FORMER Wimbledon champion Andre Agassi, one-time pin-up boy of tennis and winner of eight Grand Slams, has courted controversy for much of his life, but never more so than now.

The publication of his autobiography, Open, in which he admits snorting the drug crystal meth in 1997 and then lying to the tennis authorities to avoid a ban, has opened up a whole new can of worms.

Speaking to me from Las Vegas, where he lives with his wife, former tennis champion Steffi Graf and their children, Jaden, eight, and Jaz, six, Agassi, 39, is unrepentant about his revelations, even though critics have accused him of sending out the wrong messages to children and tarnishing the name of tennis.

All the brouhaha over the drugs, however, will no doubt help to sell his book, along with the snippets about his love life, anecdotes about his rivalry with other players and details of how he wore a wig in the 1990s (he reckons it may have lost him the French Open because he was so concerned that it would fall off).

It’s been a long and rocky road for the brash kid who became the maverick of the Centre Court, a born-again Christian, a player who applauded his opponents’ shots and, at the end, an old hand who bowed to the crowd and could win Grand Slam titles after many of his contemporaries had retired.

From the early days of his mullet hairstyle, the “hot-lava look” and teenage groupies, to his off-court liaisons with Barbra Streisand, doomed first marriage to actress Brooke Shields and second marriage to German great Graf, he’s never been far from the headlines.

These days, he spends much of his time at the school in Las Vegas he founded for underprivileged children.

“This summer, 100 per cent of the kids graduated – it was way better than winning a Grand Slam,” he reflects.

While tennis gave him vast wealth, he says he hated tennis for a long time, and he and Graf have vowed their children will not play tennis.

“The truth is, you don’t succeed in this sport unless you give everything to it every day, starting from a very young age.”

For years, he was plagued by a depression, his life teetering between perfectionism and self-destruction.

He retired in 2006, at 36, and felt liberated, he says.

“People ask if I have a love/hate relationship with tennis and I say, no, I have a hate/love relationship with tennis. No-one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis, let alone make it my life. I didn’t really love the game until I took ownership of my life and made my choice to play the game.”