Agassi at Loss to Explain It

By JERRY CROWE

Sept. 1, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

It wasn’t the heat, or the humidity.

It wasn’t his bothersome back.

It wasn’t lack of focus.

It wasn’t preoccupation with the difficult days ahead for his mother and sister, who have both been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Or so said a tight-lipped Andre Agassi after his bid for a second consecutive U.S. Open championship unexpectedly ran out of steam on a hot, muggy Thursday at the National Tennis Center.

The top-seeded Agassi was bounced from the last of the year’s four Grand Slam championships by little-known Arnaud Clement of France, whose 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 second-round victory in Arthur Ashe Stadium was as one-sided as the score indicates.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Agassi said to reporters who pressed him afterward about distractions. “You’ve got to give credit where credit’s due. Spend your energy writing about the way he played.”

Clement, wearing a red bandanna and wraparound sunglasses, dominated the two-time U.S. Open winner, needing only 1 hour 42 minutes to send Agassi packing.

The Frenchman, whose English is halting, had a more difficult time during his postmatch news conference, grabbing his cramping stomach at one point and bolting up out of his seat to stretch.

“About an hour too late for Andre,” a reporter quipped.

Clement, 22, was 0-2 against Agassi but came within two points of beating the American in the second round of the 1999 French Open, which Agassi won to complete a career Grand Slam.

Last September, Agassi beat Clement in the fourth round en route to the U.S. Open title.

On Thursday, Clement kept Agassi, 30, on the run from the start.

“To win this match, for me it’s unbelievable,” he said, “because it’s on an unbelievable court. Everybody is for him. . . .

“It’s my best victory.”

The upset, coming two days after second-seeded Gustavo Kuerten’s first-round flameout against Wayne Arthurs, left the men’s draw without its top two seeded players for the last 10 days of the 14-day tournament.

It’s the first time since the open era began in 1968 that both the No. 1- and No. 2-seeded players have failed to reach the third round of the U.S. championships.

For Agassi, the loss continued a tailspin. After winning the Australian Open in January for his third Grand Slam title in eight months, he lost in the second round at the French Open and in the semifinals at Wimbledon.

A back injury that had bothered him during the first half of the year was aggravated in a Las Vegas car crash in July. Then, after he revealed the news about his mother and sister in a television interview Monday night, Agassi was greeted with the Tuesday tabloid headline, “AGASSI’S AGONY.”

Agassi said he felt fine against Clement, rated his focus a 10 on a scale of 10 and insisted he was not distracted, but his on-court listlessness belied his postmatch words.

“I had a couple more sets in me, if I could have gotten there,” he said. “I mean, I felt pretty good. But [I was] still probably an hour away from the match being physical. It was a long ways away from getting to him that way. . . .

“You have to step up and change something at some point. I felt like every time I stepped it up, I started missing, then I pulled back and he kept the offensive.

“It was just a brutal day.”

So brutal that Agassi seemed to leave open the possibility that he might not play in the Olympics later this month in Sydney, Australia.

“The plan has been to go there,” he said. “I’m not going to start popping off right after I have a disappointing match.”

Clement is going to Sydney, but not before playing Hicham Arazi of Morocco in the third round.

Asked if he thought Agassi seemed out of sorts, Clement said he couldn’t be sure.

“I’m not in his head,” he said, “but for sure he did not play a good match today. He did a lot of mistakes. Me, I don’t think about him. I just think about me.”

U.S. Open notes

Jelena Dokic of Australia, whose father, Damir, was barred from the National Tennis Center after an obscenity-laced tirade Wednesday, moved into the third round with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Miriam Oremans of the Netherlands. . . . Second-seeded Lindsay Davenport and fourth-seeded Mary Pierce of France survived upset bids, Davenport beating Kim Clijsters of Belgium, 4-6, 6-2, 6-2, and Pierce eliminating Magdalena Maleeva of Bulgaria, 7-5, 2-6, 6-1. Defending champion Serena Williams, seeded fifth, rolled over Nadejda Petrova of Russia, 6-3, 6-2. . . . Among the men, fifth-seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia was a 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 winner over Alexander Popp of Germany.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

AGASSI BY THE NUMBERS

12: Consecutive tournaments without a title

4: Longest streak of tournaments without a title last year

32-12: Match record this year

50-9: Match record last year (through U.S. Open)

1: Tournament titles this year

4: Tournament titles last year (through U.S. Open)

Featured Matches

The schedule of matches on the show courts and others involving seeded players. Play begins at 8 a.m. PDT:

DAY SESSION

* Chanda Rubin vs. Monica Seles (6)