Agassi Knows Enough About Gambill to Call Him a Winner

This kid is such a newcomer, the crowd didn’t quite know what to call him at Grand Champions Resort.

Sometimes, Michael. Other times, Jan. But Jan-Michael--that’s kind of hard to yell in a quick, concise manner.

Andre Agassi doesn’t have that problem.

He knows Jan-Michael Gambill’s name all too well after losing, 7-6 (8-6), 3-6, 6-3, in Friday’s quarterfinals at the Newsweek Champions Cup. The defeat ended the resurgent Agassi’s 13-match winning streak on the ATP Tour, and also pulled some of the star quality out of the men’s field, a day after No. 1-ranked Pete Sampras exited, courtesy of Thomas Muster.

Who could have predicted the next potential star from the United States would come from Spokane, Wash., and hold the dubious distinction of being named after B-actor Jan-Michael Vincent?

(We won’t mention the 20-year-old’s fascination with “Star Trek”).

For Gambill, it’s his first career semifinal. He will play Australian Open finalist Marcelo Rios, and his ranking is expected to go from No. 126 to the mid-80s on Monday.

“I said I was riding a wave, but floating is a pretty good word too,” said Gambill, who received a wild-card entry a week ago.

“None of it has sunk in yet. I’ve never been in a match where people have been that into it.”

It wasn’t as though Agassi was caught off guard by the youngster. Gambill was one of Agassi’s colleagues when he dropped down to the Challenger circuit late last year, and before Friday, they had played twice in the last month. Agassi won both times, at San Jose and Scottsdale, Ariz., but needed tiebreakers in the second set of each match.

“Right now, he’s playing anywhere from No. 8 to No. 12 [in the world] tennis right now, somewhere right around No. 10,” said Agassi, who recently called Davis Cup captain Tom Gullikson to tell him he should pick Gambill as the second player in next month’s match vs. Russia.

“He’s been playing well for a few weeks. Certainly every time I’ve played him, he’s played that well.”

Said Gambill: “My shot selection was a little better this time. I just missed some dumb shots in the previous matches [against Agassi]. He’s an amazing player and a great champion. I love going out there and battling him.”

Agassi, who lost the first set by butchering an overhead in the tiebreaker, seemed to settle down in the second. He ran into trouble with his racket in the third set after he broke Gambill to go up 2-1.

“I had two double faults,” he said. “My racket felt weird, like something was wrong with it. Finally, on a second serve, as I made contact, the throat cracked and the racket flew out of my hand. That just rattled me. I got a little unsettled and lost my serve.”

Gambill, who had 18 aces, won it on his third match point, hitting a two-handed forehand winner. Earlier in the final set, he received a code violation for ball abuse, a rarity for him, apparently.

“It helped me--I smashed it out of there and forgot about my anger,” he said. “It wasn’t good sportsmanship. I hit it pretty far, though.

All of this was just a continuation of what turned out to be a weird, wild day. Starting off was Greg Rusedski of England, who set the earth shaking with his seismic-like serve, hitting a record 146-mph rocket in his 2-6, 7-6 (7-1), 6-4 victory against Sweden’s Thomas Enqvist.

Then there was the Chilean, Rios, performing a cartwheel on the court after his 6-4, 6-2 victory, not that vaunted acrobat, Petr Korda of the Czech Republic. It was payback of sorts for Korda’s on-court gymnastics after he beat Rios in the Australian Open final.

“Every time I play him, he does it right to your face,” Rios said. “Not really a nice moment. I do it because every time now I play him, [if] I beat him, I’m going to do it.”

Need more strangeness?

Muster provided another dose of the unusual, suffering a hip flexor during his match against Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine, yet holding on to win, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4. But Muster, who needed a pain killer to get through the match, called himself questionable for today’s semifinal against Rusedski.