[SalazarS2K]

Originally posted by jfw834
Man, I am happy and pissed at the same time as I TIVOed the quarterfinal with agassi and blake tonight. watched the first four amazing sets go 3-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 and then at 2-1 in the 5th, THE GODDDAM network has some stupid "contractual obligation" and they cut transmission!!!! For the love of god.....this was definately an epic US Open 5 setter and I missed the very best part. Of course the 5th set traded breaks and then went to a tiebreaker. Each player had match points in their favor!!! but of course Agassi prevailed and I'm still excited for him to make go all the way at 35 years old. I think most every audience member would have been equally happy had either player won though....so much respect for both athletes!

I'm a huge agassi fan as I have been since I saw him win wimbledon at age 22 when I was 12. But i have to say that James Blake was playing some of the best most aggressive tennis I have ever seen in the first two sets!

i'm still fuming about the coverage though....i recorded 90 minutes past when it should have ended but I guess TIVO can't do anything about cutting broadcast for Law and Order to come on......arg!!!

anyone else see the 5th set??

Nope....but at least you didn't have to sit through it to find out that they cut off the broadcasting. I watched for two hours and than I thought it went to a Law and Order commercial, but it turned out to be the actual program! Boy was I pissed, I ended up just following up online which sucked. I wrote USA Network a long email ripping them on the whole thing. Here was their response:

"Thank you for expressing your concerns about our US Open coverage. Regarding
Wednesday night's match between Andre Agassi and James Blake, our
commentators announced several times that viewers in the east would need to
switch over to CBS to continue viewing the match. Due to contractual
obligations we could not continue our coverage after CBS's US Open
Highlights show began at 12:37AM (Eastern). Requests to allow us to continue
our coverage were denied.

While the eastern feed of USA network left the match, the western feed
continued to broadcast the match until its conclusion. If you live in the
western part of the country and had the match cut off, this means you were
viewing the eastern feed. Contact your cable or satellite provider for
information on why you are not receiving the western feed of USA.

USA Network"

As for the match, Blake was on fire throught the first 2.5 sets, it didn't seem like Agassi could get to any of his big forehands. His first serve percentage was high and that kept Agassi from breaking initially. Blake's body language also seemed to change midway through the 3rd set, it didn't look like he had the same fire as he had earlier on which may have affected his mental game as well. I was amazed at the huge swing of mementum when Agassi starting painting corner after corner as he made his opponent run for everything. Great match, but what a disappointing finish to miss.