It Can’t Get Any Better

Please Pete and Andre, please don’t grow old. Please don’t lose another step, don’t get another ache or pain, don’t get sluggish or slow, tired or disinterested, don’t stop swinging from your shoetops, don’t stop clobbering 119 mph second serves, don’t stop aiming for the lines and hugging each other at the end.

Please give us some more of these moments.

It was a privilege to be at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday night. It was a thrill to see Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi play tennis in a way no other two men play against each other. It was an honor to watch Sampras glide forward, always forward, to strike his elegantly-angled volleys. It was an honor to hear Agassi grunt with the effort it took to sling passing shots past Sampras. Once again, on the biggest of stages, Sampras beat Agassi. The score was 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5). There were no breaks of serve. There were no lapses of concentration or effort or perfect shotmaking.

Let’s stop the U.S. Open now. Let’s just give two trophies, one to Sampras, one to Agassi. No disrespect to Gustavo Kuerten or Marat Safin or Andy Roddick or Lleyton Hewitt but the tennis here will get no better than what 23,033 people were given on this night. “Win this thing,” Agassi whispered to Sampras at the end, when the two hugged at the net, a heartfelt embrace of two men who understand each other and who understood the immensity of their achievement.

“I thought going in that this could be a classic,” Sampras said, “and I think it was.” Yes it was.

Before the fourth-set tiebreak, after midnight, the crowd stood and cheered for a minute. Sampras put his head in a towel. Agassi paced on the baseline. No one gets a standing ovation before a match is over. These two men, the 31-year-old Agassi and the 30-year-old Sampras, deserved it. They played 3 hours, 33 minutes of exhilarating tennis, the kind we see so seldom. There was not an inch of room in this stadium to take a breath. There were people standing around the top, sitting on the stairs. Ilie Nastase jumped to his feet to applaud a Sampras second-serve ace and Roddick sat in a box with a video camera recording the last of four tie breaks, a 19-year-old tennis tourist for a night, dreaming of having his own chance for this moment, hoping to be half the champion that both Agassi and Sampras have been.

They have combined for 20 Grand Slam titles. They have won, between them, six U.S. Open championships. That they met in the quarterfinals is a hint that age was taking a bit of a toll, a hint that maybe we won’t have many more of these nights. The record stands now at 18-14 in favor of Sampras. But when the matches have mattered most in the events that mattered most to these two men, Sampras has always won.

In the 1993 Wimbledon quarterfinals, in an exquisite five-set battle, it was Sampras who moved on, 6-2, 6-2, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4. At the 1995 U.S. Open, when Agassi had come off an unbeaten summer on the hardcourts, it was Sampras who beat Agassi at his own game, owning the baseline and the title in a 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 win. These were the two finest matches the two had played, the two most filled with sustained excellence. Until Wednesday night.

“When we clash and are both playing well,” Sampras said, “you get some of the best tennis in the game.” What Sampras means is that they have different styles. Agassi needs to hammer Sampras with his groundstrokes. Sampras needs to stifle Agassi with his serve and volley. Strength against strength. Agassi has had a very good year already. He won the Australian Open and was the No. 2 seed here. Sampras has had a very poor year. He lost in the fourth round of Wimbledon, a humbling moment for the seven-time champion and he came home to Los Angeles and was soundly thumped by Agassi only a month ago in meeting No. 31.

Where Sampras found his legs, where he located his heart and desire, his stamina and most of all his determination to prove critics wrong in the last month, he can’t tell us. At the end of the first-set tiebreak, where he had three set points and missed a simple volley, sending it into the net, to give Agassi the tiebreak 9-7, Sampras kicked his racket as he sat on his chair during the changeover. It seemed the frustration of a beaten man. It was the kick of an energized man.

Sampras won the second-set tiebreak with a backhand volley, an artistic shot, struck hard and sent skidding past Agassi’s racket. Sampras let loose with a big “Wooo.” The battle was truly engaged. Sampras was full of confidence now and he was always on the attack. There was not a second serve where Sampras did not go all out. He had 12 double faults and they were all faults of aggressiveness. He also had 25 aces, several on second serves.

Should Sampras accommodate Agassi, should he go on to win this Open, it will be the greatest achievement of his career.

In the fourth round Sampras had to eliminate Pat Rafter, this year’s Wimbledon finalist and a two-time Open champion. Now Agassi in the quarters.

Next up is Safin, the defending Open champion, a 21-year-old strongman who manhandled Sampras in last year’s finals.

After that might be Kuerten, the world’s No. 1 player or maybe Roddick, 19, same as Sampras when Sampras won his first Open 11 years ago and was anointed American’s next great champion.

As for this rivalry, we can only beg for more. “Hopefully we’ll get a few more opportunities,” Agassi said.

“It’s always a challenge stepping on the court against him. And, you know, on a night like this it makes me realize why it’s so special when you beat him. Because it’s not easy to do.” “Tennis fans,” Sampras said, “can enjoy the rivalry of Andre and Pete.” Yes we can. And we can beg for more.

Please.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com