Round 31 to Agassi  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily
Bruin Senior Staff Pete Sampras was worn down by
rival Andre Agassi in the Mercedes-Benz Cup
championship Sunday. It was their 31st head-to-head matchup.
By Jeff Agase
Daily Bruin Reporter
Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi took the court at the finals of
the Mercedes-Benz Cup to the “Star Wars” theme, both
having once ruled the tennis universe.
But after a noticeably tired Sampras fell to a nearly perfect
Agassi, 6-4, 6-2 in an anticlimactic hour and a half,
Agassi’s performance against long-time rival Sampras
didn’t exactly have the feeling of a blockbuster.
“We’ve had some matches that were one-sided in the
past both ways,” Agassi said. “Today the match was
closer than the score suggested.”
Despite Agassi’s kind words for Sampras, who had won in
Los Angeles in 1991 and 1999, the match left few doubters as to
which player was in better physical shape.
Often pausing for stretches between points in a sweltering heat,
Sampras found himself a step behind many shots and committing an
unusually high number of unforced errors. Making matters worse was
Sampras’ struggles with his serve, making only 54 percent of
his first serve and double-faulting seven times.
“This week, my serve was a bit spotty at times,”
Sampras said of his main weapon. “It’s like a pitcher
not having his fastball every night.”
Sampras looked solid coming out of the gates when he aced Agassi
to open the match and broke Agassi’s serve to go up 4-2. But
Agassi broke right back without losing a point, thanks to one of
Sampras’ double-faults and the frustration of the sun
directly overhead.
“It was a big part of the match from a momentum
standpoint,” Sampras said. “It’s a much bigger
deal to me because my serve is a bigger part of my game. I was
basically blinded over there.”
For all of the difficulties on Sampras’ end of the court,
a seemingly possessed Agassi regularly guided baseline shots to the
corners and lines with effortless precision. His returns rendered
Sampras’ usually dominant serve-and-volley strategy
ineffective.
Agassi took 48 percent of return points and capitalized on four
of seven break points, including back-to-back breaks in a second
set where Sampras appeared to be out of steam.
“After he won the first set, I lost my way a touch,”
Sampras said. “If you lose your concentration for five
minutes against Andre, that’s too much. He’s too
consistent.”
The match marked the 31st meeting between the men who distanced
themselves from the rest of the tennis world in 1995 and fought for
the No. 1 spot for two exciting years. Their meeting in the finals
was the fifteenth time the pair has clashed for a title.
But Sampras has not won a title in over a year, while the
Mercedes-Benz Cup was Agassi’s fourth this season.
“Pete can win and he probably feels like he hasn’t
been at his best,” Agassi said.
Sampras remained confident, citing the tournament as a great
opportunity to tune up on hard courts for the upcoming U.S. Open
and the final as one more installment in a suddenly aging
Sampras-Agassi rivalry.
“It’s hard to say how many times we’ll face
each other,” he said. “Every time you go out there
against Andre, you appreciate it a little more than when we were
nineteen and twenty.”
The packed house of 7,109 fans got the finals matchup they
wanted, but they will have to wait, perhaps until later in the
summer, for a future match-up with both of them at the top of their
games and another epic installment in the Sampras-Agassi
series.