Australian Open: Agassi wants Rafter to play on

Andre Agassi is to try to persuade Pat Rafter to delay his departure from tennis.

Agassi was full of praise for the man whose bid for a fairytale Australian Open victory ended after five punishing semi-final sets in Melbourne.

Rafter has said this might be his final attempt to capture a trophy last in Australian hands back in 1976.

But Agassi, at 30 the older of the two by two years, said: "Maybe I can make it up to Pat's fans for taking him out this year by talking him into sticking around for another year.

"With tennis like that, there is no reason he couldn't or shouldn't."

Rafter insists, however, that he is sticking to his plan of playing out this season and then taking what he calls a long break rather than permanent retirement.

"I want to be able to leave the game saying it's been a great year," he said.

"I have a life outside of tennis, but it's in my blood and I may want to pick it up again after six months or a year or whatever."

Agassi, through to play the winner of the all-French clash between Sebastien Grosjean and Arnaud Clement, trailed by two sets to one.

But the effort of getting into that position took a terrible toll on Rafter, who had been sweating profusely from the opening games and whose body eventually gave up on him.

The double US Open champion had the will, but not the energy to finish the job and Agassi, lasting the pace much better, won 7-5 2-6 6-7 6-2 6-3 in a three-hour, seven-minute drama played out before a championship record crowd of more than 17,000.

"It was real tough," said the American. "You don't expect it to be any other way in a semi-final, especially against Pat.

"It got to him in the end and even towards the end of the third set I felt his first serve lost a little bit.

"Two sets to one down is a problem against someone who knows how to win, but I was feeling pretty good and it always helps when you can see your opponent is struggling.

"In that humidity you just can't put back into your body what you are expending.

"It's not an easy physical situation, but the good thing about tennis is that you only have to deal with the conditions better than one person."

In the five sets Agassi made only 12 unforced errors and just one of those came in the last two sets.