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Sporting News, The, Sept 19, 1994 by Mike Lupica

The ball came back one last time from Michael Stich. He was off the court again and nearly out of the U.S. Open, hit there by Andre Agassi. It was a few minutes past 6 o'clock on the last Sunday night of the Open and the match wasn't even two hours old, but it was Andre Agassi's time now. And you can never do anything about that in sports, because that is always the magic of the whole thing. Agassi was there at the net and the ball was at his feet and he nearly went to his knees to push it back into the open court. It wasn't coming back. Agassi was the Open champion. It was his time. Michael Stich couldn't stop time at this Open because nobody could.

It was 6-1, 7-6 (7-5), 7-5 for Agassi. He started to get up after the backhand and then realized Stich was through, and so he dropped back to his knees. This wasn't the photo opportunity he gave once at Wimbledon, when his coach told him to stay down. This was genuine and joyful and seemed right. Agassi dropped his racket and looked at his new coach, Brad Gilbert, and the rest of his gang over in the corner, including Brooke Shields, and tried to yell "I can't believe it" over the roar of the Open, and finally tennis was making some real noise again. A lot of it was coming from the kids in Louis Armstrong Stadium, the way it has for two weeks.

At 1 o'clock Sunday morning, on the day he would win the Open, Agassi was on the phone with Gilbert, complaining that people kept getting his lifetime record against Stich wrong, that it wasn't three victories and one loss, that he had never lost to him. And then the two of them talked about the match a little more and this is the last thing Gilbert heard from Agassi:

"There's no way Stich is leaving here with my title."

His Open, his title. His sport for a couple of hot weeks. Twenty years ago exactly, Jimmy Connors won the Open in straight sets, and tennis in this country would never be the same. Not everybody liked Connors. A lot of people thought he was a phony and would think that across his whole prickly, amazing career. It didn't matter at the '74 Open. Something changed in tennis. People started watching Connors and didn't stop until he was 39 and made his own last run at the Open. People want to watch Andre Agassi. Kids want to watch him. When he plays tennis the way he did at this Open, he puts a charge into everything and comes up one of the exciting stars of American sports.

People who wonder how that works should try coming to an Agassi match, or any tennis match. Maybe then they might be able to figure it all out. This Open was not about the camera commercials or the "Image is everything" slogan or all the mistakes he has made in his career, all the dumb poses of which the Wimbledon post-championship swoon was just one. This wasn't about Barbra Streisand or Brooke or Agassi's occasional Christian rap. This was about Agassi finally growing into his own tennis game, and growing up, and remembering how champions are supposed to do it. When it is their time.

Twenty years after Connors, Agassi was the flashy American tennis star of the moment, hitting an opponent so hard in an Open final that he perhaps changed the shape of the sport for a while. "I felt all along like I couldn't do anything wrong," Agassi would say later.

Pete Sampras, when he is healthy, is still the champion of the whole world, a wonderful, graceful champion the way Bjorn Borg was. Maybe Agassi can slug it out with him now, the way Connors and McEnroe did with Borg.

"Jimmy was more of a counterpuncher than Andre," Gilbert said underneath the stadium after the match. "Jimmy could thread the needle more. Andre has more stick." Gilbert smiled. It was more than a lot of stick over the last two weeks, more than a lot of stick that got him past Michael Chang in the fifth set earlier in the week, when Agassi really won the Open. It was also savvy this time, and heart, and poise. The whole package, at last.

"I think I've finally convinced him," Gilbert said, "that unless they change the rules and make screaming winners count for three points instead of just one, they still only count for just one. So you've got to hit more than screaming winners."

Agassi hit more than screaming winners against Stich, though he hit a ton of those. He also won with his serve; Stich won only 17 points against Agassi's serve. There were two break points against Agassi's serve, in the first game of the match, after Agassi went ahead, 40-0, and then began to rush. Stich never really put a dent in Agassi's serve after that. Stich is the one with the big service game. It was supposed to give him at least a puncher's chance to win, but it never happened. The last two sets were close. It was 7-6 and 7-5 and Agassi, even with the best returns there are, could break Stich only once. It was the tennis we expected, but Stich, rocked by a 1-6 first set, always seemed to be fighting his way up a steep, steep hill after that.

Stich tried to make his stand in the second-set tiebreaker. He had two points and Agassi had three. Stich had two serves. He hit a first serve to Agassi's backhand. A first serve from Michael Stich to anybody's backhand is supposed to do the job. But Agassi returns the way Connors did. And with more stick. He put some stick on this one, against Stich. Stich can serve up a ball at 120 mph. Agassi hit a backhand that seemed like more than that. Stich was at the net. The return clipped the top of the net and that didn't seem to slow it down. It landed at Stich's feet and should have put a hole in the court. Agassi was ahead 4-2 in the tiebreaker. Only a matter of time after that.