After a brief moment of uncertainty had passed – did it really hit both lines? – and Andre Agassi walked toward the net, seemingly on the verge of tears, one could not help but feel sadness for the fate of James Blake.

In the match of the 2005 U.S. Open, the match of Blake’s young life, perhaps even the match of the Open’s long history and Agassi’s storied 20-year career, both players deserved to win and neither deserved to lose, but Blake deserved it less. For most of this remarkable evening – a night on which 20,000 people sat riveted in their seats until 1:09 a.m., their sleep and their jobs be damned – the 25-year-old Blake had victory in his hands until the last fleeting moments.

Off court, he had survived a broken neck, endured the death of his father, and recovered from shingles that paralyzed half his face. On court, he had weathered a ferocious charge by one of the sport’s greatest champions to win the first three points of what was to become one of tennis’s most memorable tie breakers. Until Agassi earned his first match point, it seemed as if Blake’s fairy tale would extend straight through to the U.S. Open final.

Did Blake choke? Not even close; Agassi played too well for that, and Blake fought too hard. Did Agassi, a legend in his own time, simply find his groove and pick his young pupil apart? Somewhat, but there was more to the story. In the end, Agassi won not only because he is Andre Agassi, but because Blake knew he was Andre Agassi. You could hear it in Blake’s voice after the match, when he told Agassi he could not have had more fun losing.

“This is what they came for,” Blake said, reprising the words of a 39-year-old Jimmy Connors during his fourth-round victory – also in a fifth-set tie breaker – over 24-year-old Aaron Krickstein, another all-American contest that had been, until Wednesday evening, the most precious of the U.S. Open’s vast stockpile of jewels. “Coming down to a do-or-die situation, a fifth-set tie breaker, being the only Slam that does that, the U.S. Open crowd against possibly the biggest name in tennis for the last 15 years or however long. I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

For Blake, it almost did. After racing around the court for two sets – like a “fighter jet,” as Agassi described him – Blake received a bit of charity from Agas si: three consecutive forehand errors for a break of serve and a 3-2 lead. But from that point on, whenever Agassi gave, Blake gave in return. Agassi would break back and, two games later, break again after Blake twice double faulted when he needed one point to hold.

Nearly two sets later, Agassi, four points from defeat, bounded from his seat for one last crack at Blake’s serve, and Blake undoubtedly knew what the roaring crowd wanted then, too. It was 1 a.m. when the tie breaker – the first fifth-set sudden death of Agassi’s 20-year U.S. Open career – began.

How close did Blake come over those last 14 points? Perhaps two centimeters. At 5-5, a match point in reach, he ripped a forehand into the corner, but it landed long. Though Blake staved off one match point, Agassi let a forehand fly on his second one. No one knew if it was good until the chair umpire announced, “Game, set…,” his words drowned out by the cheers.

Like Krickstein 14 years ago, Blake would have taken more from this victory. He has never reached a Grand Slam semifinal, has not discovered the supreme confidence that Agassi developed many years ago.

But that’s where the comparison ends. This loss did not come at the hands of Connors. There were no tantrums or histrionics from the gentleman Agassi, no reason to feel angry that a crowd could be so smitten with a man who so often acted like a jerk. And Blake, in terms of mental toughness, could not be better equipped to withstand a loss like this one.

“I didn’t panic and I still went for my shots,” Blake said. “Next time they’re going to go in, I think.”

As for Agassi, he is four years younger than Connors was during his semifinal run 14 years ago. Tennis, however, is much younger now than it was then. The players are stronger, the strokes more powerful, the points more punishing. Agassi might as well be 40; against the fleet-footed grinder Robby Ginepri in this weekend’s all-American semifinal, he may look 45. If he loses this weekend – and the odds are that he will – it will not matter in the end. He has given his sport a much needed victory, a lasting memory of a tournament whose outcome is no longer of any consequence.

“Tennis won tonight,” Agassi said.

Tennis won so much this week that next time, it will be just fine if Blake wins instead.