Agassi shows Master class

“When two guys are playing well, pushing the standard, and then the bar keeps getting raised, it’s just rare. It doesn’t happen a lot.”

Roddick added: “It’s disappointing, but he played great. I was hanging on the whole time. He didn’t really give me an open look, you know. There weren’t a lot of unforced errors, and that’s as clean as someone has hit the ball against me.”

The 11th-seeded Agassi won the last of his 58 career titles at the US clay courts in Houston in April 2003 – that was 17 tournaments ago.

The last time Agassi reached a final was at the year-end tennis Masters Cup last December, where he fell to Roger Federer. Agassi’s victory over the second-seeded Roddick set him up for a final outing against Lleyton Hewitt, who holds a 4-3 edge over him in their career meetings.

Hewitt’s 6-3, 6-2 victory over Tommy Robredo gave the Australian a chance at a third title of the season.

Roddick took issue with a number of line calls during the first two sets and spent a number of changeovers berating umpire Norm Chryst.

In the first set, Roddick was able to save two break points on his serve in the fifth game, but was not as lucky in the 11th game. He double faulted twice to give Agassi two set points. He saved the first with a second serve ace, but netted a forehand on the next. In the second set, neither player could break serve, forcing the tiebreaker. It was in the second set tiebreaker where Agassi struggled for the first time in the match, putting himself in trouble by losing his serve on the second and third points. For Roddick the loss hardly dents his impressive recent match record – he has won 25 of 28 matches since June including titles at Queen’s Club and Indianapolis and defeats to Federer at Wimbledon and Toronto.