Not Just Another Opening Day at the Open : Tennis: Agassi plays Krickstein in men’s headline match; Graf, Seles and Sabatini all in action on first day.

The U.S. Open, the fourth and last of the year’s Grand Slam tennis events, although certainly not the quietest, gets under way today and promises to be its usual boisterous self.

Opening day looks even louder than usual. After all, what else could it be with Andre Agassi and John McEnroe playing first-round matches back to back?

Agassi meets Aaron Krickstein in what might be one of the toughest first-round draws, then McEnroe takes on Glenn Layendecker. Defending champion Pete Sampras plays a night match against Christo van Rensburg.

The top three seeded players in the women’s draw also get on the court today. Second-seeded Monica Seles opens against Nicole Arendt in the first match on Stadium Court.

Third-seeded and defending champion Gabriela Sabatini plays Nicole Provis, and top-seeded Steffi Graf takes on Andrea Temesvari tonight.

Other than that, it shapes up as a routine day in a tournament that nearly always turns out to be anything but routine. Consider last year when Sampras, who won four matches in his previous two U.S. Open appearances, won seven in two weeks to become the Grand Slam’s youngest men’s champion at 19.

While Sampras tries to repeat, last accomplished by Ivan Lendl in 1985-87, there are plenty of question marks about just who ought to be favored.

Boris Becker is coming off a disheartening Wimbledon loss, Lendl is coming off a wrist injury, Agassi has been sick, Edberg has not won a tournament since Queen’s in mid-June, Courier has not been able to beat Sampras and Sampras has not been able to handle the pressure.

But maybe it just seems that way. When Sampras arrived for an interview with a small group of reporters at a tournament in Indianapolis, he was sullen and withdrawn, announcing he could spare only 10 minutes.

Sampras picked up a program and flipped through it during the interview, which ended abruptly when he said, “That was your last question.”

As luck would have it, there are a whole bunch of questions at the U.S. Open and many of them surround third-seeded Michael Stich of Germany.

The Wimbledon champion, the No. 3 ranked player in the world, enters the U.S. Open as something of an unknown quantity. He defeated Emilio Sanchez to win a hard-court tournament Sunday at Schenectady, N.Y., but it was Stich’s first hard-court tournament since April.

Nevertheless, Stich’s hard-court record is 27-8 and he has an overall record of 60-17, the most victories on the IBM/ATP Tour.

After winning Wimbledon, where he upset Becker in a four-set final, Stich returned home to Germany to fulfill a commitment to play in clay-court matches in a club league for $150,000. Stich could have commanded far greater paydays had he decided to take advantage of his Wimbledon victory and play hard-court events in the U.S., but he chose not to.

“I haven’t had much time off (since Wimbledon),” Stich said. “I’ve had a lot of matches, trying to push myself, but we’ll have to see how well I do (at the U.S. Open).

“I’m not as well prepared as the other players, I had a commitment with the club at home, but I still think I can play pretty well at the Open.”

Stich listed the favorites, in no particular order, as himself, Becker, Edberg, Lendl, Sampras, Courier and Agassi, and dark horses Petr Korda, Guy Forget and Goran Ivanisevic.

Actually, Stich might be nothing more than a dark horse, too: He is 1-2 in his career at the U.S. Open.

U.S. Open Notes

Seven different men won the past seven Grand Slam singles titles--Ivan Lendl at the 1990 Australian Open, Andres Gomez (1990 French Open), Stefan Edberg (1990 Wimbledon), Pete Sampras (1990 U.S. Open), Boris Becker (1991 Australian Open), Jim Courier (1991 French Open) and Michael Stich (1991 Wimbledon). . . . Jimmy Connors, 39 next Monday, plays his 21st U.S. Open, including 20 in a row. He missed last year because of a wrist injury.