There aren’t many things that could make us revisit the Davis Cup massacre at Carson, but Andre Agassi’s final word on the debacle is one of them. He got together with his teammates here at Indian Wells, some of whom professed relief at being back on a surface that plays more like a hard court than red clay. Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s what Andre said yesterday after he tuned Guillermo Coria:
Agassi said that Ivan Ljubicic’s game was “brutal to deal with” on those courts and made this intriguing observation: “In doubles, they got a lot of looks at second balls. That’s what won the match for them in the doubles, the second shot. If you’re playing sort of quicker, you know, it’s different.”
Now here’s the intriguing bit. A little later in the conversation Agassi was asked of his criticism of the surface was an implied rebuff of the USTA. He denied it immediately, explaining that the team was a four-man squad that had numerous discussions about the surface. He was tellingly frank:
Does anyone doubt that this is Andy Roddick’s team—or that this reality might add an extra layer of delicacy to negotiating Andre’s next appearance? The issue isn’t jealousy—Andre is far too secure to resent Roddick’s ascendancy, and Andy is too decent a guy to lord it over Andre. But Andre, already inconvenienced by the demands of Davis Cup, can’t be too fired up about putting himself in a comparable situation again either.