Agassi’s Not Ready to Leave L.A.

It will be a longer goodbye in Los Angeles for Andre Agassi, after all.

The 36-year-old tennis star, making the last rounds of summer events in a career that has taken him to 60 tour titles and eight Grand Slam event championships, got past a slight scare from a scary player in the second round of the Countrywide Classic Wednesday night at UCLA.

Agassi, playing the man who made his mark in the sport by becoming the last man to beat Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2002, lost a first-set tiebreaker to former USC player George Bastl of Switzerland before gathering himself and winning, 6-7 (4), 6-2, 6-1. The first set took 53 minutes and the final two a total of 48. When Agassi gets dialed in, bad things happen to opponents quickly. He finished with an ace, one of 18 he had on an unusually big serving night.

“Once I got going, you would have to go back to last year’s U.S. Open to find a time where I played this well,” Agassi said.

Agassi, a four-time champion here who will go as far as he can in the U.S. Open in September and then call it a career, had a sellout crowd of 7,021 buzzing as only he can. He finally got the match to turn his way when he froze Bastl at the net in the sixth game of the second set. Agassi hit a spectacular topspin lob that settled well short of the baseline, getting him to break point, then literally skipped along the baseline to receive in the deuce court. And at 15-40, Agassi cranked a backhand winner down the line for the break, and, essentially, the end, for a game but outmatched Bastl.

Agassi gets a day off, then will play Chilean Fernando Gonzalez in the quarterfinals. Gonzalez took out Russia’s talented, but frequently troubled Marat Safin, who has won two Grand Slam titles, but is also capable of looking bad against No. 212. The score was 6-4, 6-2, and included one of Safin’s patented racket slams, destroying yet another racket head.

Also winning were Americans Andy Roddick and Paul Goldstein. Roddick defeated South Africa’s Rik de Voest, 6-4, 6-4, and Goldstein turned back Russian Igor Kunitsyn by the same score. Last year’s winner here, Tommy Haas of Germany, also advanced over Paul Capdeville of Chile, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1.

The top-seeded Roddick made short work of De Voest in the last first-round match of the tournament, beating a player who was No. 136 in the world and had managed to get into main draws only enough to make this his sixth match of the season.

To the frequently smiling De Voest’s credit, he did what a player with no chance should have, swinging freely and going for the lines, even against Roddick’s huge serve. With Roddick serving for the match at 6-4, 5-4, De Voest hit two winners off Roddick’s serve and then got it to love-40 by attacking and hitting a winning backhand volley. But then he returned to earth, made mistakes that let Roddick back in, and even though he managed two more break points, eventually succumbed to a 132-mph serve on deuce and a final volley on Roddick’s first match point.

Afterward, Roddick said he felt sharp and said it is always good to go through a match without having your serve broken.

“It was an especially nice feeling, winning 4 and 4,” he said, “and still feeling I need to do more.”

He then fielded a barrage of questions about his new coach, Jimmy Connors, and how that had, and would, change his life. His answer to all was mostly the same. It won’t.

He was asked if, because of Connors’ legendary ferocity on the court, that he would now mirror that. “That’s never been a problem for me,” he said. “I have that work ethic, that drive.”

Goldstein, at 29 a tour veteran and undoubtedly the only college graduate in human biology on the ATP tour (Stanford, 1998), lived at least one more day after his stunning result against Lleyton Hewitt on Tuesday.

Goldstein served 70% in the second set, converted five break points in nine chances and said that not falling on his face the day after his big upset meant a lot to him.

“Fifteen years from now, Hewitt will be the memory,” he said. “But following up with a good match today, to that extent, it is almost as good.”

*

Featured matches

Today at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on the campus of UCLA:

STADIUM COURT

Beginning at noon

* Dominik Hrbaty vs. Lars Burgsmuller

* Sam Querrey vs. Dmitry Tursunov

* Kenneth Carlsen vs. Robby Ginepri

Not before 7:30

* Andy Roddick vs. Scott Oudsema

* Scoville Jenkins-Phillip Simmonds vs. Eric Butorac-Jamie Murray

*

GRANDSTAND COURT

Not before 3 p.m.

* Wayne Arthurs-Jordan Kerr vs. Paul Capdeville-Fernando Gonzalez

* Igor Kunitsyn-Tursunov vs. Jeff Coetzee-Hrbaty