Agassi Gets a Comeback Companion

Today was one of those days at the Australian Open when you wanted to wave a flag. A red, white and blue one. And that was before they even played the night matches, which brought expectations of more apple pie.

Andre Agassi and Jennifer Capriati won their way into their respective semifinals. They didn’t just win, they did so convincingly, excitingly, and with poise and maturity.

Agassi took everything that colorful little Hicham Arazi of Morocco blasted his way, blasted it back faster and won in a breezy 1 hour, 33 minutes, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.

Capriati, if anything, was even more efficient in her elimination of Ai Sugiyama of Japan, winning in 55 minutes, 6-0, 6-2.

One of the night matches pitted Pete Sampras against unseeded American Chris Woodruff, with the assumption that Sampras would win out and get this tournament to the Thursday dream match that has been talked about since the first service toss was made here last Monday.

Sampras versus Agassi. If you are alive and breathing and know cat gut from nylon, you can never get enough of this rivalry. Agassi, asked after his match--but with Sampras’ still to come--if the expected matchup gave him a little extra tingle, he smiled and said, “Yes . . . yes.”

In the women’s side at night, No. 2-seeded Lindsay Davenport was expected to make that bracket an All-American thing too, when she faced Julie Halard-Decugis of France, the No. 9-seeded player. A Davenport victory would make it a Davenport-Capriati semifinal, and while it isn’t Sampras-Agassi, it stirs a pretty good interest level of its own.

Arazi, unseeded and ranked No. 36, or 35 spots below Agassi, is a little lefty with a big game. He has been out on the tour since 1995 and has been to the fourth round of the Australian Open as recently as 1998. Still, he was no match for Agassi. Somebody suggested in Agassi’s news conference that the match looked as if they were hitting each shot for bragging rights over who could hit it harder, and while Agassi denied that, there was no denying that there were some testosterone-laced moments.

At one point in the third set, Agassi cranked in a big serve and Arazi whacked it back even harder. Agassi, approaching the net, made a swinging volley that went off the back wall.

“I just reacted,” he said. “ . . . It was a bad decision.”

At one point in the final set, Agassi had a 4-0 lead and had lost only four points. Arazi, blue bandana in place and spotting a trend, seemed to decide that, if nothing else, he would finish out by having some fun. In no exact order, he sat on a beer sponsor’s sign, sent his racket spinning skyward twice and caught it expertly in one hand each time and, after Agassi had jerked him from side to side in an incredible rally, he pantomimed back and forth on the baseline. Agassi’s only answer back to the fun was a shot between his legs chasing down a lob.

Indeed, so proficient was Agassi from his baseline laboratory that it appeared Arazi was at the end of a yo-yo, and the yo-yo was in Agassi’s hand.

Asked about it, Agassi deadpanned, “I think he’s a bit flashier of a player than I am, and he’s more of a shotmaker in many respects. My game was pretty straightforward. I was just getting a good look at the ball and taking a big cut at it.”

None bigger than at match point, where he cracked an inside-out forehand service return to the deep corner and barely missed.

“I was disappointed I missed that one,” he said.

Agassi, the No. 1 player in the world, is hitting the ball so early and so hard and so well that it is beyond the comprehension of many seeing it in person here that anybody, even Sampras at his best, can beat him. Australian Pat Cash, the 1987 Wimbledon champion and the coach of Agassi’s fourth-round victim, Mark Philippoussis, said just that in an article printed here today. Only, Cash took it a step further, predicting that Agassi could become the first person since Rod Laver in 1969, and only the third ever--Don Budge was the first--to win all four legs of the Grand Slam.

“I appreciate his words and I respect him as a great player,” Agassi said of Cash, “but that’s just an absurd conversation.”

Among the things that Capriati said after her victory was that she has drawn inspiration from Agassi’s incredible comeback, which brought him to the top from No. 122 back in 1998.

With all due respect to that, Capriati’s comeback may be even more impressive.

Her victory today put her in a Grand Slam event semifinal for the first time since 1991. She was 15 then, 23 now, and her road back from well-documented teen-age growing pains that got her in trouble with drugs and the law in a couple of separate incidents and kept her off the tour altogether in 1994 and ‘95, appeared to be much more painful than Agassi’s lost-and-found interest in the game.

The same Capriati, who left a news conference in tears at the U.S. Open only four months ago, proved today that there has been an adult in there all along, just trying to break out.

When asked about a close call earlier in the tournament and whether or not that would bring up all the questions about her crumbling again, she said, “First of all, I have stopped thinking about what the world was going to think of me. That’s a big step, maybe, in my progress here.”

She said her new physical conditioning, the fine coaching job that Harold Solomon has done with her and the never-wavering support of her father, mother, brother and friends have gotten her through the bad times.

And into the Australian semifinals.

“It feels great, tremendous,” she said. “I’m just thrilled.”

She said that a stomach pull that caused her to leave the court for an injury timeout in the first set was being treated and shouldn’t be a concern.

Nor was there any concern about injury in the Agassi camp, where they affectionately refer to their leader as “The Rock.”

Notes

Lost in all the Sampras-Agassi hoopla is No. 2-seeded Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who polished off a little-known Belgian, Christophe Rochus Monday night, 6-1, 6-3, 7-5, and then told the press he didn’t think he would successfully defend his title here. Which, of course, means he thinks he can. . . . No such introspection from the winner of the other Monday night match, Martina Hingis, who took out France’s Sandrine Testud, 6-1, 7-6 (3) and said she felt like she has felt all along, that she can win here for the fourth straight year.