"What was he thinking?” was the response of a former Wimbledon men’s singles champion who has lived an awful lot of his life in the stinging intensity of the public gaze.

That is the overriding sensation from two days during which we have learnt more about Andre Agassi’s strengths and frailties than he need have told.

What was he thinking? A carefully designed means of selling a few more copies of his memoir?

Even Agassi, who, I have to say, often left me feeling distinctly cold as a person, could not have been that shallow. One would prefer to agree with Darren Cahill, his last professional coach and “dear friend” who says that Agassi is “extremely proud of the book and I’m proud of him for giving such an honest and revealing look at his life”.

It is honest all right, especially the bit about his dishonesty. And let us cut to the quick here. For all that he might have thrown away his entire life when he decided to snort crystal meth, the revelation that he took his time and composed an utterly false account of what he had done to save his skin is the real jolt.

Let the tennis writer who is without sin cast the first stone. None of us is a saint and when I first saw Agassi at 16 in Stratton Mountain, Vermont, in 1986, he did not appear to possess many saintly virtues either. But as his career metamorphosed, as he became the darling of the establishment rather than its dread, he came to be treated by those in the game as a tennis holy man. And that did stick in the craw.

Most journalists revered him, I erred on the side of what I hope was honourable scepticism. A lot of the posturing was too much. Pete Sampras never blew a kiss to a crowd in his career, Agassi did it after every match, to all four corners; Agassi was not alone in treating ballboys like second-class citizens but his demand that they were all in their proper place before he would play (he never wanted two ballboys to be standing together, even though it meant a delay of the game while they trudged back to their place) was too much.

Apparently, he never wanted anyone to watch him practise, to the point of security overkill. Andy Murray has chastised me for not coming to watch him practise enough. Work that one out.

Everyone is free to have their view on whether what Agassi has fessed up to has tarnished his image. What is clear is that the decision he took not to tell the truth to the panel set up to review his case in 1997 was taken because he knew that if he had come clean, his image would be irreparably damaged. That the panel fell for his lies (and did that decision have anything to do with his image and what it would have meant to tennis to lose him?) is almost as vexatious.

The fallibilities of the old drug-testing system — a player can’t go to the toilet these days at a professional tennis event without someone with a clipboard and small jar breathing down their neck — have been laid bare: phone calls that probably should not have been made, anonymous people making profoundly poor decisions. The World Anti-Doping Agency wants explanations and that is its right, but one doubts anyone can repair the damage that was done.

One has to hope that these revelations do not suffocate the Barclays ATP World Tour finals at the 02 arena in southeast London from November 22, a championship that will showcase all that is good and clean in the men’s game today. Tennis is a beautiful game played by exceptional athletes.

I was asked countless times on Wednesday, when The Times began its serialisation, whether I was shocked. It was a bit of a surprise that I found myself saying “not really” as quickly as I did.

Nothing about Agassi shocked that much (well OK, that Steffi Graf fancied him was a bit of a blow). From the teenager with the denim shorts and rakish hair in the Eighties, to the weeping Wimbledon champion of 1992, through the lows of 1997 — how low we are only now discovering — his renaissance as a champion, the change in his persona, the withdrawal from the 2002 Australian Open with a wrist injury at the last minute, the sentimental mush in New York on his retirement from the top of the game in 2006, nothing shocked.

At this year’s US Open, we bumped into Agassi and asked for a few reflections. His mind went back to 1997, to a hotel in Stuttgart, Germany, with Brad Gilbert, who had become his coach that year and had had to deal with the crystal meth fallout (though there is no suggestion he knew anything of the abuse).

“I was ranked 147 and I lost two and three to Todd Martin after taking a wild card,” Agassi said. “Brad looked at me and said, ‘It’s really simple, we’re not leaving this room until you decide what you’re going to do. Are we going to start over? Are we gonna do this, because you’re too good. You’re too good of a person. I’m not going to let you do this.’

“I gave him a big hug and said, ‘I’m going to choose this.’ I looked out at the streets. I saw the lights of all the cars in Germany. I know every car I saw out there was going somewhere they possibly didn’t want to go. They were doing something they possibly didn’t want to do. It’s not till you choose it for yourself that it’s going to resonate.

“And I did. It was a long road. I didn’t know where it was going to lead me. More importantly, I didn’t really care.”