Agassi Looking for All the World Like One to Beat : Tennis: He has had an easier time than Kafelnikov, Pioline and Martin, and appears to be on track to win U.S. Open.

To the casual observer, the men’s semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament come down to Andre Agassi and three other guys. To the tennis expert, well, the same thing.

Any way you look at it, all the stars seem aligned for Agassi:

* He is No. 2 in the world and will become No. 1 if he beats No. 3 Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia in one of today’s semifinals. If Kafelnikov wins, he’ll be No. 1.

* Agassi won the French Open this year, the fourth different Grand Slam title of his career, putting him on a pedestal previously occupied by only four others: Fred Perry, Don Budge, Roy Emerson and Rod Laver, all legends.

* He got to the final of Wimbledon in July, losing to Pete Sampras, then kept on rolling through a summer in which only No. 1 Sampras and Kafelnikov were able to play at the same level.

* The day after Agassi won his first match here, Sampras announced he had injured his back and was out of the tournament.

* Agassi has lost only one set in his five matches, that to American Justin Gimelstob in the third round.

While Agassi has cruised, the other three semifinalists have specialized in survival skills, usually a necessity here.

Kafelnikov swaggered through the first couple of rounds and regaled the press with predictions that the top half of the draw, without Sampras and Aussie Patrick Rafter, might as well not even show up anymore because the champion would come from the bottom--himself, Agassi or Richard Krajicek. Then his quarterfinal nearly became a self-fulfilling prophecy when it took three tiebreakers--and four match points in the fifth-set tiebreaker--to get past the big-serving Krajicek, who set a men’s pro record by hitting 48 aces, adjusted the next day after a review of videotapes to 49.

The top-bracket semifinal that Kafelnikov says has no chance matches American Todd Martin, seeded No. 7, and Frenchman Cedric Pioline, unseeded.

Martin, battling a stomach virus and looking like death warmed over in his last two matches, already has played 19 sets; needed a fifth-set tiebreaker to get out of the first round against French qualifier Stephane Huet, No. 154. Then he had to pull off his memorable gut-it-out, prime-time show Tuesday night to beat Britain’s Greg Rusedski after trailing, two sets to love, a break in the third and 15-40.

Pioline has played the most, with 21 sets that include five against German qualifier Lars Burgsmuller and three tiebreakers Thursday in a five-set win over Brazilian star Gustavo Kuerten. One of the tiebreakers went to 16-14.

Pioline also has been involved in two of the most memorable moments in the tournament. The first was the second night of play, when Rafter retired from their match at 0-1 of the fifth set because of a shoulder injury. The second was Thursday afternoon, when Kuerten, after a sensational passing shot by Pioline in the long tiebreaker, walked around to Pioline’s side of the net to shake his hand.

Compared to Agassi’s four Grand Slam titles, Kafelnikov has two, the ’96 French and this year’s Australian. Martin has made it to one Grand Slam final, the ’94 Australian, and Pioline has made it to two major finals, the ’93 U.S. Open and ’97 Wimbledon.

The only edge the top bracket seemed to have was in sense of humor: Martin, when asked about the significance of semifinalists’ ages--Pioline is 30, he and Agassi are 29 and Kafelnikov is 25--said, “It just shows me that Kafelnikov is a little out of place.”

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Today’s Men’s Semifinals

* Andre Agassi (2) vs. Yevgeny Kafelnikov (3)

* Cedric Pioline vs. Todd Martin (7)