WIMBLEDON / MEN : Tabloid Ace Agassi Sent Packing by Martin

Tabloid writers wept. Or at least looked as if they wanted to.

Fans stared in disbelief as his white courtesy car, led by a small army of London constables, squeezed through Wimbledon’s main gate, turned right onto Church Road and disappeared quickly out of sight.

Even the people’s choice himself looked as if he had been zapped by a stun gun.

Andre Agassi, beloved hero of the Fleet Street Beasties and London’s Clearasil generation, was gone. And with him went the questions about body hair, Brooke Shields, earrings, long locks and--egad--his position on strawberries.

Instead, there is fellow American Todd Martin, the anti-Agassi who recorded a 6-3, 7-5, 6-7 (7-0), 4-6, 6-1 victory Monday over Britain’s favorite foreigner. The whole thing was enough to prompt one London tabloid representative, in obvious mourning, to ask Martin if he felt “like the man who shot Bambi?”

The sixth-seeded Martin had to think a moment about that one.

“In my eyes,” he said, “there aren’t too many similarities between Andre and Bambi.”

The same goes for Agassi and Martin. For starters, Agassi is headed home, Martin to the quarterfinals. Agassi’s game isn’t made for grass, Martin’s loves it. Agassi makes big-money TV commercials, Martin watches them.

“Some friends of mine in college called me ‘Thumper,’ ” Martin said hopefully.

That makes sense. One look at Martin’s big serve and you know why. He won the telltale Queen’s Tournament the week before Wimbledon and beat Pete Sampras, the world’s No. 1-ranked player, in so doing. Wimbledon officials thought enough of his game to seed him sixth, three spots above his tour ranking.

Even before the fortnight began, Wimbledon regulars were warning everyone about Martin, 23. Sure enough, Martin beat Grant Stafford in the first round, Patrick Kuhnen in the second, Martin Damm in the third and then Agassi, the Wimbledon winner in 1992.

Martin-mania?

“Certainly the sound of it doesn’t add to the flair,” Martin said. “It’s nice to have people rooting for you, but it’s also actually nice to play a match once in a while when the crowd is not on your side. It’s exciting to be challenged. That happened today and win or lose, I enjoyed myself.”

It helps when you win the first two sets, which Martin did. The margin allowed him to withstand the inevitable Agassi comeback.

Agassi blitzed Martin in the third-set tiebreaker and evened the match in the fourth.

“It just looked like I was going to run away with it,” Agassi said. “I felt confident, like I was in control. Then all of sudden he just picked up his level of play.”

Picked it up and put it in Agassi’s lap. Martin was up, 5-0, before Agassi knew what happened. Agassi won the sixth game, but then Martin got the serve and, well, you could almost hear the courtesy driver turn the ignition key.

Afterward, Agassi did his usual shtick. He threw his sweat-stained shirt into the crowd, where someone clutched it as if it were the holy shroud.

Martin pumped his fist, but kept his shirt on.

“I think Andre and I are completely different people,” he said. “We don’t play tennis the same, we don’t think the same and we just aren’t the same. I’m sure he’s very happy with that and I’m very happy with that. I’m very happy with just having my parents scream for me back home. Maybe I don’t need 13- or 14 year-old girls to really get excited.”

Men’s Notes

Top-seeded Pete Sampras overpowered Daniel Vacek of the Czech Republic, 6-4, 6-1, 7-6 (7-5). Sampras had 18 aces, the similarly hard-serving Vacek 14. Sampras stopped short of saying he was unbeatable, but then, everyone was saying it for him. “I think it will be very difficult to beat him, he’s playing so well,” said Sweden’s Christian Bergstrom, who ended American Bryan Shelton’s run with a 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 10-8 victory. “It will be a surprise if he doesn’t win.” . . . Sampras faces fellow American Michael Chang in the quarterfinals. The 10th-seeded Chang beat eighth-seeded Sergi Bruguera of Spain, 6-4, 7-6 (9-7), 6-0. . . . Fourth-seeded Goran Ivanisevic, eliminated in the third round last year, is back in the quarterfinals. He defeated Alexander Volkov of Russia, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (8-6), 4-6, 6-2. . . . Jeremy Bates was defeated by France’s Guy Forget, 2-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-1. All 18 singles entrants from Britain have been eliminated. . . . Seventh-seeded Boris Becker of Germany and ninth-seeded Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine were tied at 1-1 in the fifth set when their match was stopped because of darkness.