Every US Open championship run is memorable. After all, the courts of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center are professional tennis’ ultimate proving grounds. To win here, you need the whole package: intelligence, desire, stamina and courage. You need to own every shot in the book, and when that’s not enough, you need to be ready to write a new chapter or two.
But since the dawn of Open tennis in 1968, some of those championship runs have been particularly memorable and especially impressive. Some have been unexpected; some have included particularly large hurdles. Some have taken an extra degree of toughness and a double shot of tenacity.
Throughout the summer, as we make our way toward new memories at the 2021 US Open, tennis historian Steve Flink, himself enshrined in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, will be recounting some of the most notable, improbable, and particularly memorable championship runs in US Open history. In this installment, he looks at Andre Agassi’s improbable title run in 1994.
Year after year, starting in the late 1980’s, Andre Kirk Agassi was a central figure at the US Open. The swashbuckling American performer was magnificent in 1988, reaching his first major semifinal at 18 with a straight-set victory under the lights over Jimmy Connors and then making a good showing before losing to three-time US Open victor Ivan Lendl. A year later, Agassi replicated that feat, losing once more to Lendl in the penultimate round, delighting the fans with another triumph over Connors in the quarterfinals—this one lasting the full five sets. Agassi had arrived as a front-line figure, and no one in American tennis at that time was more compelling.
To most members of the sport’s cognoscenti, Agassi seemed certain to capture his first US Open in 1990 after he toppled defending champion Boris Becker in the semifinals. Agassi was heavily favored to defeat 19-year-old Pete Sampras in the title round contest that year, but his compatriot was unconsciously brilliant. The Californian took Agassi apart in straight sets. Tennis fans were astonished. Sampras was sublime. Agassi was shell-shocked.
Across the next three years at Flushing Meadows, Agassi lost early twice and advanced to only one quarterfinal. The almost innocent exuberance of his early years was replaced by an acceptance of life’s fragility and unpredictability in the seasons that followed. Meanwhile, Agassi came to understand that he need not get preoccupied with the public’s high expectations or his own unrealized aspirations. In fact, he learned that the best time for him to strike could often be when the skeptics were out in force.
One prime example of that pattern was in 1992 at Wimbledon, when he claimed his first major title on the lawns at the All-England Club, very much against the odds. Seeded 12th, Agassi upset Becker in a five-set quarterfinal and went on to claim the crown with another five-set triumph over Goran Ivanisevic. Agassi had enjoyed moving through that memorable fortnight with no pressure on him at all, confounding the critics the way he would so frequently in his storied career, relishing every moment of his joyous run.
Taking that first major at Wimbledon was a remarkable feat that few if anyone in the know envisioned. But perhaps even more astounding was Agassi’s 1994 journey in New York. This was his ninth appearance at the US Open, and Agassi had grown accustomed over the previous six years to the cushion of being a seeded player.
Not so in 1994. Agassi had endured wrist surgery at the end of 1993 and had missed the first few months of the 1994 season before returning in late February. His results had been sporadically brilliant over the course of the season. To be sure, he had won his first tournament of the year in Scottsdale and then over the summer had taken the ATP Masters 1000 title in Canada.
The fact remained that Agassi was understandably not as reliable as he needed to be leading up to the Open in the summer of ‘94. He was ranked No. 20 in the world, and in those days there were only 16 seeded players rather than the 32 that are now afforded that kind of protection. That was no small matter for Agassi.
Asked after his opening round match if it was an odd feeling not to be seeded, Agassi responded, “I haven’t felt it much. Coming here I thought it was going to be crucial for me to be seeded. But I am quite surprised that I haven’t thought much about it. I guess a lot has to do with the draw that you have. If I was playing Sampras or Ivanisevic in the first round that would not be easy. But I like my draw and feel like I can work my way into this tournament.”
That assessment was not self-delusional. In fact, Agassi could not have been more prescient. He assiduously applied himself from the outset of the tournament, aided and abetted by his cerebral coach, Brad Gilbert. Up until he started working with Gilbert earlier in 1994, Agassi had relied too heavily on his natural talent, which was considerable. He had one of the greatest returns of serve yet seen in tennis. His hand-eye coordination was off the charts. His potency off the ground was extraordinary and often unanswerable. As Arthur Ashe once told me, “Agassi has an almost unique ability to start hitting winners one after another, and after 15 minutes the score can be 4-0 in his favor. He is very gifted.”
Agassi, however, required the guile of Gilbert to take him to another level at this 1994 Open. Gilbert encouraged and enabled Agassi to look at the game differently than he ever had before, to appreciate the importance of strategic acumen and tactical acuity. At long last, Agassi was not simply relying on his natural instincts; he was putting his agile mind to much better use and thinking his way through matches. With Gilbert as his crucial anchor, Agassi was playing a brand of chess on the tennis court. It was about the score and the situation. It was based on not only his ball striking ability but also understanding how to break down his adversaries systematically and persistently finding their weaknesses.
His march through the US Open draw commenced with a routine 6-3, 6-2, 6-0 win over world No. 327 Robert Ericsson. Then Agassi moved past the big serving, left-handed Frenchman Guy Forget in four sets.
After that, Agassi found himself facing much harder competition against more formidable players. Agassi ousted No. 12 seed Wayne Ferreira in straight sets to reach the round of 16. There, in a stirring and scintillating battle fought out in front of appreciative American fans, Agassi knocked out No. 6 seed Michael Chang in a tumultuous confrontation, prevailing 6-1, 6-7, 6-3, 3-6 6-1, saving his finest tennis for the fifth set. Agassi’s shotmaking down the stretch of that meeting was nothing short of stupendous.
Buoyed by that victory, he then stopped No 14 seed Thomas Muster, the industrious and enterprising Austrian, taking that match in straight sets. Now all the way through to the semifinals, Agassi’s game was soaring and his state of mind was stable. He collided with Todd Martin, the 6’6” serve-and-volleyer who had the weapons to threaten his countryman. But Martin was only burdensome for Agassi through the first couple of sets. Agassi removed the No. 9 seed 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
And so the stage was set for Agassi to confront the 1991 Wimbledon champion Michael Stich in the title round appointment. Stich was seeded fourth and was playing perhaps the best hard-court tennis of his life. His attacking style—featuring one of the smoothest service motions in the sport and clinically efficient play at the net—presented Agassi with a serious set of problems as a supreme counter-attacker.
The man from Las Vegas knew the odds were on his side, but also understood that Stich was a talented and multi-faceted player who was not to be taken lightly.
Yet Agassi peaked for this propitious occasion. He had already accounted for four seeded players, so why would he hesitate to cut down another? Agassi came out of the gates blazing, firing return winners, keeping his groundstrokes exceedingly deep during the rallies, passing Stich meticulously off his stellar two-handed backhand, making certain that the German remained largely at bay.
The American claimed the first set swiftly, setting the tone early with his clean hitting and steely resolve. He conceded only one game in that opening set, and put Stich in a bind. But over the last two sets, it was a different kind of match altogether. Agassi broke the German only once in that stretch, but his big point prowess carried him to a richly deserved 6-1, 7-6, 7-5 victory. In his last 14 service games of the encounter, Agassi allowed Stich only 13 points. He was masterful across the board, and an entirely worthy winner of his first US Open.
Leave it to him to come though despite not being seeded. That had never happened in the Open Era. The affable Australian Fred Stolle was the last man to realize that feat at the U.S. Championships in 1966—two years prior to the start of Open tennis. In many of the preceding years, longtime tennis observers had anticipated a championship run from Agassi, but he had not lived up to the lofty expectations. Now he had been largely under the radar in 1994 but he had thrived under those circumstances. Perhaps that was no accident. He seemed a lot more comfortable as an underdog than as a favorite.
Agassi looked back afterwards at the Chang round-of-16 clash as the turning point in the tournament. He said, “That was a big obstacle for me, that fifth set with Michael. To take the guy who is arguably the mentally-toughest player and the fittest, and to beat him so handily, gave me a lot of confidence.”
He added modestly, “I can’t believe that I actually did this and it is actually over. More than anything this is a reflection of my commitment. My commitment isn’t any different than it was two weeks ago but now I have more self-belief.”
That was surely so. But there was more to Agassi’s first of two title runs at the US Open than that. His unspoken message was to silence the critics with his racquet, to collect seven match victories over formidable adversaries across a fortnight and to secure the title that had such immense value to him as an American.
For those reasons, in many ways, the 1994 US Open was a signature moment in the illustrious career of one Andre Agassi—the ultimate nonconformist.
