Now Agassi Reigns in Rome

Et tu, Andre.

With a tennis racket rather than a dagger Andre Agassi lit up Caesar’s town Sunday by dispatching a troublesome antagonist called the Italian Open.

A long time of fear and loathing of a dirt patch beside the Tiber, Il Foro Italico, dating back 15 years, was ended as No. 9-seeded Agassi fell on No. 7 Tommy Haas. The brutal score, 6-3, 6-3, 6-0, caused a gathering of 6,500 to hail Agassi and wiped out sour memories of a tournament he called “the most important after the four majors.”

“There’s so much history here,” Agassi said. “It was something missing for me, a title I really wanted and came so close to winning 13 years ago.

“To come back and do it after 13 years away from the final is a dream.”

From a narrowly thwarted 19-year-old to an at-last fulfilled 32-year-old, it has been quite a bumpy Roman journey for Agassi, whose first taste of the tawny soil at the Foro was stomach-turning. As a kid tourist, his first time abroad, he wasn’t thinking about such sights to be seen as the Catacombs--but he felt like a resident thereof after being put away by Argentina’s Martin Jaite in the second round.

“I was 17, it was 1987,” he said, “and I’d never seen red clay.”

Quickly homesick for his native asphalt, he lamented that, “Roman clay didn’t seem right for tennis. Movement was difficult. It was too slow. I’d hit four great shots in a row--and the ball would still come back. There were a lot more downs than ups for me here.

“Especially 1989. I thought I understood clay then. I had it won, but ... “

But at match point, 5-4 in the fourth with a 2-1 lead in sets, Agassi couldn’t get that last point against an Argentine banger, bull-chested Alberto Mancini. Mancini took the set in a tiebreaker, and the fifth, 6-1. Since, Agassi had never advanced past the third round. Until this year.

Nick Bollettieri, then the coach of Agassi and today the coach of Haas, has said that Agassi, frosted, tanked the last set in 1989. It wouldn’t have seemed beyond him during that less dedicated stretch of his career--but Agassi denies it.

“What happened was the crowd really got behind Mancini as he rebounded,” he said. “I got dejected, discouraged and was just a kid. I wasn’t experienced enough not to let the crowd take me out of it.”

The experience, plus the finely honed physical toughness, is showing. Agassi is the third oldest man to carry Rome, following 37-year-old Bill Tilden in 1930 and Australia’s Rod Laver, a four-months-older 32 in 1971.

Agassi, raising his ranking from No. 9 to No. 5, was in danger of losing a set only one time in the tournament, that coming in a tiebreaker to Argentina’s Agustin Calleri in the third round. During six victories his greatly improved serve, precise at critical moments, was broken only three times, the last by Haas to reduce his second-set lead to 4-3. Retaliating immediately, Agassi sprinted through the next eight games to the title.

This was Haas’ tale of woe after the baselining duel.

“Andre has such quick hands and feet that he puts you on the defensive right away,” Haas said. “He wears you down. He makes you go right left, right left, left right, left right again and again. He makes you doubt yourself and try to serve and make shots too good.

“He was my idol when I was 13 and met him, and he still is for his dedication. He keeps improving.”