Agassi Joins the 800 Club

If it had been just any old first-round match for Andre Agassi, nobody would have been surprised when he stormed past young Russian Alex Bogomolov, 6-3, 6-1, Tuesday night in the Mercedes-Benz Cup at the Los Angeles Tennis Center.

But Agassi was recovering from a hip injury that forced him to skip Wimbledon. He had lost his opening round match the last three times he played and hadn’t won a match since March.

So when Agassi dispatched Bogomolov and became the sixth member of tennis’ 800-victory club, even he was slightly taken aback.

“It did surprise me to feel good, to move as well as I did,” Agassi said. “I thought I was going to be a little more tentative, but I trusted my legs and pushed through it and I felt good. Obviously those are great signs.”

Agassi joins Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Guillermo Vilas, John McEnroe and Stefan Edberg as the only players in the Open era with 800 singles-match victories. For the occasion, tournament organizers made him a cake and presented him with champagne.

“Any time you accomplish something only the best have done, it’s pretty special,” he said. “It takes a lot of time to win that many matches.”

Agassi dominated in No. 800. It took him only 54 minutes and it was classic Agassi, dictating play from the baseline with an array of power passing shots into corners and on the lines. During one stretch of the first set, he won 10 consecutive points. During a stretch in the second, he won 13 of 14 points.

Agassi, 34, expect a little rust after having not played since before Wimbledon, but didn’t show any signs of it to Bogomolov, who was playing Agassi for the first time.

“I don’t want to say I expected him to be rusty, but maybe I wanted that,” Bogomolov said. “I was amazed that he’s back. I always admired those shots but I never really realized how good they were until today.”

Agassi, no matter how encouraged, isn’t going to get too far ahead of himself. His hip injury is chronic and can rear its head without warning.

“I can’t just play one good match and get my hopes up,” he said. “I’m taking it slow.”

In a match between serve-and-volley specialists, Greg Rusedski defeated No. 7 Taylor Dent, 7-6 (9-7), 3-6, 6-2.

Rusedski, who won last week in Newport, R.I., took control in the third set with a barrage of backhand passing shots that thwarted Dent’s attempts to rush the net.

“The key today was I returned well from the first ball to the last ball, especially well in the third set,” Rusedski said. “I think I’m surprising a few guys with my passing shots now so it’s a nice thing.”

Rusedski is making a comeback from a low point in his career. Last July, he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone. He was cleared of any wrongdoing in March, but the 14-time ATP winner had fallen to No. 118 in the world while fighting the charges.

“It’s nice to get back, you know,” he said. “Everything I’ve been through, I’m trying to put that behind me. People have been writing me into retirement and I’m just trying to prove that I’ve still got something left in my game.”

Dent had a 6-3 lead in the first set tiebreaker, but let it slip away. He dominated the second set with a first-serve percentage of 81%, but won only 10 of 25 service points in the third set.

“In the third set for whatever reason the pace on my serve slowed down and so did the accuracy,” Dent said. “And he started returning better.”

In other matches involving seeded players, No. 3 Mardy Fish beat Jan Vacek, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2; sixth-seeded Vincent Spadea retired because of back spasms after losing to Cyril Saulnier, 6-4, in the first set and fifth-seeded Sjeng Schalken defeated Gregory Carraz, 6-4, 6-4.

Tommy Haas defeated eighth-seeded Robby Ginepri, 6-4, 6-3, and Julian Benneteau pulled the biggest upset of the day when he knocked off 2003 Wimbledon runner-up Mark Philippoussis, 6-1, 7-5.

Benneteau will play Agassi Thursday in the second round.