Agassi, Roddick Advance

Wednesday was Davis Cup hangover day at the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament at Indian Wells.

Andre Agassi rose above his No. 9 seeding to take out No. 5 Guillermo Coria of Argentina, whom Agassi correctly identified as the fastest tennis player in the world. Agassi’s victory was a solid 6-4, 6-1.

Andy Roddick, No. 3 here, got a measure of revenge by beating the player who wrecked his Olympic dream in Athens, No. 17 Fernando Gonzalez of Chile. Roddick’s victory, with one service break in each set, was a solid 6-4, 6-3.

Both are in the quarterfinals of one of the world most prestigious events, a Tennis Masters Series in a 16,100-seat stadium that was nearly filled all day. Both have the momentum and the games to win here.

And yet both said the same thing, presumably without exchanging notes, about their performances and state of mind afterward: “We’re about a week late.”

Ten days ago in Carson, the U.S. Davis Cup team lost to Croatia. Agassi and Roddick each lost a singles point to Ivan Ljubicic, and it marked the first time in the 105-year history of the Cup that the U.S. lost a first-round match on its home soil. Clearly, the disappointment has not disappeared.

Agassi, as always, was especially articulate.

“Wish we could have played [the Davis Cup] here,” he said. “Seems like these conditions are perfect.”

That triggered a discussion of the court setup at the Home Depot Center. The control of that is in the hands of the home sanctioning body, in this case, the U.S. Tennis Assn. Agassi said the court was “thick, thick, the slowest hard court I’ve ever played on ... like a rainy day in Hamburg.”

He talked about how he likes it faster, Roddick likes it a little slower, and how the court speed had even hurt the doubles team of Mike and Bob Bryan, who lost to the Croatians but advanced here Wednesday, because the Croatians “got so many looks at second balls.”

But Agassi made it clear he was not criticizing the USTA, saying that there had been team feedback in the court setup, and that talking about changing everything after you lose is not productive.

“The reason why it is easy to second guess now is because we lost,” he said.

Joining Agassi and Roddick in the quarterfinals, on a day in which everything else was an undercard to the late-night Roger Federer-Ljubicic feature, were No. 2 Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, who breezed past Paul-Henri Mathieu of France, 6-1, 6-2; No. 4 Carlos Moya of Spain, who beat Fabrice Santoro of France, 7-5, 6-2; No. 6 Tim Henman of England, who beat Tommy Robredo of Spain, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2; No. 29 Nicolas Kiefer of Germany, who upset No. 10 David Nalbandian of Argentina, 6-1, 6-3, and No. 14 Guillermo Canas of Argentina, who advanced when he won the first set, 6-3, and Taylor Dent defaulted with a virus.

In the quarterfinals, Agassi will match up with Hewitt, Roddick with Moya and Canas with Henman, leaving Kiefer for Federer.

Russia’s Elena Dementieva was the first into the women’s semifinals, winning a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 struggle over Svetlana Kuznetsova. Dementieva, whose weakness is her serve, served for the match at 5-3 of the third and lost at love. Then, much better at receiving for the match, forced Kuznetsova to save four match points at 5-6 before the 19-year-old finally caved by pushing a tight second serve long on the fifth match point. Dementieva will play Kim Clijsters, a 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 winner over Conchita Martinez.