COMMENTARY : It’s Time for Agassi to Seize His Open Moment

There has never been a great American tennis player who did not win the U.S. Open. If Andre Agassi wants to be remembered, it is time for him to win it.

He won Wimbledon once. A lot of people have won one major. It is when you do it again that people begin to believe you really are a champion. There comes a time in sports when you declare yourself. Andre Agassi is supposed to declare himself this weekend at the Open.

Riddick Bowe won a big title fight once. He was colorful and made a lot of money in a hurry. Now no one remembers the last time Bowe did anything. It will be that way for Agassi one of these days. It is why this chance to win the Open might be the best he will ever have.

Agassi always has had the game. He hits shots off the ground, catches the ball on the rise and attacks from the back of the court, the way Jimmy Connors could. Agassi has done that now for five straight matches at the Open. In the past, on big points, Agassi played as if you could park cars inside his head. He also played scared, going for more shot than he had to, unwilling to play the point out.

In tennis, that is a form of choking. It has not happened to Agassi at the ’94 Open, at least not yet. At this Open, Agassi has looked like a finisher. He has been a star, not some loopy tennis starlet, going from one pose to another, one hairstyle to another.

He had one dream run like this before, at Wimbledon in 1992. Agassi played beautifully on the grass, then ended up with a dream draw when he got to the last weekend. His semifinal opponent was John McEnroe. Agassi made McEnroe, who had once owned Wimbledon, look like some sad, used-up batting practice pitcher. The score for Agassi was 6-4, 6-2, 6-3.

Then in the final, Agassi got Goran Ivanisevic, who had a huge serve and no idea when the service return came back. The two of them went all the way to 4-all in the fifth set. Then Ivanisevic’s left elbow turned to concrete and Agassi surprised everybody, himself most of all, by winning Wimbledon.

Until then, he had always come apart in the late innings.

Now he reaches a crossroads in his career, even though he is only 24. If he wins the Open Sunday--if he can beat Todd Martin today and then win the final--everything changes for him, and tennis is luckier for that. If he cannot grab this moment, with Pete Sampras out of the way, then maybe one major is all he has in him.

“I really believe the optimum years for a tennis player are between the ages of 24 and 27,” Brad Gilbert, Agassi’s new coach, was saying the other day.

“I’ve told Andre that out of the next eight (majors), he can win three. You can’t win one and be satisfied. I really expect that over the next nine months, he’s going to be in the top two in the world.”

Todd Martin will not be an easy opponent for Agassi today. Martin played Sampras in the final of the Australian Open in January, then made it to the semifinals of Wimbledon. He is having a much better year than Agassi. But Martin also nurses a groin injury and may be too slow, the way Agassi is running opponents all over the court.

The stakes are the same for Martin as for Agassi but there will not be the same urgency for Martin somehow. This Open seems more important to Andre Agassi.

If Agassi can win it, maybe he can make it all the way to No. 2 in the world behind Sampras. Maybe the two of them can build a rivalry that is more than just one Open final. Maybe what we really find out this weekend is if Agassi has it in him to be the whole show in tennis, not just a sideshow.