The Late-Night Ride of a Man Revered

There had to be a morning after at the U.S. Open, even if the night before was all anybody was talking about. Andre Agassi, the maestro of the magnificent, was the talk of the town. He had taken a huge bite out of the Big Apple.

Roger Federer, the top player in tennis, dismissed Tim Henman in three sets Friday and then talked about staying up late watching the Agassi-Marcos Baghdatis epic on TV the night before.

“It was great, fantastic. Loved it,” Federer said, adding that just watching made him so nervous he was getting cold feet and had to squeeze under the blanket in bed.

American star James Blake took the court at midafternoon, wearing a pirate-like headband with a Nike swoosh and a white shirt with loud black-and-red stripes. That look was in style years ago, when Agassi made it so. Blake, whose quarterfinal match here last year against Agassi got lots of mention Friday in comparison with Agassi-Baghdatis, said the outfit was his personal tribute.

Young German Benjamin Becker, who has next against Agassi in a match scheduled for this afternoon, although it’s expected to be washed away to another day by the last gasps of Tropical Storm Ernesto, said he tried to watch the match Thursday night but was tossed out of the stadium when they ran out of seats for players.

He went and found a TV set and said, “At first, I was scouting, but after a while, I was just interested in watching. It was one of the best matches I’ve ever seen.... Both of them are champions.”

The talk here was where this fit on the “best-ever” scale.

There were mentions of the 1980 Bjorn Borg-John McEnroe Wimbledon final, when McEnroe saved five match points and Borg won in five sets, surviving an 18-16 tiebreaker loss in the fourth.

There were mentions of the Pete Sampras-Alex Corretja quarterfinal here in 1996, when a dead-tired Sampras vomited on the court and still won the match when Corretja double-faulted on match point in a fifth-set tiebreaker.

There was the 2001 Sampras-Agassi quarterfinal here, with no breaks of serve and Sampras winning in four tiebreakers.

There was Sampras-Agassi in a 2000 Australian Open semifinal, Sampras consistently hitting second serves in the high 120s and Agassi eventually breaking through to win a fourth-set tiebreaker and stay in control in the fifth.

There was Michael Chang, cramping up in the French Open semifinals in 1989, serving underhanded against Ivan Lendl and still managing to win.

And there was Agassi, in what he would call his grandest moment, coming back from two sets down against Andrei Medvedev to win the ’99 French Open.

But nobody was willing to give Agassi-Baghdatis a back seat to any of those. This was quality tennis on the highest level.

“What a great match it was,” said somebody who ought to know, the often-reflective Federer.

The story is better because Agassi has become a symbol of all that is good and noteworthy about our sports heroes, at a time when many of our sports heroes aren’t all that good and noteworthy.

Tuesday night, only hours after Agassi had received his cortisone shot, he was spotted in a Manhattan hotel lounge by an 18-year-old high school tennis player from Carlsbad named Drew Sager, there with his father, Denis.

It took Sager about 40 minutes to get up the courage to approach Agassi, who was seated with friends. Once he did, Agassi shook his hand, asked his name, thanked him for his kind words about his first-round victory and asked him whether he would be going to the Baghdatis match.

Denis, who tells the story, said that even though Agassi had just had the injections in his back, whenever a woman arrived at his table to join the group, Agassi stood up.

Bob Kramer, director of the Countrywide tournament at UCLA each summer, tells the story of Agassi’s originally balking at, then relenting to Kramer’s request to play the second match on a Wednesday night this year, after a doubles match featuring the Bryan brothers.

“We had promoted that Wednesday night as doubles night, and Andre understandably was worried that his match would run way too late,” Kramer said. “But he didn’t really understand the new doubles format, that matches are shorter.

“The old Andre wouldn’t have listened. The new Andre not only listened and eventually understood but said that he could see how doing it this way would be good for tennis.

“There I was, expecting to have to redo the schedule and have all sorts of fans and people in the press mad at me, and he says to me, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ I almost cried.”

Agassi’s connection with fans is unmatched.

This is not new.

At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, fans became so infuriated when a match was changed to a different court, one requiring a new ticket, that they stormed the gates of the new court, prompting the famous utterance of veteran writer and broadcaster Bud Collins, standing nearby. “They are rioting at tennis,” Collins intoned.

And why were they rioting? Because they had purchased tickets to see Agassi play doubles, which is a little like getting angry over a missed chance to see Madonna wash her car.

Agassi’s celebrity has long transcended tennis. Now, on the way out, he is letting his sport ride along, one last time.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.