Tennis Roundup : Agassi Beats Duncan, Faces Arias for Clay Court Title

Top-seeded Andre Agassi and former champion Jimmy Arias advanced Saturday to the final of the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships.

Agassi struggled past Lawson Duncan, 2-6, 7-5, 6-4, and Arias beat Jim Courier, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, at the Wild Dunes Racquet Club in Isle of Palms, S.C.

Agassi and Arias, who is seeded seventh, will play for the $38,000 first-place prize today.

Agassi said he had to raise his game a notch to beat Duncan, a baseline player with a crunching forehand.

“What was so satisfying about winning this match was that I had to dig deep inside of myself and find another level of play,” Agassi said.

“Even if I played my best, for him to keep playing the way he was, I don’t think I had much of a chance.”

Duncan, who was not seeded, said he was confident he could beat his more highly touted opponent.

“I really felt like I was in a position to win this match,” he said. “I’m not sure what exactly happened. He may have raised his game a hair, or mine may have fell a hair.

“I definitely felt I should have won. But it just didn’t happen. He played a gutsy match.”

Until his comeback in the second set, Agassi said it was the first time in his career he was “outright just getting beat.”

“He got up 6-2, 2-0 like it was nothing,” Agassi said. “I was just laughing. I had nothing else to do but watch things go flying by.”

Agassi, whose age, 18, matches his world ranking, played his worst set of the weeklong tournament in falling behind Duncan, who is ranked 134th.

Duncan was able to run down nearly every shot Agassi made and was able to match the power of his younger opponent.

At one point in the first set, Agassi had won just two points over five games.

At Hamburg, West Germany, France’s Henri Leconte needed a pair of tiebreakers to upset top-seeded Boris Becker, 3-6, 7-6, 7-6, and will face Sweden’s Kent Carlsson in the final of the $602,500 West German Open.

Leconte beat the two-time Wimbledon champion from West Germany for the first time by winning both tiebreakers at 7-2.

Carlsson, who is seeded second, downed Jordi Arrese of Spain, 6-4, 6-2, in the other semifinal.

At Tokyo, top-seeded Pam Shriver bounced back after a slow start to defeat the Soviet Union’s Larisa Savchenko, 6-7, 6-2, 6-4, in the semifinals of the $300,000 Pan Pacific Open after Savchenko took the first set in an 11-9 tiebreaker.

In the other semifinal, third-seeded Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia upset second-seeded Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria, 7-6, 4-6, 6-3.

Today’s champion will earn $50,000.