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| | Thursday, November 4 Agassi ensured year-end top ranking | |||||
| PARIS -- Andre Agassi ensured he would end 1999 as
world No. 1 before hitting a ball at the Paris Open on Wednesday
when his leading rivals fell by the wayside.
Second seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov lost his second-round match
6-4, 2-6, 6-4 to Australian Lleyton Hewitt, and Pete Sampras and
Greg Rusedski, who met in the final of this event last year, pulled out of the
$2.55 tournament because of injuries.
The results made an official end to the record reign of
Sampras, who had ended 1998 as world No. 1 a record six
times in succession.
Agassi, winner of the French and U.S. Open crowns, has a
1,115-point lead over Kafelnikov in the world rankings with just
one tournament to be played before the year-ending ATP Tour
World Championship in Hanover. He cannot be overhauled.
Sampras, playing in his first tournament since a back injury
forced him out of the U.S. Open, decided to pull out despite his
hard-fought victory over Spaniard Francisco Clavet Tuesday
night.
The American, seeded third and the winner here in 1995 and 1997,
said his back was bothering him and he did not want to take any
risks.
"The eve of the U.S. Open was more worrying to me because
it was a sudden move and it was a disc," the Wimbledon champion
said. "This is serious enough so that I can't play, but it's not
to the point of redoing my disc. Just to be on the safe side
I'll do another test next week."
Sampras's withdrawal came only hours after defending champion Rusedski was forced out of the tournament. Rusedski hinted it might put an end to his season. "I'm thinking that's probably going to be it for the year most likely. I don't want to risk making anything worse," he said of the hamstring injury he suffered last week in Stuttgart. Rusedski retired at the end of the first set of his second-round match against Spaniard Albert Costa on Wednesday.
| ALSO SEE Back too soon? Sampras withdraws from Paris Open
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