Andre Agassi's Extraordinary Journey

Andre Agassi's disclosure last week that he took a drug known as crystal meth, lied about it to authorities and got away with it, is only one of the startling revelations in the new autobiography from one of the most respected athletes in the world.

What Agassi has to say about tennis - the sport that earned him over $100 million - is also pretty startling. Agassi's book covers a life he says he didn't choose and couldn't escape, a life that often made him feel empty and depressed.

It's the story of a tennis prodigy whose flamboyant personal style and relentless game changed the sport, and the story of a man who was a star before he was a champion, a champion who fell to the bottom before rising to the top, where he matured to become an elder statesman, sports icon and philanthropist.

"60 Minutes" and correspondent Katie Couric caught up with Agassi recently in his hometown of Las Vegas in a place he doesn't visit very often anymore - a tennis court.

Web Extra: Chrystal Meth
Web Extra: Getting Caught
Web Extra: The Meth Fallout
Web Extra: Wigging Out!
Web Extra: Andre on Brooke Shields
Web Extra: Steffi vs. Andre
Photo Essay: Andre Agassi

It has been three years since Andre Agassi retired from tennis after a 21 year career, one of the longest, most successful and most colorful in modern sports.

We met him on a public tennis court not far from his home in Las Vegas, on a rare tennis outing with his wife Steffi Graf, one of the greatest female players ever.

"Is this a little fun for you? It must be or is it torture?" Couric asked.

For both Steffi and Andre, tennis isn't what it used to be.

"It is a little fun. Come on!" Graf replied, laughing.

"Yeah, it's fun," he said.

Maybe now, but in his candid and surprising new autobiography Agassi reveals that for most of his life he hated tennis with "a dark secret passion" but never let anyone know.

"I think I was just flat out scared," he told Couric. "Just didn't know what people would do if they heard the way I felt."

"You write that one day quote, 'I'll look an interviewer right in the eye and tell him, or her, the unvarnished truth.' Is this that day?" Couric asked.

"It is. It is," he said. "I have to call it like it is. And hating tennis was a deep part of my life for a long, long time."

From the time he was an infant, his father, Mike Agassi, a first generation immigrant from Iran, programmed his youngest child for tennis, taping ping pong paddles to his hands when he was a toddler and encouraging him to hit anything in his path.

By the age of six, he was practicing four to five hours a day.

"Your dad had a burning desire to have you be the number one tennis player in the world. What drove him to drive you so hard?" Couric asked.

"Well, I think he drove me hard because he drove himself hard. Tennis was a passion that he had from when he was a little boy himself. And he saw it as the quickest road to the American dream for his kids. Somethin' that, you know, he wanted for his family," Agassi explained.

But according to the book that's not how he felt. He wanted to quit, but was afraid to tell his father, who he calls "Pops."

"Did you ever look at your dad and say, 'Pops, I hate this. I hate it so much. Please don't make me do it'?" Couric asked.

"No," Agassi said. "I needed to do it for the family, possibly an unnecessary burden for a child, but one that I definitely carried."

"What do you think he would have done if you had said that to him?" Couric asked.

"'You don't have to love it. You're gonna do it. This is what we do. This is what you're gonna do. You're born to be a tennis player. You're gonna be the best in the world. And that's the end of it,'" Agassi said.

Being "the best" meant hitting the road, traveling to tournaments every weekend. And when he wasn't, he was taking on a ferocious ball machine Andre Agassi nicknamed "the dragon."

"It was really scary. Especially to a seven year old," Agassi remembered.

"Shooting tennis balls at one hundred and ten miles an hour to seven-year-old boy?" Couric asked.

"One hundred and ten miles an hour, because my dad put a souped-up engine in it. We didn't have ball machines that hit the ball that hard back then."

"He was a maniac," Couric remarked.

"He was a mad scientist, as well," Agassi said.

Asked if that was the age when he decided that he hated tennis, Agassi told Couric, "It always came with a level of anxiety. It always came with a level of pressure. None of it really made sense to me. So I don't ever remember really not hating it."

His describes his father as prone to fits of rage, and so obsessed with tennis he thought school actually got in the way.

Asked what his father's attitude was towards school and education, Agassi told Couric, "Unnecessary, takes up too much of the day because we should be hitting tennis balls; we could literally be driving to school and he could strike a deal with us to turn the car around as long as we get out there and play additionally. He just never thought a whole lot of it. And neither did I."

He was sent to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida when he was 14, dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and when Agassi called his dad and asked him if he should turn pro at 16, he said his father reacted like this: "He was like 'Hello? Who am I talking to? What are you gonna do? Be a doctor? You don't go to school, take the money and turn pro.' And while he was right and while I probably knew I would make that choice anyhow, I just didn't quite like the way he put it."

Agassi was quickly becoming a tennis heartthrob - his pop star good looks and unconventional outfits got plenty of attention and won him lucrative endorsement deals.

But his image, he says now, was all a façade, including his hair. It started to fall out when he was just 17. So he got a hairweave. He was terrified people would learn the truth about his trademark mane.

"What this could mean if people found out, or what does it really mean to my endorsement companies? What's it mean to my overall image? What's it mean to me? What's, you know, I was living a fraud. I mean, I was just living in a hell," he said.

He nearly found out when he finally made it to his first grand slam final at the 1990 French Open.

The night before, the unthinkable happened: his hairpiece literally fell apart in the shower and Andre and his brother frantically put it in place with a slew of bobby pins.

"First time I ever really prayed for anything as it related to a result. I was praying not for the wind but for my hair to stay on," he remembered.

"Were you afraid it was just gonna fly off?" Couric asked.

"Scared the heck out of me. I kept envisioning what this would be like if my hair just flew off and landed. Like what would I do? Would I go over and kill it or would I quickly put it back on? Do I take it home and name it? I didn't know what I was gonna do. I didn't have a plan for what I was gonna do, which is why I was trying to move less and less."

"'Cause the last shot, you just sort of stood there?" Couric asked.

"Oh yeah. When the match was over I had won," he said.

The hair had stayed on. "One of the trials and tribulations of my journey," he joked.

For most of the next two years he struggled on the court, but then came an unexpected win at Wimbledon, his first grand slam victory.

His second major win came two years later. His blistering baseline passing shots helped him capture his first U.S. Open. It was the beginning of a run of 26 consecutive victories that earned him the number one ranking in the world.

Agassi was clearly on a roll, a roll he expected to continue a year later at the 1995 U.S. Open final. His girlfriend, Brooke Shields, who had convinced him to shave his head, was there.

He lost that game to Pete Sampras.

"I hit a big wall. I lost interest. Lost desire. Lost inspiration, is what I really lost that day," he told Couric.

"Your life really went into a tailspin after that, didn't it? And it lasted quite a while," she asked.

"Yeah. I got disinterested in tennis," he said.

He says he wasn't interested in much of anything for the next couple of years - even his relationship, worrying that he and his future wife were not a good fit.

"It seems that you really didn't want to be married to Brooke Shields, and yet, you did it," Couric remarked.

"You know, I was also in a life that I didn't want to be in. I didn't want to be playing tennis either, you know. So, my life was filled with things I didn't want, things I didn't choose, you know. Part of it was an inability to really find a place for anything, really," he said.

He claims when his assistant asked him if he wanted to get high and offered him a white powder - an illegal highly addictive drug called crystal meth - Agassi writes he was in "such a bad way" he agreed.

"My decision was 'Why not? Can't feel any worse.' There was a sadness that came with it initially, followed by the energy and a chemically induced reconnection to life. I was looking for anything to make me get off the couch, to make me re-engage in life," Agassi said.

"Did you think about the ramifications of doing it while you were doing it?" Couric asked.

"Of course not," Agassi admitted. "How do you think about that? I knew what I was doing but tennis wasn't a concern to me, 'cause I didn't care about tennis. You know, my own body wasn't really that much of a concern to me because I didn't think that highly of myself."

"You write that during that summer, I guess, or during the following months, you and your assistant got high a lot. How many times did you do crystal meth, do you think?" Couric asked.

"You know it was a foggy time in my life for a lot of reasons. The simple answer is I don't know. I did it way too many," he said. "I wouldn't be able to put a number on it. What I can tell you is I did it for a good part of 1997, a better part of the year. Starting early in the year, and ending deeper into the year, you know. So, it was way more than it should've been."

In his book he writes that no one close to him knew what he doing. But after he lost in the first round of a tournament in Germany, his coach gave him an ultimatum: he needed to quit tennis or start over.

He decided to start over.

"And I said that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna choose this. I don't have to. I can quit right now. My dad's not choosing it. This is my choice and my choice alone. And I made the decision right then and there that I'm gonna choose to fight this battle. And I'm gonna choose tennis," Agassi told Couric.

Asked if that was the first time in his life where he felt that it was his choice, Agassi said, "It was the first time in my life. Twenty-seven years old. Ranked 141 in the world. And in a marriage that I shouldn't be in."

Agassi's life was spiraling out of control. He was using crystal meth and had lost all interest in tennis, really in everything. But just when he decided to quit using the drug, turn his life around and recommit himself to the sport, he got some very bad news.

A doctor from tennis' governing body, the Association of Tennis Professionals, or ATP, called and informed him that he had failed a drug test, was facing a three-month suspension and needed to write a letter explaining himself.

"In life, most bad decisions lead to more bad decisions," Agassi told Couric. "And this one did. And I wrote a letter filled with lies, because I was ashamed."

"And afraid of what would happen?" Couric asked.

"Embarrassed, and panicked. I was panicked," he said.

Asked what he wrote in that letter, Agassi said, "I wrote that I ingested the drug accidentally."

"Once?" Couric asked.

"At the time of the testing," he replied.

The ATP accepted his explanation, threw out his drug test and exonerated him.

"I can't believe they believed you," Couric remarked. "That's sort of like 'The dog ate my homework,' don't you think?"

"Yeah. You know, very few people make mistakes that big, and get a second chance. And you know, I got a second chance, and it wasn't lost on me -- that every day after that, there's some form of atonement for that second chance. And I'm committed to making the most of my life every day after that," he told Couric.

"So the reaction to your admission of using crystal meth has been pretty swift and harsh. How have you been feeling with so many people criticizing you?" Couric asked.

"It doesn't surprise me," he said. "I think everybody has a reason to be angered and to be disappointed. You know?"

"Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were pretty critical of this revelation about crystal meth," Couric said. "And Martina Navratilova was especially harsh. Do you know what she said?" Couric asked. "She said, 'Shocking. Not as much shock that he did it as shock he lied about it and didn't own up to it. He's up there with Roger Clemens as far as I'm concerned. He owned up to it in the book, but it doesn't help now.'"

"It's what you don't wanna hear," Agassi said. "But when somebody takes a performance inhibitor, a recreational drug…"

"Not at first as a performance enhancing drug?" Couric asked.

"The one thing that I would hope is not that there aren't rules that need to be followed, but along with that would come some compassion that maybe this person doesn't need condemnation. Maybe this person could stand a little help. And I had a problem. And there might be many other athletes out there that test positive for recreational drugs that has a problem. So I would I would ask for some compassion," he said.

"Are you at all sorry, given the reaction that this has gotten, that you were honest about this in your book?" Couric asked.

"It wasn't an option for me to write a book about my life and leave out one of the central points of it. One of the turning points of it. And it certainly wasn't an option for me to write a book called 'Open' and not be," he replied.

"Are you concerned at all that people will read your story and see the life you've built and say, 'This guy is ungrateful. He's a bit of a whiner'?" Couric asked.

"Regardless of how somebody else would perceive the life I've lived, the fact that I perceived it that way and found a way to get through I think is a hopeful, inspirational story," he replied.

Getting a second chance, he took it, pouring himself back into the game. At an age when most tennis careers are winding down, his was winding up.

At 29, he won the French Open, only the fifth man in tennis history to win every grand slam title.

In the span of 18 months, he went from being ranked 141 in the world back to number one. It was one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

And it showed.

"And when I won Paris, it gave me that hope, that belief, that, geez, I'm really doing it. It gave me my career in Paris. And I just kept - kept rolling with it," he told Couric.

His career would roll on for another seven years. At the 2006 U.S. Open, accompanied by his wife and two children, he was 36. His body was giving out and he knew it would be his last tournament. Everyone did.

"You have pulled for me on the court and also in life and I want to take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you," he told the crowd.

Agassi went home to Las Vegas where he lives with his wife Steffi Graf. They've been married now for nine years. Their courtship began after they both won the French Open in 1999.

"You told Stef on one of your first dates that you hated tennis. Why'd you do that?" Couric asked.

"Because I was falling in love with her," Agassi said, laughing. "You can't do that under false pretense, you know."

"He was also asking me if I wanted to have children in the first date," Graf added.

"Really?" Couric asked.

"Well, close," he replied.

With Steffi he had finally found his perfect match, thanks to tennis.

"When Stefanie came into my life, I realized that tennis gave me her, you know. The scorecard was gettin' more balanced, you know. It gave me my school. It gave me… Stef, you know. And just that weight alone, you know, gave me a lotta wind under my sail."

Agassi said it gave him a reason to appreciate tennis.

With help from an annual gala in Las Vegas, his foundation has raised $140 million, and he has personally donated millions. His real passion is Agassi Prep, which he built in one of Las Vegas' worst neighborhoods.

He dropped out in ninth grade, but is now devoting his life to educating kids. "It's my life's work. And you could say maybe because of my lack of education, I feel the void of it."

He wants to make sure other kids don't. The 623 students are chosen by lottery, and there's a waiting list of over 800. A charter school, Agassi Prep emphasizes academics. Both parents and students must sign a commitment to excellence. And the goal is college, from the very start.

The first class of seniors graduated last June. And everyone headed to college.

At the school's graduation, Agassi said, "Some people told us we were getting carried away with our imagination that we idealized you and now you've grown up to exceed our imagination and our ideals. Finally I want to say one last thing, something I've wanted to say for a very long time: 'class dismissed,'" he told the grads.

Produced by Harry Radliffe and Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson