Gritty performance from the unseeded Andre Agassi in the first round of the US Open tonight, with Agassi prevailing in 4 sets (6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 6-2).The first 3 sets went to tie breaks, with Pavel winning the first set and Agassi fighting back to win the next two sets in the tiebreaks. In the third set, Agassi came back from 4-0 to force the tiebreak, in which he won 8-6.

Andre serves in his first round match against Andrei Pavel

The crowd was electric from the moment Agassi took the court, but it is evident that age is finally catching up with the great champion who now struggles to dispatch opponents who in year’s past would not have troubled him in the slightest. Pavel played a brilliant match, but it was a match where Agassi was nowhere near his best.

Agassi will face the extremely talented Marcos Baghdatis (finalist in the Australian Open and semi-finalist at Wimbledon this year) in the second round. It will be a good sign of where Agassi is in his game at the moment, and if he can make his way in to third round, he will have a good chance of making it deep into the second week of the tournament. One thing is for sure - anyone that comes up against him will have to face the pro-Agassi crowd as well as the great man himself.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Tennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.