2005 NASDAQ-100 Open News
By Eleanor Preston |  April 01, 2005

There was a sadness in Andre Agassi’s eyes as he trudged off court having watched his chance of winning what would have been a record seventh Nasdaq-100 Open title get blown away like a handful of South Beach sand.
 
He has been playing in Miami for 19 years, but losing there doesn’t seem to get any easier, even when its to Roger Federer.  The man so ridiculously talented that if he were a junior he would be bumped up a couple of divisions in order to stop the other kids from bursting into tears the moment he unzipped his racket bag. After losing their semi-final 6-4 6-3 Agassi looked like he might be tempted to give a howl or two and no-one on Crandon Park’s stadium court would have blamed him.
 
“You can play a quality match but he has the ability, at any given moment, to play spectacular tennis,” said Agassi, a little sadly.
 
The tragedy for Agassi is that he has seen it all before. He has been the marginally less talented one, the one with fewer grand slam titles and musthave figured, when Pete Sampras finally retired, that he might be allowed to be in the best for a while. Then Federer turned up.
 
“They pose different problems entirely,” said Agassi, after running through the relative merits of both of the thorns in his side, “but Roger makes you do it from start to finish, and Pete made you do something incredibly special at a lot of given times.”
 
There was plenty for the fans to cheer in Agassi’s performance against Federer, and plenty of moments where he looked capable of turning it around. But Federer is Federer, and there is a very good reason why he has now won 21 matches in a row, 31 matches this year and why he has lost only once in 48 matches, stretching back to last August. That defeat came to Marat Safin, who needed two things to happen in order to do the near impossible – he needed to play almost supernaturally well, and he needed Federer to play like a mortal.
 
The planets don’t align like that very often, as Agassi found out.
 
Agassi managed to keep pace with Federer until the Swiss served at 4-4, when a suspect line call seemed to break his concentration. He argued with umpire Lars Graf with uncharacteristic insistence to little end other than to distract himself long enough to get into trouble in the next, crucial game.  
 
Federer, like one of the scary sharks that prowled off Florida’s coastline earlier this week, smelled the blood and began to circle his prey. After 34 minutes Agassi was a set down.
 
The quality, which had been gratifyingly high in the first set, dropped a notch in the second and Agassi fashioned some chances at 3-3, enough to make the crowd believe, just for a few minutes, that he had a chance.
 
“I love them,” said Agassi of the Floridians who have come to watch him over the course of nearly two decades.  “It's been an incredible 19 years for me.  They've seen me through a lot.  There was a stage here when I wasn't losing first round, I was winning it.  That's a lot of ups and downs, peaks and valleys that we've lived through together.  They were certainly electric tonight, giving me so much support.  I’m just disappointed I couldn't deliver a little bit more.”
 
Agassi’s chances came and went with some thudding Federer serves and some snatched shots from Agassi and that was the end of the American’s challenge. Federer, having been threatened, became infinitely more frightening.
 
The Swiss broke in the next game and that was that, another tournament over for Agassi, another final for Federer. Plus ca change, as they say in the French speaking parts of Switzerland.
 
He has won his last 17 finals and will, in all likelihood, beat Rafael Nadal on Sunday to make it 18. The 18-year-old Spaniard is as talented as he is athletic but, playing the biggest ATP Tour match of his career, he will be hard pushed to repeat last year’s win over Federer in Miami.
 
That came in the third round when Federer was exhausted and laid low with a virus, neither of which appear to be the case this time around. He looked a little vulnerable early in the tournament against players like Mario Ancic and Mariano Zabaleta but his seemed to click against the hapless Tim Henman and was motoring along nicely by the time he got to Agassi.
 
At least Agassi could find his sense of humour afterwards, which surfaced when he was asked who he thought the favourite for the final was. “Hmm,” he said, with mock thoughtfulness, “let’s see…”
 
“I'm from Vegas so I don't mind taking some chances.  I'm going to go on a limb and I'm going to say the person who's 47-1over the last six, seven months, is the favorite.”

/// BACK