Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi, father and original coach of Hall of Famer Andre Agassi, has died at age 90.
Mike Agassi passed away at 9:17 p.m. on Friday at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, Andre Agassi confirmed in a text to the Las Vegas Review Journal. Andre Agassi said any memorial service for his father will be private.
More: Agassi Ecstasy
Mike Agassi represented Iran as a boxer in two Olympic Games, in 1948 and 1952. Growing up in a family so poor they didn't have an indoor bathroom, Mike Agassi fell in love with tennis watching American soldiers play the sport in Iran. It was the start of a life-long love affair with the sport. Mike Agassi taught himself to play and later taught his children.
"Believe me, I know what it's like to be on the outside," Mike Agassi wrote in his memoir "The Agassi Story." "I've spent the better part of my life on the fringes. I was born in Persia—later called Iran—in 1930 to Armenian parents, a Christian in an overwhelming Muslim country.
"I remained an outsider in America, where I emigrated at age 21 with almost no money and even less English.
"My outsider status was cemented when, years later, my kids began playing competitive tennis. To the other parents, I was an appallingly middle-class Armenian casino worker from Las Vegas by way of Tehran, trying to involve my kids in the ultimate upper-class sport."
Mike Agassi initially moved to Chicago where he met his wife, Betty, in June of 1959. The couple married two months after meeting before settling in Las Vegas in 1963 where Mike Agassi found a job working at the Tropicana casino and hotel.
The elder Agassi and a crew of his co-workers and friends built a court in his backyard where he taught all four of his children—Rita, Phillip, Tami and Andre—tennis.
In an interview with Tennis Week Magazine years later, Mike Agassi admitted he "killed his relationship" with Rita and "I ruined tennis for Rita by pushing her too hard."
"My first three kids were like guinea pigs, I learned what to do and what not do in teaching Andre," Mike Agassi told Tennis Week. "I learned a lot so by the time Andre was born nearly 10 years after Rita's arrival, I was ready. I decided I wouldn't push him the way I had Rita and Phillip, but I would begin teaching him about tennis at a very early age."
Mike Agassi used a ping pong paddle and a balloons to teach the young Andre Agassi to track a moving object with his eyes. In his memoir, "Open", Andre Agassi detailed how his father built a custom ball-machine he dubbed "The Dragon", which would fire tennis balls a thigh velocity against the young Andre Agassi.
Though father and son clashed over the years, Mike Agassi always professed great pride in Andre and all his children telling Tennis Week one of the proudest moments of his life was seeing Andre Agassi capture the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
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