As a child, Andre thought of the ball machine his father modified as “the dragon,” conveying the anxiety it induced in him. Describing his feelings of powerlessness as the dragon towered over him, the author depicts the machine as a fearsome beast, stating, “As pressure builds inside its throat, it groans. As the ball rises slowly to its mouth, it shrieks” (26). For Andre, the dragon was as intimidating as his “fire-breathing” father. The continual onslaught of tennis balls that the machine fired at him symbolizes the relentless emotional and physical pressure that Mike Agassi placed on his son to become a tennis champion.

Later in the memoir, Andre was forced to relive his traumatizing encounters with the dragon when his father proudly demonstrated the machine to Peter Graf. Agassi also references the dragon in his match against Medvedev, whose game significantly improved because of his advice. Comparing Medvedev’s transformation to his father’s modified ball machine, he describes battling against “a fire-breathing dragon that I helped to build” (296).

Agassi uses the motif of imprisonment to underscore his lack of agency as his father and the tennis academy molded the young boy for a career in tennis.