachiever in the history of our game, you know, so I don’t have to look very far with the life I’ve lived to identify. You know, I’ve live with certainly a lot in my life. Lot of excess. Lot that I don’t need. But I’ve also, also been on the other side of it. I’ve also had to work myself through it. You know, when I was a child I didn’t have a lot. When I was on the… about to turn pro, and on the road I was, I knew what it was like to be one week away from broke, I mean, literally. When I look at those kids, there’s not an excuse in the world they can give me to make me think that they can’t succeed.
Andre, thanks so much.
Thank you.
Key:
1F 2T 3F 4T 5T 6T 7T 8F
