Former Champs Are Gone The Departure Of Agassi, Seles Opens Door For Chang, Williams

Andre Agassi faded from the U.S. Open just like Pete Sampras and Monica Seles, three former champions gone in a span of 30 hours of high-tension tennis.

Waving them goodbye, and hoping to make the most of their departures, are Michael Chang, wobbled but still standing, and Venus Williams, a teen making her own place in the record book as a semifinalist.

Arthur Ashe Stadium rocked for the second straight day and night Tuesday until Agassi finally succumbed at 12:54 a.m. to net-charging Australian Patrick Rafter, the No. 13 seed, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 6-3.

“It was a fantastic, electric atmosphere,” said Rafter, a quarterfinalist for the first time in six U.S. Opens.

When Agassi lost the first two sets, half the crowd of 20,000 left. But those who stayed made up for the empty seats by roaring even louder as Agassi mounted a comeback.

“Betty Crocker was waiting for me there,” said Agassi, describing how he was almost cooked after two sets. Still, he wouldn’t quit, and he made it a memorable match. “I had my chances, but I didn’t serve well and didn’t return well. I let it slip away. At the end he did what he needed to do.

“It was a beautiful opportunity,” Agassi added glumly.

Rafter came out of the match looking the worse for wear, his whole body cramping up immediately afterward. The right hand that wielded a racket so strongly at the net, down to the final backhand volley, seized up in a gnarled grip from the cramps that also coursed through his legs and chest and arms.

“I wouldn’t have liked to go to a fifth set,” said Rafter, who began cramping early in the fourth set. “I think they actually helped me a little bit because they helped me relax. That worked wonders for my serve.”

Chang and Cedric Pioline shuffled as if they wore lead sneakers, the muscles in their legs pulsating with pain, their feet sore, shoulders slumped, mouths gulping for air.

Yet they still had a set to go.

Chang, that most indefatigable of players, looked as if he had absolutely nothing left on this hottest and muggiest of days. There was no reasonable way Chang could come back, trailing 5-2 in the fourth set and down two sets to one. Yet, somehow, he did.

Chang dug into his incredible reservoir of desire, called upon those thick, sculpted legs to start moving, and won game after game - seven in a row and 11 of the last 12 - to produce a masterful 6-3, 0-6, 5-7, 7-5, 6-1 victory in 3 hours, 41 minutes to move to the quarterfinals.

Now, with Agassi gone from his path, the second-seeded Chang stands poised with perhaps his best chance to capture a Grand Slam title since he won the French Open as a 17-year-old in 1989.

A day after the top-seeded Sampras, the defending and four-time champion, succumbed to his own exhaustion, and right after Seles, the women’s No. 2 seed, lost to Irina Spirlea, Chang barely escaped a similar fate.

Chang’s survival and Seles’ surrender surpassed in drama, though perhaps not in historical significance, the ascension of the 17-year-old Williams to the semis of her first U.S. Open with a 7-5, 7-5 victory over Sandrine Testud.

Williams became the first woman to reach the U.S. Open semis in her debut since Pam Shriver in 1978. Only two others accomplished that feat in the open era - Chris Evert in 1971 and Helga Masthoff in 1973. Williams also is the first unseeded semifinalist since Mima Jausovec in 1976.

The 6-foot-1 Williams grabbed a railing and hoisted herself up to kiss her mother after the match. Williams next meets Spirlea, who has made no secret of her dislike for the attention teens like Williams are getting before they win even one tournament.

No one, though, has paid his dues and gotten so much out of his body as Chang.

In 11 years at the U.S. Open, Chang had never lost a set 6-0. Rarely had he ever been pushed around from the baseline as he was against Pioline. And almost never did Chang hit the kind of sloppy, loose shots he hit in the second set when he committed 17 unforced errors to the Frenchman’s three.

But Chang, as everyone in tennis knows, is most dangerous when he is down. At that moment, when he summons his last stores of energy and attacks, he can break an opponent’s spirit. That’s exactly what he did in this match against Pioline, a finalist at Wimbledon this year and at the 1993 U.S. Open.

“When you are out there, you try not to think about being tired,” Chang said. “You try not to think about anything that has to do with the physical aspect of the game. I felt like I had a little bit more today than Cedric. He was getting tired, and a few more errors were starting to creep into his game. He was starting to shorten up the points. I could see he was cramping up, shaking his leg.”

“I was too tired,” Pioline said after his second consecutive five setter. “That’s why he’s No. 2 in the world, and I’m not No. 2. I was cramping. and I think he saw I was tired and he tried to make me run.”

Though Sampras, who beat Chang in the final last year, is gone, Chang doesn’t buy the idea that he seems destined to win his first U.S. Open.

“People talk about favorites,” Chang said. “Every match is tough. You can’t come out here and expect a cakewalk in any match. If you don’t come out here and play your best tennis, you’re going to fall short.”

Chang will play in the quarters against No. 10 Marcelo Rios, who beat No. 7 Sergi Bruguera 7-5, 6-2, 6-4. Unseeded Magnus Larsson also reached the quarters, beating Wayne Ferreira 6-3, 7-6 (7-5), 6-3, and will next meet Rafter.

Spirlea, who boldly said last week she wanted to “shut up the mouths of everybody” talking about the teens on the tour, reached the semifinals by knocking off Seles, the two-time champion, 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (10-8), 6-3.

Only a few crucial points in each set separated Seles and the 11th-seeded Spirlea in their dramatic match, which featured tennis at its highest level and had fans gasping and roaring after seemingly impossible shots.

Seles, the U.S. Open champion in 1991 and 1992 and a finalist the past two years after a two-year absence following her stabbing, showed the resolve for which she is famous in the first set tiebreaker when she scrambled out of a 3-5 jam. She cracked groundstrokes from side to side, oblivious to pressure, and won four straight points - the last on a hopping second serve that Spirlea slugged long.

“I can get used to it,” Spirlea said of the crowd’s applause for her in a rare stadium appearance. “I like it.”