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Round 31 to Agassi   KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Pete Sampras was worn down by rival Andre Agassi in the Mercedes-Benz Cup championship Sunday. It was their 31st head-to-head matchup.

By Jeff Agase

Daily Bruin Reporter

Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi took the court at the finals of the Mercedes-Benz Cup to the “Star Wars” theme, both having once ruled the tennis universe.

But after a noticeably tired Sampras fell to a nearly perfect Agassi, 6-4, 6-2 in an anticlimactic hour and a half, Agassi’s performance against long-time rival Sampras didn’t exactly have the feeling of a blockbuster.

“We’ve had some matches that were one-sided in the past both ways,” Agassi said. “Today the match was closer than the score suggested.”

Despite Agassi’s kind words for Sampras, who had won in Los Angeles in 1991 and 1999, the match left few doubters as to which player was in better physical shape.

Often pausing for stretches between points in a sweltering heat, Sampras found himself a step behind many shots and committing an unusually high number of unforced errors. Making matters worse was Sampras’ struggles with his serve, making only 54 percent of his first serve and double-faulting seven times.

“This week, my serve was a bit spotty at times,” Sampras said of his main weapon. “It’s like a pitcher not having his fastball every night.”

Sampras looked solid coming out of the gates when he aced Agassi to open the match and broke Agassi’s serve to go up 4-2. But Agassi broke right back without losing a point, thanks to one of Sampras’ double-faults and the frustration of the sun directly overhead.

“It was a big part of the match from a momentum standpoint,” Sampras said. “It’s a much bigger deal to me because my serve is a bigger part of my game. I was basically blinded over there.”

For all of the difficulties on Sampras’ end of the court, a seemingly possessed Agassi regularly guided baseline shots to the corners and lines with effortless precision. His returns rendered Sampras’ usually dominant serve-and-volley strategy ineffective.

Agassi took 48 percent of return points and capitalized on four of seven break points, including back-to-back breaks in a second set where Sampras appeared to be out of steam.

“After he won the first set, I lost my way a touch,” Sampras said. “If you lose your concentration for five minutes against Andre, that’s too much. He’s too consistent.”

The match marked the 31st meeting between the men who distanced themselves from the rest of the tennis world in 1995 and fought for the No. 1 spot for two exciting years. Their meeting in the finals was the fifteenth time the pair has clashed for a title.

But Sampras has not won a title in over a year, while the Mercedes-Benz Cup was Agassi’s fourth this season.

“Pete can win and he probably feels like he hasn’t been at his best,” Agassi said.

Sampras remained confident, citing the tournament as a great opportunity to tune up on hard courts for the upcoming U.S. Open and the final as one more installment in a suddenly aging Sampras-Agassi rivalry.

“It’s hard to say how many times we’ll face each other,” he said. “Every time you go out there against Andre, you appreciate it a little more than when we were nineteen and twenty.”

The packed house of 7,109 fans got the finals matchup they wanted, but they will have to wait, perhaps until later in the summer, for a future match-up with both of them at the top of their games and another epic installment in the Sampras-Agassi series.