Agassi Stands Out in Wimbledon Win : Tennis: Top-seeded player opens with an easy victory. Stich and Rosset, seeded ninth and 10th, lose in first round.

On a day when seven former Wimbledon champions played their opening matches, there was only one who drew an overflow crowd and whose first step on the green lawn elicited screams and a blizzard of flashbulbs.

Certainly no other player had betting pools organized around his choice of tennis clothes.

It had to be Andre Agassi, whose fan interest is so high that tournaments are not thought to have actually started until he strikes his first ball. In Tuesday’s first-round matches, Agassi and his all-white, hugely baggy outfit served as an antidote to Monday’s pedestrian opening day.

Showing no lingering effects of a recent hip injury, the top-seeded Agassi demolished Australian qualifier Andrew Painter, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1.

Two seeded players lost first-round matches. Ninth-seeded Michael Stich, who won here in 1991, lost to Jacco Eltingh, 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 6-1, and 10th-seeded Marc Rosset was upset by Michael Joyce of Santa Monica, 6-0, 6-7 (10-8), 7-5, 6-2.

Defending women’s champion Conchita Martinez had little trouble in her opening match, beating Asa Carlsson of Sweden, 6-1, 6-1, in 49 minutes. Mary Pierce, making her Wimbledon debut, took 57 minutes to eliminate Sandra Dopfer, 6-1, 6-2.

But the excitement was reserved for Agassi. He entered Court 1 on another sunny and hot day looking like a hospital orderly, his bristling head swathed in a white bandanna to go with his new, strictly-by-the-rules, white-only outfit.

The injury to his right hip that led to his ouster from the French Open has prevented Agassi from fully preparing for Wimbledon, but he said Tuesday that it may work out for the best.

“Quite honestly, my feeling is that the more you play on grass, the worse you get,” he said. “I think that with the bounces and with the unpredictability of it, it requires you to adjust every time the ball is coming off the grass in a split second. Sometimes a lot of your fundamentals can break down after a period of time. . . . Not playing matches might be difficult, coming in on the first match or two, but I think it pays dividends in the long run.”

Painter, ranked No. 526, comes from Georgetown, Tasmania, a town with a population of 5,000. He left home at 16 to attend the Australian Institute for Sport in Canberra and this is his first year on the pro tour. Before Tuesday’s match, the highest-ranked player Painter had ever faced was 140th.

His first year as a pro, his first time at Wimbledon, his first match, against the world No. 1.--a nerve-testing scenario.

Painter opened the match with an ace, but that prowess soon deserted him. In one especially excruciating game, Painter was serving at 1-5 to stay in the first set. Agassi had steamrollered through him up to that point and Painter began to press. In that seventh game, which he somehow won, Painter served four aces, six double faults and staved off two set points in a game that went to deuce six times.

Painter’s jittery performance had the crowd moaning, but Agassi understood the young player’s motivation.

“It was kind of strange for him to hit four double faults, but I also thought it was a bit strange to be hitting second serves at 106 m.p.h. He was going for big seconds and he felt like he needed to. There’s not much you can do.”

The red-haired Painter was slightly red-faced after the match.

“I was probably thinking the wrong things before serving,” he said. “Especially when you think of who it was down at the other end of the court. I couldn’t help thinking that it was Agassi at the other end.”

Agassi has certainly earned the awe of many players on the tour, but his respect on grass has come only of late. The same can be said for Agassi’s respect for the surface.

“You know, I’ve really grown to love it here,” he said. “I might have said something different a few years back, but I’ve grown to love it. Granted, there are a few times when you’re up a break point and the ball bounces and it almost hits you in the head, but outside of that, you just take it as it comes and just enjoy being part of the history here.”

A tiny part of recent tennis history exited on Tuesday.

Henri Leconte, the mischievous Frenchman, lost to Javier Frana, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, then gave a melancholy wave as he left the court, perhaps for the last time.

Leconte will be missed for his wide array of shots and swashbuckling style--characteristics sadly lacking in today’s players. Although he was seldom consistent and rarely could be counted on to win big matches, he was never less than terrifically entertaining.

Proving he could win big, Leconte became a national hero in 1991 when he upset Pete Sampras to lead France to the Davis Cup title.

Leconte wistfully spoke of his love for Wimbledon, which he called a temple, but conceded to the inevitability of age. With Gallic pragmatism, Leconte--who turns 32 on July 4--faced facts that few older players enjoy confronting.

“For me, at age 32, you just have to realize that some day you are not going to be able to produce the best,” he said. “You just have to be reasonable and realize this sometimes. For me, tennis is not a job, it’s a pleasure. But if you’re talking about a job, I’ll never find another job like it.”

Leconte, who recently married one of the few female professional bullfighters, joked that he might take up that sport.

“To fight a bull would be more difficult,” Leconte said, laughing. “It will be good for my legs. They [legs] will move very fast. Maybe I’ll try. It could be new--why not?”