Agassi May Have a Stake in Cup

MELBOURNE, Australia — U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe’s road home from Australia will run through Los Angeles, and a recently added stop in Las Vegas.

There, he will have dinner and a chat with a certain tennis star and grill-master named Andre Agassi. McEnroe will use his powers of persuasion to try to get Agassi to return to Davis Cup action for the first time since 2000. Agassi lost to Roger Federer in straight sets in the Australian Open quarterfinals.

“I’ve just got to try to look him in the eye, and we had a good chat on the phone,” McEnroe said today in an interview. “I sensed that me coming there and just sitting down with him face to face would be a good thing. And he said he’d have a steak on the grill ready for me.”

The first round will be against Croatia at the Home Depot Center in Carson, March 4-6. Even the possibility of Agassi’s presence on the team has excited the likes of Andy Roddick, and doubles players Mike and Bob Bryan. The Bryan twins, who are from Camarillo, will be making upcoming appearances in Los Angeles to try to spur what they called “sluggish” ticket sales.

“It’s going to be fun,” Mike said. “We’ve got a huge list of friends and family coming for that one. It’s going to be good to give them a taste of the Davis Cup excitement. They’ve probably only watched us on TV.”

Mike stated the obvious, saying: “If he [Agassi] played, it’ll sell out in a couple of minutes.”

Agassi has made statements worthy of an elected official, saying all the right things here and on a weekend conference call, but giving little indication of what he will do.

McEnroe is realistic, saying he recognizes Agassi is “torn.”

“I would still say it’s probably a little less than 50-50,” McEnroe said. “That’s my gut on it. He’s just a gung-ho guy when it comes to Davis Cup. He feels like there were other times in his career when other players played when it was convenient. I don’t think he liked that. He doesn’t want to do that....

“As long as he’s considering it, I’m going to try to do everything I can to get him to play some this year.”

The door opened slightly late last year when McEnroe spoke to Agassi shortly before the Davis Cup final against Spain in Seville, and Agassi let him know he was thinking about coming back to the team in 2005. Now, the task is to persuade him that he doesn’t necessarily have to play in every round.

If Agassi doesn’t play, the top candidates for the second singles spot behind Roddick are Taylor Dent of Huntington Beach and James Blake. Dent beat Lleyton Hewitt at Adelaide, Mardy Fish at Sydney and lost to Agassi in the third round of the Australian Open. Blake pushed Hewitt to four sets in the next round.

“Dent has had a very good start to the year,” McEnroe said. “What I saw from James Blake down here, I was very optimistic about his game and his attitude was excellent....

“Dent has had the best results so far. I’m a little concerned about him in best of five. I would like to see him get in better shape. He’s played well against the Croatians. He’s been knocking at the door to get a shot.”

The Bryans reached their second Australian Open doubles final in two years and lost in straight sets. But Bob was suffering from a strained stomach muscle, McEnroe said. It happened in a mixed doubles match, and Bob was reduced to serving at three-quarters pace in the men’s final against Wayne Black and Kevin Ullyett of Zimbabwe.

More confusing to McEnroe was the way Roddick folded in the fourth set against Hewitt in the semifinals. McEnroe said he was “perplexed” and suggested Roddick may have panicked.

“You’ve got to dig and believe in what you have,” McEnroe said. “If you lose, you lose. I don’t think anybody would be disappointed Andy Roddick lost in the semifinals to Lleyton Hewitt in Australia. It was more the way he seemed to mentally break down in the fourth set.

“Some of those losses last year were tough for him. He’s obviously got something there about losing big matches in Grand Slams and Davis Cup. He’s got to go to work and get better. Hewitt was No. 1 in the world and he dropped down to 15. He gutted it out and worked his butt off, and got better. That’s what’s going to differentiate Roddick from getting to the semis of majors and trying to win and get to the final of a couple more.”