newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ANDY LAGOMARSINO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

He said he hated tennis. He took crystal meth during his career. And he revealed that the long, golden locks that he sported for most of the 1990s were a wig.

Andre Agassi looked the camera in the eye and asked for compassion during his TV interview on "60 Minutes" Sunday. It was his time to take center court since the shocking excerpts from his autobiography ‘Open' were released to the public less than two weeks ago.

"I have to call it like it is," Agassi said when asked about the motivations behind revealing his past. "And hating tennis was a deep part of my life for a long, long time."

Agassi was visibly emotional — saying he was scared, isolated and "living a fraud" during his years in the tennis spotlight.

The tennis star said that it was his ex-wife Brooke Shields who eventually persuaded him to shave his head and to rid himself of the "chain" that he was carrying around.

"Every morning I would get up and find another piece of my identity on the pillow, in the wash basin, down the plughole.

"I asked myself, 'You want to wear a toupee? On the tennis court?' I answered myself: 'What else could I do?'"

The 39-year-old said that his first Grand Slam final performance at the French Open in 1990 was hampered by fears that the hairpiece may fall off.

Agassi became emotional when interviewer Katie Couric read him the words of Martina Navratilova, who compared Agassi to Roger Clemens, a star baseball pitcher who has denied wrongdoing despite links to performance-enhancing drugs.

"It's what you don't want to hear," Agassi said. "I would hope with that would come some compassion that maybe this person doesn't need condemnation. Maybe this person could stand a little help.

"Because that was at a time in my life when I needed help. I had a problem, and there might be many other athletes out there that test positive for recreational drugs that have a problem. So I would ask for some compassion."