TENNIS ROUNDUP : Tired Agassi Puts Lendl to Sleep

Andre Agassi got a wake-up call after the first set and rallied to defeat Ivan Lendl, 3-6, 6-2, 6-0, Saturday to win the Player’s Ltd. International at Toronto.

Agassi, the Wimbledon champion, started slowly after being on the court past midnight on Friday in a three-set doubles match.

“Ivan plays well in the lead, so when I broke him in the opening games of the second and third sets, that was the difference,” Agassi said.

“The last time we played I was 150 pounds if weighing in on a good day,” Agassi said of their last match in the 1989 U.S. Open semifinals. “Now, I have enough strength to compete against him. Now, it’s just a question of who is better that day.”

The victory was Agassi’s first in six tries against Lendl, who has won the International six times.

The third-seeded Lendl won the first set with a pair of service breaks as Agassi struggled to find his range.

Agassi, seeded second, went ahead, 2-0, in the second set with a break of his own and added another break in the seventh game for a 5-2 advantage.

“The best part of Andre’s game is his return, and in the second and third sets he was making hardly any mistakes and punishing the ball,” Lendl said.

The third set belonged to Agassi, who broke Lendl three times to take a 5-0 lead and served out the match with four aces after falling behind, 0-30.

Agassi and John McEnroe were beaten, 6-4, 6-4, later in the day by Dan Visser of South Africa and American Pat Galbraith in the doubles final.

Second-seeded Pete Sampras defeated Marcelo Filippini of Uruguay, 6-7 (7-4), 6-3, 6-0, to advance to the finals of a clay-court tournament at Kitzbuhel, Austria.

Moving into today’s championship match opposite Sampras was seventh-seeded Alberto Mancini of Argentina, who eliminated Austria’s fourth-seeded Thomas Muster, 7-6 (7-1), 6-1.

Jordi Arrese of Spain and Karel Novacek of Czechoslovakia posted straight-set victories Saturday to reach the final of the Dutch Open at Hilversum, the Netherlands.

Arrese used a strong serve-and-volley game to oust wild-card entry Mikael Tillstrom of Sweden, 6-3, 6-3, in just over an hour.

Arrese, seeded second and ranked 29th in the world, will face Novacek, seeded third and ranked 23rd, in today’s final of the $250,000 ATP event.

Novacek, using a strong return of serve, rolled past Fabrice Santoro of France, 6-3, 6-1.