Andre Agassi's children Jaz and Jaden extend heartfelt birthday wishes to their father
American tennis legend Andre Agassi recently received heartfelt birthday wishes from his children.
The 53-year-old had an illustrious tennis career that lasted two decades. He is the only male player to have completed a Career Super Slam - winning all four Majors as well as an Olympic gold medal and the year-end championships.
Agassi put down his racquet in 2006 and is now active with several charities and occasionally dabbles in coaching and commentary. He previously collaborated with Novak Djokovic.
The American tied the knot with fellow tennis legend Steffi Graf 22 years ago. Graf gave birth to their first child, Jaden Gil, on October 26, 2001, and their daughter Jaz Elle was born two years later. Agassi and Graf remain happily married, living in Las Vegas.
On April 29, Andre Agassi's son and daughter posted messages on Instagram to wish their father a happy 53rd birthday. Jaz Agassi used three love emojis to accompany a photo of her father holding her as a child on her Instagram stories.
Meanwhile, Jaden Agassi, a baseball player himself, took to Instagram stories to share a photo of himself with his father, captioning it:
"Happy birthday Pops! Love you, @agassi."
"Loving tennis was not who I was, I actually hated it for most of my life" - Andre Agassi
While Andre Agassi reached the top of the tennis world and won almost everything the sport had to offer, he never liked being on the tennis tour. Agassi admitted his hatred for the sport in an episode of writer Zibby Owens' podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books back in 2018.
The eight-time Grand Slam winner claimed that he hated the game for the majority of his life because he was unable to identify his "purpose." But as soon as he became a father, it allowed him to escape and tennis just "went" away.
"Loving tennis was not who I was. I actually hated it for most of my life for a lot of reasons. I would get out there and struggle with my purpose and reason. I found my reason, finally, in giving choice to other children through education. That became my distraction from myself when I was out there," the American said.
"When I had children, it actually, in some odd way, made it a lot easier for me because I was able to escape — it was so real. It was so who I was that it was a relief to me to have the responsibility of being a dad and to, quite honestly, feel normal and to feel like tennis just went away," he added.