Agassi continues march to sixth title

Top seed, and five times champion, Andre Agassi cruised through to the quarter-finals of the Legg Mason Classic with a comfortable 6-1, 7-6 victory over wildcard Brian Vahaly on Thursday.

The home town fans, looking forward to the prospect of an Agassi-Andy Roddick final, were disappointed when Roddick was upset by 16th seed Fernando Meligeni of Brazil 6-4, 6-4 in the final match of the day.

Roddick, the second seed for the tournament, was the defending champion.

"It's been five continuous weeks of match play, I don't know if I was due for one, but I had a bad match," Roddick said afterwards.

"I wasn't seeing the ball well and I wasn't seeing his serve well. He played very smart (and) he came up with a good shot when he needed to.

"What I'll do now is take the weekend off and start fresh next week leading up to the Open."

Meligeni, who now meets fifth-seeded Marcelo Rios of Chile in the quarter-finals, said he had been expecting a tough match.

"To play a guy like this, who is on fire every week, you have to be mentally strong," the 31-year-old Brazilian said.

"Today I think I did this perfectly. There were many times when I could have given away my head and I'm very happy because I stayed mentally strong throughout the match."

HISTORIC BID

Agassi, however had no such worries as he continued his bid to become the fifth player to win the same tournament for the sixth time.

Just three players - Bjorn Borg (Roland Garros), Ivan Lendl (Toronto/Montreal) and Balazs Taroczy (Hilversum) -- have won the same tournament six times while Pete Sampras has won the same tournament (Wimbledon) seven times.

"After the first set Brian started feeling a little more like he had to do something and he stepped up and played very aggressively and took his chances," Agassi said.

"He was probably playing riskier tennis than he wanted to, but he needed to and I thought he did it well."

In other matches, Thailand's Paradorn Srichaphan, who upset Agassi in the second round at Wimbledon earlier this year, overcame the hot conditions to upset last year's beaten finalist Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Schalken was the third seed for the tournament.

"He's a very tough player and the number three seed here," Srichaphan said. "I've never beaten him before... (and) I knew it was going to be a tough match because he can rally all day.

"I was almost cramping (in the third set). I was sweating a lot and it was so hot (but the support from the Thai community) got me through it at the end."

Srichaphan now meets Jarkko Neiminen after the eighth-seeded Finn beat Alex Kim of the U.S. 0-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Rios overcame France's Jerome Golmard 6-3, 6-1 to set up his quarter-final clash with Meligeni while sixth seed James Blake will meet Alex Corretja after the Spaniard romped through his third round match with Slovakia's Karol Kucera 6-1, 6-1.

Agassi will meet Sweden's seventh seed Thomas Enqvist, who dispatched Germany's Lars Burgsmueller 6-3, 7-5.