Your 7-year-old is at a weekend clinic hitting soft red balls off a feed. Andre Agassi, at 7, was in a Las Vegas backyard facing a homemade ball machine — nicknamed “The Dragon” — that his father rigged to fire 2,500 tennis balls an hour at up to 110 miles per hour. He faced it day after day, year after year.
That was Andre’s childhood. It produced one of the greatest returners the game has ever seen — and a man who opened his autobiography Open with the line: “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.” Both are true at once. That’s the story tennis parents need to hear.
Childhood
Andre Agassi was born in Las Vegas in 1970, the youngest of four. His father, Emmanuel “Mike” Agassi, was a former amateur boxer from Iran who worked at a Las Vegas casino and became obsessed with turning his children into tennis champions.
Mike started Andre essentially from birth — tennis balls hung over his crib, then a racquet in his hands as a toddler. The backyard was converted into a tennis court, and Mike built “The Dragon,” a modified ball machine that blasted balls at the boy at speeds that would frighten most adults. Agassi writes that he flinched every time it fired.
Mike coached Andre himself. In 1983, at 13, Mike decided he had nothing left to teach his son and sent him to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida. The plan was a three-month stay — that’s all the family could afford. Bollettieri watched the kid for thirty minutes and told Mike, “Take your check back. He’s here for free.”
Agassi dropped out of school in the ninth grade to train full-time and turned pro in 1986 at 16.
What set him apart early
Coaches didn’t just see a talented kid — they saw a freak of ball-striking. Years of facing The Dragon at 110 mph had given Andre reflexes that looked superhuman. He took the ball early, on the rise, and redirected pace in a way adults couldn’t.
By 12, he and doubles partner Roddy Parks won the 1982 National Indoor Boys 14s doubles championship — beating older kids.
The trait that defined him was the return of serve. When you’ve spent years returning 110-mph balls in a backyard, a normal serve looks slow.
How he trained as a junior
- Backyard court in Las Vegas, built and maintained by his father — not a club, not an academy, for the first 13 years.
- “The Dragon”: the modified ball machine, roughly 2,500 balls per session at up to 110 mph. Brutal, repetitive, and completely unplanned by any coaching curriculum.
- Bollettieri Academy, Florida, from 13: the famous tennis boot camp. Agassi later called it a “glorified prison camp” — teenagers raising themselves — and said the move damaged his relationship with his father and his sense of self.
- Schooling fell away. He was constantly missing school and exhausted when he attended; he dropped out in ninth grade. He later called his lack of education one of his deepest regrets — and in 2001 founded the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a K–12 charter school in Las Vegas.
The through-line to pro success
The backyard forging worked — in tennis terms. Agassi won 8 Grand Slam titles, completed the career Grand Slam (sealed at the 1999 French Open), held world No. 1 for 101 weeks, and retired at the 2006 US Open after a 20-year career.
The skill that won him those titles was the skill The Dragon built: the best return of serve of his generation, and the ability to take the ball early and rob opponents of time.
In 1997, at 27, his ranking collapsed and his life unraveled — he later wrote openly about it in Open. He rebuilt, took ownership of his career, and had some of his best years after age 29. The talent was his; the choice to use it had to become his too.
What tennis parents can take from this
1. Your kid’s buy-in matters more than the reps. Andre faced thousands of balls a day and became a genius returner — and hated the sport for most of his youth. Volume without the kid’s genuine consent builds skill and resentment in equal measure. Check in on the deeper question: does this still feel like theirs?
2. Know when you’ve taught all you can — and hand them off. Mike Agassi’s best coaching decision may have been admitting at 13 that he’d hit his limit and sending Andre to someone better. If your kid is outgrowing their coach’s level, finding the next person is an act of love, not a failure.
3. Protect school. Agassi’s regret wasn’t about tennis — it was about education. Junior tennis can swallow academics whole if you let it. However serious your kid gets, keep school non-negotiable for as long as humanly possible. A tennis career ends; an education doesn’t.
We’re parents, not coaches — this is what the story taught us, not a prescription.
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