Yesterday was momentous for Andre Agassi, whose $4.1 million charter school designed for children of low-income families officially opened in Las Vegas. It almost became momentous for another reason, as Agassi nearly lost in the second-round of the U.S. Open for the second straight year.
After three days of sweeping blowouts by the high seeds, the Open was dying for hardcore competition – so much so that the Open crowd rooted against normal fan favorite Agassi and cheered on the underdog, 86th-ranked Chilean Nicolas Massu. The tournament didn’t get a major upset but witnessed plenty of drama when Agassi and Massu slugged it out for three hours, 20 minutes, playing into the darkness at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Agassi, seeded second and considered the Open favorite, avoided a choke job and saved his best for the fourth-set tiebreaker to win, 6-7 (7-4), 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (7-1), and move into the third round against Ramon Delgado.
“There’s ones that stand out more than others in a series of seven matches,” Agassi said. “My experience tells me that [today] was a great one to sneak through. He wasn’t giving an inch from the beginning and neither was I.”
The marathon match, which ended at 7:35 p.m., held up the night card by an hour and forced thousands of night-session fans to wait outside.
Agassi was dangerously close to going down two-sets-to-none, but dodged a deadly bullet when a Massu passing shot sailed an inch long on break point. After winning the first set, Massu had a great chance to break Agassi at 4-4 and take a 5-4 lead in the second set, allowing him to serve out the set. But on the break point, Massu chased down a volley and smacked a running forehand past Agassi down the left sideline. However, the shot bounced barely an inch long as Massu put his hands up to his head in shocked disbelief.
“Maybe with this ball, I won the match,” Massu said. “I can’t believe it when they told me it was out. When he won the second set, he felt more confidence.”
Massu admitted he let the missed shot bother him in the next set. A winded Agassi, coming to the net more than he had in recent memory, won the next two sets, but then blew three straight match points while ahead 5-4 in the fourth set.
Massu captured the next five points to make it 5-5, and the two players headed into another tiebreaker. Avoiding a do-or-die fifth set, Agassi rolled to a 6-1 lead in the tiebreaker and closed out the match 7-1.
And to think, Agassi was glad to hear that Massu, not Francisco Clavet, would be his second round opponent. Agassi had rolled over Massu at Wimbledon in the third round in straight sets.
Indeed, this was a different Massu who showed up at Flushing Meadows while Agassi’s mind partly was on his new private school built far away from the Vegas neon.
“It was definitely on my mind all day,”Agassi said. “It’s been a long project in the making. To see the kids actually pull into school today would have been great thing to be there. But tennis gave me the opportunity to do those things.”
