By Foster Niumata
Andre Agassi had not felt this "up" for a Grand Slam tennis event in over a year.
He was steaming through matches. His greatest foil, Pete Sampras, was not around. He would not meet the players he feared most, Karol Kucera and Thomas Enqvist, until the final.
The trouble was,
just as he was looking at the light at the end of the Australian Open tunnel, Agassi stumbled into a hole dug by Vince Spadea which he could not climb out of yesterday, leaving a devastated men's draw looking about as glamorous as a car wreck.
But the women delivered as four-times champions Steffi Graf and Monica Seles powered through their fourth-round matches in 47 minutes each to set up their mega-confrontation tomorrow.
"It just wasn't meant to be today," said Agassi, who has not won a Grand Slam tournament since the 1995 Open and needed to go much further to believe this trip was worth it.
His conqueror, Spadea, a six-year journeyman pro who last year broke into the top 50 and reached his first final, was so over the moon that he described his greatest tennis feat as if he was at a funeral.
"I'm not a showboater or a person who gets pumped up," said the 6-1 7-5 6-7 6-3 winner, who now advances to meet another first-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist, Tommy Haas.
"I just didn't think I wanted to make it look like or feel like I'd ended world hunger, or something extravagant. It was something that was a step in the right direction for me after years of struggle."
Spadea used to wear his heart on his sleeve. But he learned that that was too energy-sapping. Now he talks proudly of poise, efficiency, keeping an even keel.
Ironically, Agassi spent a lot of energy trying to work out his frustration, but you cannot pump up a tyre which has holes in it. He countered 62 winners with 71 errors.
"When I get a little tentative or discouraged my game starts breaking down," he said." I was moving as well as I could have and I was thinking about my swing more than I was thinking about just what it is I was trying to do out there.
"Nothing felt comfortable, and I thought I'd give myself a look at the basket at least by hanging in there, but it wasn't enough."
He could leave the fewest seeds in a Grand Slam event quarter-finals since tennis went open in 1968. The record is two, at the 1997 French Open. Only No 7 seed Karol Kucera, the highest-ranked player left, has actually made it, as No 10 Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the only Grand Slam winner left, and No 15 Todd Martin were playing overnight (NZ time).
Tenth seed Graf and sixth seed Seles rolled up their sleeves and handed out businesslike hidings to Barbara Schett and Sandrine Testud, but if they looked in a hurry to get it on tomorrow, Seles denied it. No match-up, not even with her greatest rival, was special, said Seles, who did admit that her 1993 Open final win over Graf was quite memorable.
"As always its a great challenge," said Seles, on a 32-0 unbeaten Open streak going back to 1991. "I think both of us, we really just play because we love the game so I think we both want to have challenges like we'll have on Wednesday."
The winner will be likely to meet defending champion Martina Hingis, who scaled that tough little South African mountain, Amanda Coetzer 6-3 6-7 6-1, and was awaiting the winner of last night's Mary Pierce-Anna Kournikova match.
In junior action, Lee Radovanovich, of Auckland, lost to Australian Michael Staniak 5-7 5-7 and girls' 12th seed Leanne Baker, also of Auckland, beat Japan's Kaori Aoyama 1-6 6-2 6-3.
Pictured: Andre Agassi bowing out of the Australian Open in Melbourne.
By Foster Niumata
Andre Agassi had not felt this "up" for a Grand Slam tennis event in over a year.
He was steaming through matches. His greatest foil, Pete Sampras, was not around. He would not meet the players he feared most, Karol Kucera and Thomas Enqvist, until the final.
The trouble was,
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