APART from confessions about his drug use, perhaps the most striking revelation in Andre Agassi’s autobiography was the insight it gave into his troubled relationship with his father. Mike Agassi was the prototype tennis dad, somebody who saw great potential wealth for himself and his family if he could turn his son into a tennis champion, but it meant that the boy would have little joy in his childhood.

Being urged on so fervently by his father caused nightmares for the young Andre, leading to a lifetime’s deep-rooted aversion to the sport at which he excelled. “I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and still I keep playing, keep hitting all morning, and all afternoon, because I have no choice,” he writes in his autobiography, Open. There is no doubt that this hatred stemmed from the ferocious regime imposed upon him from an early age by his father.

Born Ardashes Saginian nearly 79 years ago in Salmas, in the western Azerbaijan province of Iran (or Persia as it was then known), Mike Agassi was the son of an Armenian father and an Assyrian mother. He came from a poor background, his family living in one room and sharing a basic outside toilet with other families, hardships that had a profound effect. He became aware of tennis by watching British servicemen during the second world war, but was a much better boxer and represented his country at the 1948 Olympics in London, though he lost in the first round. After suffering the same fate four years later in Helsinki, he emigrated to America, initially to Chicago, and married Elizabeth Dudley, a young American woman.

However, he never lost his interest in tennis, or his sense that the sport could change his life, so the family moved to the more tennis-friendly environment of Las Vegas. The place suited Agassi, who was a hustler. He found work in the casinos as a greeter and security manager but his passion for sport never left him and soon he became the tennis pro at the Tropicana Hotel and Resort.

Andre writes in his book: “Violent by nature, my father is forever preparing for battle. He shadowboxes constantly. He keeps an axe handle in his car. He leaves the house with a handful of salt and pepper in each pocket, in case he’s in a street fight and needs to blind someone.”

Three children — Rita, Phillip and Tami — came along and were soon playing on the tennis court Agassi Sr had built in the back yard of their home. Mike Agassi gave his side of the story in his 2006 book The Mike Agassi story, a memoir that is remarkable both in its candour and its lack of regret. Perhaps the most shocking insight was that, as far as his father was concerned, Andre had it easy: the kids who really suffered were the two oldest. By the time Andre was born in 1970, Mike Agassi writes: “I decided I wouldn’t push him the way I had Rita and Phillip.” All the same, he admits: “People say I pushed my kids too hard, and I nearly destroyed them. And you know what? They’re right. I was too hard on them. I made them feel like what they did was never good enough. But after the childhood I had, fighting for every scrap in Iran, I was determined to give my kids a better life.”

In 1984, Rita, who had rebelled against her father, became the sixth and last wife of another tennis legend, Pancho Gonzales. There had been previous ill-feeling between father and son-in-law. Back in his Chicago days, Mike acted as a line judge for one of Gonzales’s professional matches. The fiery Mexican was so critical of perceived miscalls that Mike walked away and sat in the stands. Late in life, Gonzales claimed Mike had riled him so much that he had considered having him killed.

Agassi Sr may have decided to ease up on Andre, but within a couple of months the baby was sleeping with a tennis ball hanging over his crib. “My dad was convinced that if my eyes were going to move around as a baby, I might as well be looking at a tennis ball,” Andre writes in his book. In his own book Mike Agassi provides a chilling rationale. “I believed I could hardwire Andre’s body to swing a racket to make contact with a secondary object, and in doing so boost his hand-eye co-ordination.” The baby was just six months when this process began. At the age of two, he was running around the tennis court with a racket taped to his hand.

Before long, Andre was a tennis phenomenon, one his hustler of a father exploited to the full. Andre’s book relates the story of how as a nine-year-old his father pitched him against the American football legend Jim Brown, the original wager of $10,000 toned down to $500 after Brown was warned that the youngster never lost. “Afterwards, Brown asks what my goals are, my dreams,” recalls Andre. “I start to answer but my father jumps in: ‘He’s going to be number one in the world.’ Mr Brown says: ‘I wouldn’t bet against him’.”

By now Mike Agassi’s regime was pitiless, and in particular his use of a modified ball machine — “the dragon” — which fired balls at 110mph at him on the practice court. “The sound it makes is a bloodthirsty roar,” writes Agassi. “I flinch every time.”

Agassi goes on: “My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day, I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls. He believes in maths. Numbers, he says, don’t lie. A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.”

In many ways Mike Agassi succeeded. For all his natural talent, few can doubt that Andre’s progress to becoming one of the greatest (and richest) players of his generation was at least in part due to his father’s relentless bullying. But the cost has been enormous — a scarred relationship for the rest of their lives. Mike walked out of Andre’s marriage to Brooke Shields and was not present at his marriage to Steffi Graf (nor was her father).

Even as his dreams were coming true, Mike Agassi found it difficult to truly enjoy his son’s achievements. When Andre rang him after his Wimbledon triumph (neither parent was there) he was told by his father that he should not have lost the fourth set.