For A Change, Tennis Comes First

The U.S. Open is the Grand Slam tournament where the players need wide-armed security guards to throw a flying wedge so that they can walk from the locker room to the courts past fans who are more concerned about not spilling their $3 water and $10 hamburgers than about touching Andre Agassi.

This is the Grand Slam tournament where four-letter words serve as compliments, and weird things happen at night when the matches sometimes last until 2 a.m. It is the tournament players hate, too, because the tournament can swallow them whole. It is cramped, crowded and disrespectful. No one gets out of the way. The smoke from cooking hamburgers chokes the players on Court 3. You can trip over the swirling garbage on Court 1.

The players aren’t the stars; they’re the sideshow.

But today this big, boisterous, season-ending bash begins again, and there is a buzz about it. And the buzz is about tennis. This Open has something people want to see. There is the opportunity for two final matches worth watching: Monica Seles versus Steffi Graf, and Andre Agassi versus Pete Sampras.

A year ago at this time, Agassi was everybody’s favorite has-been. Sullen, overweight, unseeded, unwanted, ignored, he blew through the Open as if he were a firecracker, lit in anger and thrown into the draw. Then he won. Now Agassi is ranked No. 1 and is the most enthralling, engaging, maddening star since John McEnroe.

And Seles wasn’t even thought about last year. She was well into her second season in seclusion, out of the way in Florida, considered by many to be finished with tennis forever. How could Seles possibly come back now, two years out of the game? asked other players, tennis officials and TV commentators. It couldn’t be done, they said. Seles was gone, and women’s tennis was in terrible shape.

Then Seles came back. One exhibition match, one real tournament won with ferocity, and Seles is the betting favorite to win the women’s title. But more than that, Seles has made it OK to pay attention to tennis. And so has Agassi.

A year ago, tennis was not OK. It was dull. Sampras was a wonderful player but a deadly personality. Women’s tennis was a joke, a bunch of nobodies and Graf and Aranxta Sanchez Vicario. The Open wasn’t cool. There were hardly any stars. Used to be that Johnny Carson, Barbra Streisand, Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise would be in the stands. Last year, people were pointing out David Dinkins, the former mayor of New York City.

Now the Open is cool again. On Friday, three days before the tournament was to start, a New York tabloid devoted two pages to U.S. Open gossip and pictures of players such as Agassi and Boris Becker, with his wife and child. People were calling the U.S. Open ticket office every day, officials said. They wanted to know when Monica was playing, when Andre was playing. They wanted to know where Brooke Shields would be sitting when her guy Agassi was on the court.

So thank Agassi, for deciding to be great instead of just a flake. Agassi brings stars to tennis. Streisand one year, now Shields. And he brings his intriguing tennis, so different from anyone else’s, with his raw power from the baseline. His groundstrokes are flamboyant things hit at three speeds: hard, harder, hardest. His strokes make the crowd breathe hard. He keeps all those big servers and volleyers off balance, especially his nemesis, Sampras.

But Agassi alone, that’s not enough. In these Grand Slams, where the women play at the same time, Seles is needed badly. Since the last Slam Seles played, the Australian Open in 1993, there has been no life in the women’s draws. The results were determined only by whether Graf was healthy, mentally and physically.

Now there is more. Now there is Seles. Sampras thanked Seles the other day for coming back.

“Her comeback seems like it is just as big as Tyson’s comeback,” Sampras said. “She will have a lot of the attention at the U.S. Open, and she will deal with that fine, I’m sure. And it’s less that I’ll have to deal with.”

Sampras also spoke about the amazing ease with which Seles won her first tournament after a 28-month layoff. And that’s where Sampras didn’t get it. Sampras belittled women’s tennis some, and it’s hard to argue with that.

“I mean, you are out for two years, you come back, and to win a final, one and love, that is pretty much impossible,” Sampras said. “If I was out for two years and came back, who is to say if I could get through the qualifier? The top four, five girls are so much better than the rest, it’s a joke.”

That will not be a popular opinion around the ladies’ locker room the next two weeks, but one point is that Sampras is right. The other point is, people want to see Seles pound people.

Her charm is her power and her trilling giggle.

MEMO: U.S. OPEN

This sidebar appeared with the story: Featured matches today involving top-seeded players at the $9.86 million U.S. Open tennis championships at Flushing Meadow: Men: Boris Becker (4), Germany, vs. Alex LopezMoron, Spain. Goran Ivanisevic (6), Croatia, vs. Brett Steven, New Zealand.Women: Monica Seles (2), Sarasota, Fla., vs. Ruxandra Dragomir, Romania. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (3), Spain, vs. Catalina Cristea, Romania. Mary Pierce (6), France, vs. Mariaan de Swardt, South Africa. Gabriela Sabatini (9), Argentina, vs. Adriana Serra-Zanetti, Italy.