June 4, 2002	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22,1423

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PARIS, June 3: The future of men’s tennis and its glittering past collided on Monday on a Roland Garros battle ground. After three hours and one minute, experience triumphed by a whisker.

Youthful exuberance eventually bowed to wisdom as Andre Agassi scratched and clawed his way back from two sets and a break down to edge Paul-Henri Mathieu, a French wildcard ranked outside the world’s top 100, 4-6 3-6 6-3 6-3 6-3.

The American’s reward is a clash with Juan Carlos Ferrero for a place in the French Open semi-finals. The Spaniard also did things the hard way, needing five long sets to beat Argentine Gaston Gaudio 6-7 6-1 6-7 6-2 6-4.

Tenth seed Sebastien Grosjean kept the home fires burning with a 6-2 7-5 6-3 victory over Belgium’s Xavier Malisse.

He will face either second seed Marat Safin or compatriot Arnaud Di Pasquale — playing later on Monday — for a place in the semi-finals.

It took Agassi all his effort to oust the dogged Mathieu, boys’ champion here in 2000, and for two-and-a-half sets the fourth-seeded American was made to look every bit his 32 years by a stripling 12 years his junior.

“I’m certainly feeling a little lucky to have come through that,” a relieved Agassi said afterwards.

Plenty of players better than Mathieu have been mugged by Agassi, but that is unlikely to ease the pain for the Frenchman after he let the match slip through his fingers.

“I needed a little help from him out there, and thankfully midway through the third set he started coming off his game a little and I stepped it up,” Agassi added.

Agassi — champion here in 1999 — is one of only five men to have won all four grand slams in the history of the sport, but from the start he was given the runaround in front of a rapidly-filling astonished centre court crowd.

Trailing two sets to love, the grey skies above Roland Garros finally broke and Agassi was given a brief reprieve from his nightmare as the players were called off court.

But 20 minutes later he returned and dropped serve from 40-love up as Mathieu showed no sign of letting up.

There seemed to be no way back for Agassi as the young Frenchman found the lines with his powerful groundstrokes, well-struck serves and searching lobs.

But Agassi’s solution to sticky problems has always been the same. When in trouble, hit harder. Then harder still... and take more risks.

A dangerous gambit at the best of times, but potentially fatal when his timing is awry as it was on centre court.

It is a policy that has served the seven-times grand slam champion well over the years, however, and he turned to it once more.

Cracking forehands and backhands deep into the corners, Agassi was still missing plenty of chances. However, Agassi having upped the stakes, Mathieu was duped into trying to match his intensity and errors crept in.

The American won the third set and then raced to a 5-0 lead in the fourth.

Agassi took his eye off the ball at that stage and Mathieu rattled off a few games but Agassi broke again to seal it 6-3 and force a decider.

After two hours and 19 minutes of uneasy and, at times, unattractive tennis Agassi was level. The stakes were high, the tension was enormous — Agassi was in his element.

Mathieu did break him in the third game and move 3-1 ahead but there were signs of his immaturity in a handful of ill-chosen drop shots and angle groundstrokes.

Master of momentum, Agassi rode it through the decider, reeling off the last five games to clinch the win.