Stephen Bierley tennis
Should Pete Sampras reach his eighth Wimbledon final next month, he would do well to make sure Bill Clinton is nowhere in the vicinity of SW19. When his country’s former president took his seat at Roland Garros on Wednesday Andre Agassi had just won the opening set of his quarterfinal against France’s Sebastien Grosjean 6-1. Agassi then lost the next two sets by the same score.
The French crowd, having given Clinton a standing ovation, whistled him as he then appeared to be deserting his fellow countryman in distress. Agassi duly gained a 2-0 lead in the fourth set but Clinton returned and Agassi immediately lost his serve and ultimately the match 1-6 6-1 6-1 6-3. As coincidences go, the symmetry was perfect or perfectly horrible from Agassi’s point of view.
The point was put to him. “Sounds like you have it all worked out,” he snapped, then denied he had even seen Clinton. “I didn’t know he was there.” And this from a man who guards a tennis court like a master chef guards his kitchen. One ball or ballboy out of place and Agassi has spotted it in milliseconds. To suppose he had failed to notice Clinton’s arrival was simply fatuous. How much it affected him may never be known.
This was a return to the Agassi of old. There were no bows and no kisses and he swore profusely in the final set when Grosjean lobbed him. At the close he thrust his rackets away, shouldered his bag and made for the exit faster than he had moved most of the afternoon. Asked if there had been anything in particular causing him trouble, he replied tersely: “Yes, Sebastien Grosjean.”
He was obviously bitterly disappointed, having convinced himself by defeating Argentina’s highly dangerous Franco Squillari in the previous round that a second French Open title was a real probability. But the hot, windless weather of Monday had been replaced by grey skies and squalls, whipping the clay up in clouds.
It was in similar conditions that Agassi almost lost the 1999 final to Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine. On that occasion it rained and, when the match resumed, the sun came out, the wind dropped and Agassi won. This time it picked up and Grosjean’s forehand, always a formidable weapon, cut cleanly through the elements and Agassi’s defences.
“He wasn’t missing his backhand, even hitting winners on it,” said Agassi, who refused to describe himself as shell-shocked, even though he looked and sounded it. “Hard to be shocked when every game is so decisively won.”
After beating Squillari Agassi had remarked that he would do his best “not to hear anything out there and just go to work”. Hear no evil, see no evil. Grosjean, on the other hand, did notice Clinton’s arrival. ” I don’t know if I impressed him. At least for me it was very good because from then on I played very well.” While Clinton was watching Agassi won three games out of 20.
There was no doubt that nerves were eating into Grosjean in the first set. During this year’s Australian Open he had two match points against his fellow countryman Arnaud Clment before losing, and at the time it was felt this defeat might have done psychological damage to the Florida-based Frenchman, the world junior champion five years ago and currently number 10 in the world.
In Friday’s semifinal Grosjean will play Spain’s Alex Corretja, the French Open runner-up in 1998, who in Wednesday’s other quarter-final defeated Roger Federer, the 19-year-old Swiss, 7-5 6-4 7-5.
The other semifinal is between Brazil’s reigning champion Gustavo Kuerten and Spain’s Juan Carlos Ferrero, the pre-tournament favourite, who was beaten at this stage by Kuerten last year.