For Andre Agassi, any issues he had with ex Brooke Shields are water under the bridge.
While speaking to Us Weekly about his first-ever Agassi Open Play Day at Life Time Green Valley event on April 12, in honor of National Pickleball Month, Agassi gave Us an update on where he stands with Shields.
“I have always wished nothing but the best for her,” Agassi, 54, said when asked about Shields’ latest book, Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old. “I guess maybe one of the reasons why I don’t know much about it is because I don’t want to be in a position to necessarily comment on it one way or another, except rooting for her. I mean, at the end of the day love wins and I try to love everyone.”
In her memoir, Shields, 59, described her history with the athlete, to whom she was married from 1997 to 1999. Agassi went on to find lasting love with fellow athlete Steffi Graff, whom he wed in 2001. The pair share two children, Jaden, 23, and Jaz, 21. (Shields and Chris Henchy tied the knot the same year as Agassi and Graff, 55. The actress and the producer, 61, have two children, daughters Rowan, 21, and Grier, 18.)
After 25 years of marriage, Agassi and Graf have moved into their empty-nester era. Speaking with Us, Agassi said that the sport of pickleball has “filled a huge gap in our lives collectively” since they’re in a “different season of life.”
He called pickleball’s growth “an anomaly here in America. I don’t know of any sport that has ever covered this kind of territory in such a short period of time.”
When he and Graf aren’t on the court, they enjoy spending time with their kids and their respective partners.
“We had a great date night the other night where it was me, Steffi, my son and Catherine, his girlfriend, and Jaz, our daughter, and her boyfriend Parker, and it was like a triple date and we all just went out and sat and talked,” he told Us. “We feel like peers around them, we respect them, we seek their opinion on things, they’re not hesitant to ask us our perspective on what they’re going through, so it really feels like a healthy season in life.”
Jaden prefers playing baseball to his parents’ game of tennis. At USC, he’s a star pitcher. When asked whether Jaden might go pro and join MLB, Agassi replied, “I don’t know. You know, tennis is like you eat what you kill. Team sports, you know, they have to pull you along so he’s still hoping for his dreams and going after it and I respect him tremendously for it so hope the best for him, but he’s clear on what he wants to do.”
Agassi detailed his experience with tennis in his acclaimed autobiography Open, which was published in 2009 and cowritten with author J.R. Moehringer, who also worked on Prince Harry‘s Spare.
Asked if his kids have read his memoir, Agassi responded, “Well, I think they understand more about me than even 400 pages allowed me to express to the world, but I also think they have the luxury of seeing behind the curtain, right — like The Wizard of Oz.”
He added that Jaden and Jaz “don’t live with ideas of grandeur” about his tennis stardom because they know the challenges that came with it. He said they’re “very engaged in their life and it makes us proud.”
