A Feeding Frenzy for Top Men

It was a feast of men’s tennis at the Pacific Life Open tournament Sunday, and American star Andy Roddick brought the dessert. Also, his huge game.

Playing the late night match against Argentina’s Jose Acasuso, who upset him in the second round of last year’s French Open with a 10-8 win in the fifth set, Roddick started with a 140-mph serve, tossed in another dozen or so in the 130s, outslugged his opponent in a 7-5 tiebreaker and coasted home for a 7-6 (5), 6-0 victory, as Acasuso sulked his way through the second set.

In the first game of that set, Acasuso, serving, chased down a drop shot, hit it near the sideline and, when the linesman called it out, slammed his racket to the ground in anger. After skulking about for a minute or so, he lost the game at love and ended up winning only six points in the set while Roddick was making just one unforced error. Acasuso didn’t even flinch as Roddick hit an easy 119-mph serve on match point.

The main course was served throughout the day. The top eight seeded players all competed, either in front of a sellout crowd of 16,100 in the Indian Wells Garden stadium or on the outer courts.

When an estimated 4,000 more tickets were sold as grounds passes for those outside courts, that pushed the day’s attendance over the 20,000 mark.

The schedule logjam was caused by two days of cold, rainy weather, and Sunday continued to be cold but was mostly dry.

So, for the first time since Friday, the story was tennis and not weather.

No. 1 Roger Federer, unbeatable these days by all mortals not named Rafael Nadal, took out Nicolas Massu of Chili, 6-3, 7-6 (4).

Nadal, seeded No. 2 and with a win last week over Federer in the final at Dubai, pushed Jan Hernych of the Czech Republic around with his huge, looping ground strokes and won, 6-4, 6-4.

Crowd favorite Andre Agassi, seeded No. 8, continued to struggle with a sore back, but got through his match against veteran Paul Goldstein, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.

Argentina’s David Nalbandian, No. 4, beat qualifier Justin Gimelstob, the former UCLA player who is ranked No. 98 and pushing to get back to his career best No. 68, achieved in 1999. Nalbandian won, 6-4, 6-4.

Nikolay Davydenko of Russia was stretched to three sets by Scotland’s phenom, 18-year-old Andy Murray, who defeated Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt last month en route to the title in San Jose. Davydenko won Sunday, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.

No. 6 Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, who single-handedly dismantled the U.S. Davis Cup team a year ago in Carson, handled qualifier Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia and Montenegro, 6-1, 6-4, in a rare night match on an outside court. Ljubicic has started the season with an 18-2 record.

Sunday’s field was so deep that the most competitive match of the day, pitting two former No. 1 players, was played on Court 2 in late afternoon. In that one, Russia’s Marat Safin, former U.S. Open and Australian Open champion, outlasted Spaniard Carlos Moya, former French Open champion, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-4. The match, starting in daylight and ending in the dark, took 2 hours 8 minutes.

Agassi, a month from his 36th birthday, got up a set and a service break against Goldstein, an articulate Stanford graduate who is at his career-best No. 63 at age 29. Then Goldstein won six straight games and Agassi looked lost.

Early in the third set, while Agassi was digging himself an 0-2 hole, and shortly after he had uncharacteristically mangled his racket by smashing it to the court in anger and received a code violation, a few raindrops fell. Agassi asked the chair umpire about the need to continue, was told to do so, and soon, Goldstein took a hard fall.

Play was stopped for three or four minutes, and once it began again, Agassi magically restored his powers of concentration and ran off six straight games for the win. He said he really couldn’t analyze how he was able to turn it around, other than to say that, once he broke Goldstein’s serve for 1-2 in the third, things felt better.

“[You say to yourself] here you are, not down, 3-0, in the third,” Agassi said. “Count your blessings and go back to work.”

Goldstein said he has a tendency to get tentative when he gets ahead, a problem he said he has been trying to fix for years.

“There were just a handful of shots I wish I had back now,” he said. “I need to play more carefree. I need to hit some of those what-the-heck shots.”

Federer’s opponent, Massu, is not exactly chopped liver, even though Federer’s mastery made him look like it. Massu won the Olympic gold medal in Athens in both singles and doubles and has been ranked as high as No. 9. His best chance was when he was receiving at 5-6 in the second. But Federer casually hit two baseline bombs into the same deep corner that were so good, all Massu could do was watch and smile.

In the tiebreaker, Federer was Federer, same as he was in the news conference afterward: poised, even-tempered, amazed that others are amazed.

“I always worry about crashing out in the early rounds,” he said, “and then having to sit here and explain why.”

Nadal, who at 19 has already won 13 tour titles, now has a 3-1 record against the world’s No. 1 after beating him in Dubai.

Nadal may be young, but he’s not dumb. Afterward, when asked about Federer, he said, “I say always the same. I think he is, he’s the best now. He’s the best player in the world, one of the best in history.”

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Today’s matches

Today’s featured matches at the Pacific Life Open:

STADIUM COURT

Starting at 11 a.m.

* Rainer Schuettler, Germany, vs. Lleyton Hewitt, Australia

* Elena Dementieva, Russia, vs.

Sania Mirza, India

* Justine Henin-Hardenne, Belgium,

vs. Akio Nakamura, Japan

* Fernando Verdasco, Spain, vs. Andy Roddick.

Not before 7 p.m.

* Andre Agassi vs. Tommy Haas, Germany

* Shenay Perry vs. Ana Ivanovic, Serbia