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Another showdown Agassi, Sampras advance to ATP Championship final
Posted: Saturday November 27, 1999 10:03 PM
HANOVER, Germany (AP) -- The Player of the Year will clash with the Player of the Decade when Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras battle in an all-American final at the ATP Tour World Championship. Agassi won two Grand Slam titles this year and is assured of finishing the year as No. 1, ending Sampras' record six-year streak. "It's not good for me just to get to the finals. I want to be the best," Agassi said. Agassi and Sampras moved into the final of the season-ending event that brings together the eight top players in the world by beating their semifinal opponents in straight sets Saturday. In a showdown between the two top-ranked players in the world, Agassi rallied from a slump in the second set to beat No. 2 Yevgeny Kafelnikov 6-4, 7-6 (7-5). Sampras shed off the rustiness he had shown in some earlier matches in ousting the home crowd favorite, Nicolas Kiefer, 6-3, 6-3. Agassi was trailing 5-2 and was two points away from dropping the second set when he picked up his game to even the score at 5-5. The match ended with two straight Kafelnikov errors in the tiebreaker. "I felt the chances of winning the second set had dropped considerably," Agassi said. Kafelnikov said he allowed Agassi to get back into the match. "I played a very poor game at 5-3 and that was good enough for Andre to get back into the match," he said. "Andre was very strong from the baseline. He had an answer to every shot I was coming up with," Kafelnikov said. Agassi celebrated the 600th singles win of his career to reach his second final at the $3.6 million event. Of active players, only Sampras (656) and Thomas Muster (622) have more singles match wins. Sampras is coming off a three-month layoff because of hip and back injuries and has dropped to No. 5. He will be playing his sixth final at the championship, which he has won four times. In the round-robin portion earlier in the week, Agassi beat Sampras easily, 6-2, 6-2. But Sampras leads the series 16-11 and had won the previous three clashes this year, including the Wimbledon final.
"I don't want to lose twice in a row and hopefully I can make it more of a match," Sampras said. "One of the best servers in the world against one of the best returners, I hope we can play tennis worth of a great final." "It won't be easy. He's playing about as well as you can play tennis," Sampras said. "But I'll have the adrenaline kicking in." Agassi won this tournament in 1990, the first time it was staged in Germany and he can now become the last champion in Germany. The event will be played in Lisbon, Portugal next year as it starts moving around the world. With the French Open and U.S. Open titles this year and three other tournament victories, Agassi has secured the No. 1 ranking for the year. Agassi's battle against Kafelnikov, the Australian Open champion, failed to electrify the crowd, although the match involved officially the two best players in the world. "I didn't think the quality of the match was good in the first set," Agassi said. "I thought there was a lot of unforced errors on his part, then on my part too. It wasn't like we were having great points." With girlfriend Steffi Graf, the retired German star, watching from the players' box, Agassi broke Kafelnikov's serve in the opening game. He retained the advantage to win the first set. The second set began in the same fashion, but Agassi double-faulted in the fourth game to allow Kafelnikov to even the score. Another Agassi double-fault allowed Kafelnikov to take a 4-2 lead. At 5-2 in Kafelnikov's favor, Agassi came within two points of losing the set. But he recovered, broke Kafelnikov's serve when the Russian double-faulted in the ninth game and forced a tiebreaker. With the score at 5-5, Kafelnikov netted a simple drop shot, with Agassi far behind the baseline. "I was really hoping to make he drop shot but I was unable to do that and lost the match," he said. On match point, Kafelnikov's backhand passing shot attempt also ended in the net and Agassi had the victry after one hour, 24 minutes. "I didn't think he was playing his best tennis today by any means and I could tell that early," Agassi said. Sampras is in his 10th consecutive appearance in the tournament and was in his ninth straight semifinal. He finished with 13 aces against Kiefer, the No. 6 in the world, who had the partisan support of 13,500 fans. Kiefer comes from near Hanover.
The crowd support was not enough to carry Kiefer, who double-faulted twice in giving Sampras three match points, hitting a forehand into the net on the last.
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