Kafelnikov’s Mission Has Air of Urgency

There are many little things for Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov to achieve with a victory tonight against No. 1 Andre Agassi in the Australian Open men’s singles final.

He can win his third Grand Slam event, adding to his 1996 French Open title and his Australian Open title last year.

He can become only the eighth man in the open era, which started in 1969, to win consecutive Australian titles, and the first since Jim Courier in 1993.

And he can give the expected capacity crowd of 15,021 on the center court of Rod Laver Arena a good show, something he has said he is dedicated to doing.

But in the big picture of tennis, there might be something more important. With a victory, Kafelnikov can also achieve one very big thing:

Hope.

As in hope for the rest of the players on the ATP Tour, who with an Agassi victory today may start checking the classifieds for other lines of employment.

This will be Agassi’s fourth consecutive Grand Slam final. He started the run at the French, where he came back from big deficits twice in the early rounds and then trailed Andrei Medvedev in the final, two sets to love, before winning.

He went to Wimbledon and lost in the final to Pete Sampras, who played one of those matches in which the other guy is just a spectator. He followed that with a victory in the U.S. Open, but only after losing the first set of the semifinal to Kafelnikov and then trailing Todd Martin in the final, two sets to one.

He has won 69 of 83 matches, and of the 14 he lost, four were to Sampras.

All that, and here he is, only three days removed from a masterful performance in which he beat his nemesis, Sampras.

It was interesting to listen to some of the other players before the Sampras-Agassi match. Most seemed to be pulling for Sampras, and it has little to do with his being more popular than Agassi. No, it was more like, “If Sampras can’t beat Agassi, none of us can.”

Kafelnikov is talking the good talk, although before his quick win over Magnus Norman in the semifinals, he mostly played the role of the forgotten underdog, just happy to have a chance to play on the same courts with all these big stars.

Friday, speaking about today’s final, he said, bravely: “Neither of us can dominate each other.” And, “I can play with him on the baseline all day.”

Brave, indeed, but probably wrong.

Kafelnikov was a bit more realistic when he said, “I know Agassi’s ego, and he wants to win every match he plays. Sunday would be no exception.”

Agassi addressed the final only briefly.

“I just want to see a great match,” he said.

For him, that means 6-2, 6-4, 6-1. For the rest of the tour players, it would mean at least four sets, or, God willing, five.

That would give them some hope. Some.