It's tough for me to fully understand that comment without seeing it in context - without reading the entire book. He may go on to say or suggest he has a love-hate relationship with tennis, which would not surprise me. Based on that quote, he's saying that in 2006 using the present voice, but we're in 2009 now so you have to think he either explains that feeling throughout the book or qualifies that comment at some point.
Seles, near the end of her career, once told me that her favorite thing was just hitting the ball. That she was much happier just going out and rallying - just hitting - than she was actually playing matches and tournaments. Now, she did NOT say "I hate tenis." She was saying clearly though, as you said here about him liking to hit a clean ball, that she much preferred that pure feeling of hitting the ball cleanly to any match or tournament. I can totally understand that.
Have asked John McEnroe about it because he wrote in his book how tennis was not his favorite sport. He told me he much preferred team sports like basketball or soccer, but he wasn't nearly as good in those sports as he was in tennis so "I picked tennis because that's what I was best it."
Another example: A friend of mine was an all American college wrester, placed 5th in the nation his junior year. He went on to coach wrestling, but has told me many times "I hate it" going on to qualify that he resented having to put so much of his life into a sport his father basically picked for him and that required so much discipline (a bit of a monastic existence: always cutting weight in season so couldn't really eat much, no partying, etc.) and that he felt he was denied other parts of his life and kind of coerced into focusing on this one single pursuit at the expense of a lot of other things, namely living his life on his terms. That said, he also likes and values learning and teaching the technique and actually mastering and executing the moves that made him so good - he was a very technique-orientated wrestler as a opposed to someone who just tried to use strength to beat you. The pure act of doing the sport, of being a wrestler, that he still values and likes, but the other stuff surrounding it: the pressure to perform when you're on scholarship, the expectations of coaches, teammates, family, the fact you really don't have your own life while you're doing it, etc. the way he explained it to me it was like he felt his life had, at some point, stopped being his own life and he was the mouse running on the wheel.
If you ever want to read a good book on that kind of love-hate relationship with a sport check out John Ed Bradley's "It Never Rains In Tigers Stadium" about his experiences coming from a football-crazed family (his father was a football coach) playing center for LSU. It's provides a lot of insight into those feelings - at one point he concedes he really doesn't like football as much, doesn't really want to be playing it, but realizes it's too late to quit, that he is in too deep and that he will play it because he's played it so long and because it's expected of him.
I do agree with you though: I don't believe AA actively hates tennis. Have a hard time believing that not only based on what you say, the way he played and trained, but also the way he talked about it, his total recall of matches, etc. I think one reason why he connected with Gilbert and Cahill so well (and Reyes off court) is that he really is into that detail and minutiae.
As for your point that "it's a lie generated to create more intrigue..." Again have to read the entire book, but you may well be right that it could absolutely be an attempt to provoke reader response - the fact we're talking about it right now before the book is even out would suggest that provocative aim has at least piqued our interest - like a teaser.
When I first saw that quote I thought back to Maureen Connolly's book and there's a section in it where she says her first coach, Teach Tennant, motivated Little Mo by building up a real and sheer hatred for her opponents. That she would kind of psychologically manipulate her by telling her things about the opponent (according to the book much of the stuff the coach told her was not true) and that in her early years that's what fueled her: a hatred (and if I remember right she does use that word "hate" a few times) of the opponent. And she won titles playing purely fueled by hate, but she goes on to say it was only after she split with that coach and learned to really tap into why she began playing the first place - because she really loved it - that she played her best tennis and actually won the Grand Slam. It's been years since I read Little Mo's book but I can remember her writing something like "When I learned to play from love that's when I played the best tennis I ever played." For me, it's hard to imagine doing something at a world class level as he did for 20 years if you realy truly hated it with a passion.
Yeah, I understand he wrote that, but I just can't imagine having any kind of sustained success that way and also athletes I know who have been driven from a place of hate - hating to lose, hating the opponent, hating the media criticism, (some athletes have told me they hate the fans and the media - because they feel like they know little about the game and the pressure yet talk and act like they know it all) etc. - are really telling you they are driven by a fear and especially in a solo sport like tennis playing from fear is very tough to sustain.
May have mentioned this before, but I remember asking Connors during his days on the senior tour "who do you like to watch play?" He looked at me like it was a dopey question and replied: "I don't watch tennis. I play tennis." Whereas with Agassi, I would bet he's ont he couch watching the US Open, watching the Austalian Open, breaking down the Fed vs. Del Potro Open final etc. I mean listen to the guy talk you don't make those kind of observatiosn about the game today - particuarly when you're not playing it - unless you watch it and you don't watch it if you really hate it.
Maybe he has gone through periods where he hated it for stretches, but I think the guy is smart enough to understand not only what he's gained from tennis but what tennis allows allows him to do now, the platform he's gained because of it and how he can take that position, money, fame, etc. and leverage it to achieve what he wants to whether that's his school, charity, the book, running for political office someday, etc. So I would thikn at some point he must realize that maybe his hate or resentment of tennis stems from the whole issue of being raised to do it and at some point feeling like you're consumed by it or even part of you is cannibalized by something you never even chose for yourself. But ultimately he learned to use it as a tool to build the kinds of things he is interested in and people can say he's motivated by philanthropy or the desire to give back or by ego gratification or the desire to make money or the spotlight or adulation, etc. But many of us are motivated to do things for a numberof reasons and I would say that if you think back to any intense relationship you've had - whether it is with another person or with a job or a passion or even a substance - there can be all sorts of complex and even sometimes contradictory forces at work that go into it. Maybe for some people it is as simple as loving it or hating it, but people who have done it that long - there tends to be some more complex forces at work than that.
Again, I haven't read the entire book so this is all speculation and comparing it to others. Would like to hear your reaction after you do read it.