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After all the talk flying around about Andre Agassi since the revelation last week that he took the recreational drug crystal meth for much of 1997, and then lied about it to officials when he tested positive, the essence of his highly-publicized appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday came down to the last few images of the item he did with interviewer Katie Couric.

They were of the children, in caps and gowns, during the first ever high school graduation ceremony of the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas.

Anyone looking at those children, from a disadvantaged area of Agassi’s hometown, all of whom were reported to be going on to college, would have to say that what Agassi has done in starting that school vastly overshadows the human fallibility he showed by taking crystal meth and then lying about it.

Put simply, he is like many professional athletes who have fallen for the temptation of recreational drugs, but he is unique in giving back to the community in a way that will so directly improve the lives of the 623 kids at his school. His foundation has raised $140 million (U.S.) to build and run the school, something that looks awfully good on a man who didn’t go past grade nine himself.

Couric’s interview touched on several of the hot topics in Agassi’s new book ‘Open,’ done with Pulitzer prise winning writer J.R. Moehringer, that have appeared in excerpts ahead of its release on November 9.

Agassi talked about hating tennis, something that went back to his childhood when his domineering father Mike drilled him mercilessly in hopes of making him a champion. That feeling was described as being “a deep part of my life for a long, long time.”

The drug use was attributed to being “in a life I didn’t want to be in,” as well as being conflicted about his pending marriage to actress Brooke Shields.

Maybe the most touching moments involved his father and the criticism that has recently come from some of his tennis peers, specifically Martina Navratilova, regarding his drug use and subsequent lie about it.

When he phoned his father from the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida at age 16 to ask him if he should turn pro, Agassi said about the response, “it was like ‘hello, who am I talking to? What are you going to be – a doctor? You don’t go to school – take the money and turn pro.’ While he was right, and I probably knew I would make that choice anyhow, I just didn’t quite like the way he put it.”

Agassi, 39, teared up when Couric mentioned Navratilova’s criticism, particularly that she had compared him with disgraced baseball pitcher Roger Clemens. “When a person takes a performance inhibitor (as opposed to performance enhancer), a recreational drug,” he said, “the one thing that I would hope is, not that there aren’t rules that need to be followed, but along with that would come some compassion. That maybe the person doesn’t need condemnation, maybe this person could stand a little help. I had a problem and there might be a lot of athletes out there that test positive for recreational drugs that have a problem. So I would ask for some compassion.”

Agassi also spoke about the 1990 French Open final when he claims he spent the match worrying that a hair weave he was wearing, which had come apart the day before when he took a shower, would come off. It all sounds humorous now, but in it there was an element of disrespect to Andres Gomez of Ecuador, who won that final and became a national hero in his homeland.

In storybook fashion, Agassi cited falling in love with tennis great Steffi Graf, whom he calls Stefanie, as something that has helped redress his hatred for his sport. “When Stefanie came into my life,” he said, “I realized that tennis gave me her. That in itself... the scoreboard was getting more balanced and gave me reasons to appreciate it.”

Couric didn’t mention the reported $5 million (U.S.) advance he received for the book, but did ask him if he regretted being so honest about his drug use, given some of the reactions. There were equal parts candour and calculation in Agassi’s response: “It wasn’t an option for me to write a book about my life and leave out the central points of it – one of the turning points of it. It certainly it wasn’t an option to write a book called Open and not be.”

AD-IN: During television coverage of last week’s ATP 500 event in Valencia, Spain, Tommy Robredo went wide for a ball to his backhand side and, in a desperate effort to reach it, transferred the racquet to his left hand as is sometimes done by Maria Sharapova.

Commentator Jason Goodall remarked, “Robredo is doing his Sharapova...but he does not look quite as nice is a dress though.”