Counting Down: The US Open's Greatest Champions: #13 Andre Agassi
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Two career titles: 1994, 1999
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Other than Wimbledon, the flash and dash of Andre Agassi had gone largely unfulfilled by the 1994 season. By 1999, he had fallen off the face of the tennis landscape.
Both times, the US Open helped change his image. And after all, image was everything.
The brash American was 24 at the time of the 1994 US Open. He had started the year ranked 32nd, but used wins at Scottsdale, Miami and Toronto to vault into the Top 20 by the time the tournament started.
Unseeded, Agassi defeated five straight Top 15 opponents to claim the crown, including three players ranked in the Top 10.
His toughest battle came in the fourth round, when he needed five sets to outlast No. 6 Michael Chang, 6-1, 6-7(3), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1. In the semifinals, he KO'ed Todd Martin in four sets, then swept Michael Stich with a pair of tie-break wins to claim the title.
Agassi would go on to win the 1995 Australian Open to start the next season, and took over the No. 1 spot in the world for the first time later that season.
Over the next four years, he would rise to No. 1, fall to No. 110, contemplate retirement, shave his head, divorce his wife, win the French Open in shocking fashion and rise back to No. 1.
He was the second seed heading into the 1999 tournament, but became the de facto No. 1 when Pete Sampras had to withdraw with a back injury.
Agassi lost only one set in the first five rounds, then lost the first set of the semifinals to Yevgeny Kafelnikov, before blitzing him with consecutive 6-3 victories.
He faced fellow American Todd Martin, who had beaten two unseeded opponents in the previous two rounds. Martin went up two sets to one in the final, with a pair of tie-break winners, but Agassi took the last two sets 6-3 and 6-2 to claim the championship, eventually breaking Sampras' six-year hold on the year-end No. 1 ranking as well.
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