MORE FIVE-SETTERS COULD PROVE DISASTROUS

Agassi pulls off a miracle but needs to step it up

By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net

Susan Mullane/ Camerawork USA, Inc.

Susan Mullane/ Camerawork USA, Inc.

FROM ROLAND GARROS – As great as Andre Agassi is and as mentally impressive as his 5-7, 1-6, 6-4, 6-2, 7-5 victory over Mario "the Mauler" Ancic was Wednesday, there is no way he's going to win his second Roland Garros crown if he continues to stutter for two-and-a-half sets and dig himself into deep holes.

Sure, coming back from two sets and two (different) breaks down is the mark of a champion, but so is stomping on your teen opponent's during the first few week of a Slam and making sure you have enough energy left for the second week. That's what he did in winning the Australian Open five months ago and it proved very effective.

Agassi said that winning five-setters early on in a tournament is no surefire recipe that he will win the title. He's done it all on the road to his eight Slam titles, but here in Paris recently, he's only pulled a Houdini once and survived the rest of the way – in the '99 final against Andrei Medvedev.

Last year, he came back from a 2-0 deficit against France's Paul-Henri Mathieu in the fourth round. In the quarters, he was mentally tapped out in his loss to Juan Carlos Ferrero. As Andre said, he has to pray that the early five-set thriller against Ancic propels him to greater heights.

"It's easy to look on paper and say, 'The most important ones are against the best players the semis, the finals,' but it's not always the case," he said. "I hope that the story is this is the one I needed to get through."

STRONG RETURNS STEADIES ANDRE
What Andre did against the Croatian pogo stick was play mediocre ball up until he was down a break and 2-3 in the third set. He stood strong, began to crack his returns at the net-rushing Croat, served with more intelligence and passed with more vigor. He got the break and essentially rolled from there, his late fifth-set hiccup and double fault on his first match point excluded.

"That's what Grand Slam tennis is all about," Agassi. "Sometimes you have to find a way, dig deep and come up with the goods. In tennis you have to finish off the match. Something is always going to change psychologically when you get closer to the finish line. The question is how you handle it at that stage when you're on fire. He missed a few first serves and I made a few good shots. I stepped up my game a little and got into the match. That's what I needed."

Agassi will play Belgium's Xavier Malisse in the third round, a five-set winner of Austria's Stefan Koubek. Malisse could good give him trouble, because he's fast and super-creative, but the Belgian hasn't shown much since he reached the Wimbledon semis last year.

But Andre needs to beware and make sure he doesn't allow Malisse to get the crowd in his favor, or draws Andre into a let's-see-who-can-hit-the-most-remarkable-shot contest. He needs to dictate early and impose himself physically on Malisse. Malisse badly cramped in his five-set win over Stefan Koubek, and probably doesn't have more than two hours in him. That means Andre needs to focus on playing solid, deep, long rallies until he wears him down.

Whether Agassi's capable of that kind of tennis is a silly question of an all-time great, but whether he can consistently pull off miracles in Paris is a very legitimate query.