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SAMPRAS
PROVES HE'S STILL A CONTENDER
The
GREATEST Open match
ever
By
Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net
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Susan
Mullane
Camerawork USA, Inc.
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FLUSHING
MEADOWS, N.Y., SEPT. 6 – It
was arguably the best U.S. Open match of all time and was certainly
the highest level of tennis ever played on Ashe Stadium.
Before
tennisreporters.net
went
up to call the match on US.org radio, the talented young play-by-play
man, Spiro Dedes, said he felt that the Andre Agaasi-Pete Sampras
quarterfinal would be classic. This tennisreporters.net
reporter
hesitated, because we have witnessed so many of their 31 clashes
and the many of them have disappointed us – especially
the ones that have been so hyped up.
But
not on Wednesday when the two titans played the match that the
gods sent down – the
highest level of tennis ever seen at the U.S. Open in this reporter's
eyes.
Were
their any unforced errors in the match? Sure, but only a handful
and most of those were nervous errors in the tiebreakers when
the tension was so high that you would have needed a Seven Samurai
Machete to cut through it.
Both
men executed their strategies to perfection and only at the end
of the third and fourth breakers when Agassi was forced to change
his game plan to adjust to Pete's white magic did Andre truly
falter.
Who
would have known that the mentally wounded and backhand-challenged
Sampras would stride on the court and serve like a demon again,
whipping slice serve aces wide to the deuce side, flat blasts
down the tee that Andre couldn't touch and angled serves to the
ad court that bounced sharply to the stands? Who
knew that Andre could crush high-hopping kick serves for three-and-a-half
hours and gun some hard ones down the middle when he need it most.
How
exactly did Pete find a hard, flat backhand return down the line,
or caress
so many touch volleys, or rediscover his hooking forehand? And
how did Andre
manage to hammer home so many outright forehand winners, or nail
seemingly
every one of Pete's chips into the corners for passing shots winners?
Just
for a moment reconsider the cold fact that neither of the modern
game's two
greatest players were broken in 48 games. That has never happened.
Neither of
them deserved to be broken. They were both the Rock of Gibralters
on their
opponent's few break point chances.
How
did either man lose that match?
No
one really did.
The
fans won. The ATP Tour won. The U.S. Open won. Scribes won, because
for
one night even the most hypercritical of the writers felt blessed
with the
privilege to have been there when Zeus faced Atlas.
Atlas
shrugged and Pete won.
Before
the fourth-set breaker, some 20,000 fans left in the stadium just
past
midnight rose in unison to give the two warriors a standing ovation.
"It was
awesome,"P ete said. "It was very intense. Very dramatic.
Two heavyweights
going toe to toe. We almost went the distance."
Sampras simply willed his way to the win in the fourth set breaker.
At 2-3,
Pete cracked a service winner and then an ace. Then he nails a
backhand down
the line to go up 5-3. Andre panics a little, charges the net
and somehow
overswings on an angled backhand volley that goes wide. At 6-3,
Pete can't
handle an Andre blast and misses a volley. At 6-4, Pete doubles
fault, saying
later that he had not idea where his slice serve was going, except
into the
net. Andre serves at 5-6, thumps one into Pete's backhand, gets
a midcourt
ball that he must have hit 40 times during the night for an inside
out
forehand winner, and some how he hesitates and dumps it into the
net.
Samprasis
triumphant and now he is no longer a struggling 13-time Grand
Slam
champ looking like a has been, he looks like a revived legend
ready to snare
No. 14.
If
he takes out Marat Safin in the semis and either of the daring
trio of
Guga/Roddick or Hewitt, it will be called his greatest assault
on a Slam
title ever.
And
the Agassi match will be the one that will be replayed during
every rain
delay for the next millennium.
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