Andre Agassi admits to using crystal meth

Andre Agassi, the former World Number One tennis player who won eight Grand Slam singles tournaments over the course of his career and who is hailed by his peers as one of the greatest players of all-time, has sensationally admitted to taking the hyper-addictive illegal drug crystal methamphetamine during his playing days. He also recounts how, after testing positive for the drug, he was able to fool the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) into believing he had taken the substance unwittingly.

Writing in his memoir Open: An Autobiography, which is being serialised exclusively in the Times, Agassi, now 39, admits to taking the drug in 1997, when he was struggling on the court to match the explosive form of his early years - when he won Wimbledon aged just 22 - and he was worrying his upcoming marriage to actress Brooke Shields.

Agassi took the drug with his assistant, Slim. "Slim is stressed too... He says, You want to get high with me? On what? Gack. What the hell’s gack? Crystal meth. Why do they call it gack? Because that’s the sound you make when you're high... Make you feel like Superman, dude. As if they’re coming out of someone else’s mouth, I hear these words: You know what? Fuck it. Yeah. Let's get high.

After snorting the drug, "there is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful — and I’ve never felt such energy." However, soon afterwards the Las Vegas-born tennis player was faced with the consequences of his actions when he received a telephone call from an ATP doctor telling him he had failed a drug test.

"He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation,” Agassi writes. “Performance-enhancing drugs... would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.” This would entail a three-month suspension, but the damage to the American's reputation would be significant - "My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing."

Agassi then describes how he wrote a letter to the ATP incriminating Slim, who is no longer his assistant. "I say Slim... is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth - which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely."

The ATP accepted Agassi's pleas for mitigation and threw the case out - the American went on to win five more grand slams and write his name into the sport's history books. ·