"He was gagging; Prepare yourself for it Andre"- When Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors exchanged intense words after epic QF at the 1989 US Open
Jimmy Connors and Andre Agassi locked horns in the quarterfinals of the 1989 US Open. The 19-year-old Agassi was seeded sixth at the tournament while the 36-year-old Connors was the 13th seeded.
The two played a thrilling encounter in Flushing Meadows, with Andre Agassi winning 6-1, 4-6, 0-6, 6-3, 6-4 to book his place in the US Open semifinals.
Speaking about the match, the then-teenager said that his strategy was to make Connors work.
"The longer the match went on, the more it leaned towards my side. My strategy was to make him work," Andre Agassi said.
Agassi was in a dominant position during the final set of the match and was leading 5-1 before Connors won three games in a row. Connors said that his opponent was gagging and things might have been different if he tied the scores at 5-5.
''He was gagging, he was starting to. It's not something you can see. You just feel it in the sting of his shots, the way he just plays the ball back. If I had won that game to go 5-5, that would have been some dream," the five-time US Open champion said.
Andre Agassi claimed that he knew facing Jimmy Connors would not be easy and it wasn't.
''Last year when we played here, all I knew was that he was 36. I guess I was a little naive. I thought last year that it was going to be easy, and it wasn't. This year I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and it wasn't," he said.
The then-teenager also said that he was listening to the crowd during Chris Evert's match against Zina Garrison and told himself to prepare for the match as Connors was the crowd favorite at the time.
"I was listening to the crowd, I was going, 'Prepare yourself for it, Andre. You're in for it," Agassi said.
Andre Agassi leads 2-0 in the head-to-head against Jimmy Connors
Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors locked horns twice. Before their epic clash in the 1989 US Open quarterfinals, the two faced each other at the same stage of the New York Major in 1988.
Back then, Agassi won 6-2, 7-6, 6-1 to reach the semifinals where he lost 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 to Ivan Lendl. He suffered a similar fate in 1989, as Lendl beat him 7-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1.
Agassi eventually went on to win eight Grand Slam singles titles, thus equaling Connors' tally.