Boot Camp

The two of them had so little in common; how odd to find them thus bracketed by fate. One was a ponytailed girl in her last year as a teenager, traveling with her mother. The other a bald man coming off a divorce. Somehow last week Martina Hingis and Andre Agassi had each ended up, in the final days of a famous tennis tournament on the earth's other side, staring up at the same unsettling silhouette.

Both were what they had long striven to be, king and queen of their worlds, No. Is. Yet both—such a strange condition for sovereigns—lived beneath a boot. When minions hushed and well-wishers receded, both heard the same squeak: Am I really No. 1?

Hingis's boot went by the name of Lindsay Davenport. Entering the Australian Open in Melbourne, Davenport had stomped her in straight sets the last three times they'd met; no No. 2 in women's tennis had ever done that to a No. 1 in the Open era.

Agassi's boot was Pete Sampras, the man who had kicked him around in four of their last five encounters and nine of their last 12. Whenever it mattered most, it seemed, Sampras, who had been relegated to No. 3 by last year's herniated disk, could arise from injury, layoff or lethargy and place Andre under heel again.

In no professional sport besides boxing does the possibility of domination hang more rancidly, more ruinously in the air. Both Hingis and Agassi believed their peril was temporary, changeable—they told people that. But there comes a moment when the boot no longer simply hovers and haunts, when it's about to come down and make that final crunching twist and then walk off wearing the poor bastard, like gum, for life. For the ponytailed queen and the bald-headed king, that moment had come.

What more could Agassi do, if he couldn't break Sampras's psychological grip on him here? He was in the best condition of his life, chiseled by a training regimen that lasted four to five hours a day. Where was Pete on Christmas Eve? As cars full of gifts and families flickered by on their way to dinners with relatives, Andre was huffing his 320-yard sprints up a hill in Las Vegas that he calls Magic Mountain. He'd never struck the ball as cleanly as he had in Melbourne nor played more fearlessly. Against Mark Philippoussis in the fourth round, Agassi had actually charged a 134-mph serve. He'd never been more focused or more at peace. He was rich in love with a woman sitting at courtside named Steffi Graf.

He sat in postmatch press conferences radiating a Buddha glow, arms folded, hairless head gleaming, bemused smile forever playing about his lips, twinkling eyes and thoughtful replies ready to meet each questioner—unless the questioner dared to ask about Steffi and tabloid rumors of a recent secret marriage in Hawaii.

Across the net, in last Thursday's semifinal, stood Sampras, who had played only a handful of matches in the five months before Melbourne, who had slouched and hangdogged his way-across this newly coated surface he compared to glass, struggling to keep control of the lightest and hardest balls ever to pop from an Oz Open can. Good lord, a 148th-ranked Zimbabwean named Wayne Black had had him down two sets to none in the third round before Sampras's ears finally twitched. Sure, he was stalking history, but he looked slightly irritated that he had had to come 8,000 miles to tuck a record-breaking 13th Grand Slam singles title inside his racket bag.

If he couldn't beat Sampras now, no makeover or permutation would remain; Agassi would know the stark answer to the naked question: Is my talent enough?

Afterward, people would call it the best match they'd ever seen in Melbourne Park, the most electric of Agassi and Sampras's 29 duels. It crested in the second tiebreaker, with Sampras leading 4-6,6-3,7-6,6-6 and now just a few more line-licking aces from complete ownership of Agassi. History's massive bulk leaned on Agassi. He hadn't taken a breaker from Sampras in five years, and the most recent one—the 7-0 anvil Pete had dropped on him just 45 minutes earlier—was surely ringing in his head.