Although today featured the completion of third round play on the women?s side, news from the men?s tournament, which starts in earnest tomorrow, stole the spotlight. The bombshell was the surprise withdrawal of would-have-been 2nd seed Andre Agassi, victim of a right shoulder injury. Agassi had been seen practicing yesterday with Yevgeny Kafelnikov yesterday, but had to leave the practice court after 30 minutes, and the pain he experienced convinced him that it would be a mistake to play. ?My mus cles have constricted around a nerve that runs through them,? explained Agassi in a late afternoon press conference. ?Every time I hit forehands or serves I?m getting a strong sort of electrical nerve pain that shoots through my shoulder.?

Agassi has been undergoing treatment on the shoulder since his first round loss to Thomas Enqvist last Monday in Scottsdale, and he will try to be get the shoulder in shape for Miami next week. ?Hopefully I?ll be ready to go there? It?s an ongoing balancing act.? Gastón Gaudio is promoted to a seed, takes Agassi?s place in the draw, and will face Marcelo Ríos in the first round. Olivier Rochus, a lucky loser from qualifying, moves into Gaudio?s old spot.

Back to the on-court action, today we focus on one of last year?s surprise stories, Emmanuelle Gagliardi, who is making another nice run this year. We also look in on top seed Kim Clijsters, who, like Amélie Mauresmo yesterday, had to pull herself through to victory despite a patchy performance.

---

Emmanuelle Gagliardi def. Cara Black, 7-6 (7-3), 6-0
Third round
Stadium 1
Previous head-to-head: First meeting

Emmanuelle Gagliardi came to the desert with no small amount of pressure on her shoulders. The 26-year-old out of Geneva is defending a big chunk of ranking points from last year?s Indian Wells, where she reached the semifinals and came the closest of anyone to toppling eventual champion Daniela Hantuchova. This year she is moving smartly through the draw again, adding Zimbabwe?s Cara Black to her previous victims Mirjana Lucic and 19th seed Tatiana Panova.

Gagliardi and Black fought for 74 minutes in the long first set. The Zimbabwean took the early 3-0 and 4-1 leads, only to be broken at 4-2 by the Swiss. Gagliardi was having trouble with her shoulder in the early stages, and called for a trainer at the first changeover. ?It was a little bit shut down and it was not really reacting,? explained the Swiss in her press conference. ?I was stuck from the upper part of the thoracic spine. [The trainer] just unstuck me from there.? At 5-5 Black showed a lot of grit to fight back from 0-40 to gain a key hold, notably with a splendid, dipping forehand pass shot at 30-40. The tie-break was eventually required to settle the set, and it was dominated by Gagliardi:

• CB serving, and starting things off poorly with a double fault. 1-0 Gagliardi
• EG: Gagliardi wrong-foots Black with a backhand, follows it to the net, and Black?s pass is long. 2-0 Gagliardi
• EG: The same wrong-foot play works again! 3-0 Gagliardi
• CB: Gagliardi forehand error. 3-1 Gagliardi
• CB: Black dumps a forehand in the net. 4-1 Gagliardi
• EG: A looping Black forehand lands beyond the baseline. 5-1 Gagliardi
• EG: Black tries coming to net, and Gagliardi?s pass attempt is long. 5-2 Gagliardi
• CB: Good play by the Swiss, a crosscourt forehand approach paints the line, and she puts away Black?s weak reply into the open court. 6-2 Gagliardi, set point
• CB: Gagliardi?s looping backhand loops too far. 6-3 Gagliardi, Set point #2
• EG: Clean forehand winner crosscourt. First set goes to Gagliardi, 7-6 (7-3)

The second set turned on the lengthy opening two games, a 6-deuce hold by Gagliardi followed by a 3-deuce break against Black. After putting so much effort into losing those two games, Black?s spirit and energy sagged badly. ?I think her running was a lot worse,? noted Gagliardi. ?Once she was running less it was easy for me to play. I didn?t expect it, but I was happy it was happening.?

Emmanuelle has handled the pressure of defending all those ranking points quite well so far. ?It puts a little pressure when you don?t do this every week. It?s a new situation for me. It?s the first time I have to do it. I think it?s what all the good players do, so you just have to get used to it.?

As well as Gagliardi has played here the past two years, it must be pointed out that she has had the luck of the draw working for her. In 2002, she was helped out by the early losses of the top seeds in her quarter of the draw, Kim Clijsters and Meghann Shaughnessy. This year the second round defeat of Jelena Dokic opened up her bracket, which was ?prime real estate? in the draw given Dokic?s poor play of late. As a result Gagliardi will play Conchita Martínez for a spot in t he quarterfinals. The veteran Spaniard lost a set to Barbara Rittner for the first time in their seven career meetings (and how!), but eventually prevailed, 0-6, 6-3, 6-3.

---

Kim Clijsters (1) def. Francesca Schiavone (31), 7-5, 6-4
Third round
Stadium 1
Tied 1-1 (Counting Schiavone?s Hopman Cup win in 2002)

Is the top seed vulnerable? There was quite a bit of waste in the game of Kim Clijsters (pictured at right) today, as she committed 43 errors in a somewhat laborious win over Francesca Schiavone. The underdog Italian, as she usually is, was plenty feisty, but not solid enough in the clutch to take advantage of the chances she was being given.

Schiavone served for the first set at 5-4, but lost woefully at 15, thanks to 3 unforced errors and a missed volley. Clijsters went on to break Schiavone again to conclude the set, when at 5-6, 30-30, the Italian double faulted and then angled a forehand into the doubles alley.

Clijsters was not much more convincing early in the second set. Schiavone took a 3-1 lead, then Clijsters came back to level the score at 3-all. The match stayed on serve until Schiavone served to stay in the match at 4-5. The Italian double-faulted at 30-15, and on match point sent a forehand into the net. Make the final: 7-5, 6-4 Clijsters.

In her post-match comments, Clijsters suggested that Schiavone?s style was responsible for some of her difficulties. ?With the high spins she plays, it?s very hard for me to play my aggressive tennis.? Similarly to Amélie Mauresmo, who also struggled in her three-set win over Tamarine Tanasugarn yesterday, Kim said she was labouring with her legwork. ?I think the timing is not where it should be,? commented the Belgian star. ?Maybe the movement. I?m not feeling as fast as I could be.?

Up next in the fourth round for Kim Clijsters is Nathalie Dechy. The 15th seed, Dechy came back from 3-4 and a break down in the third set to topple Silvia Farina Elia (17), 3-6, 6-4, 6-4. There is some intrigue surrounding this matchup, since it was none other than Dechy who knocked Clijsters out of Indian Wells last year. ?I really want to get that revenge back,? smiled Clijsters. ?I?ll definitely have to play better than what I did today.? As for Dechy, she thinks the upset of last ye ar might help her this year. ?[Clijsters] has more confidence than last year at this stage. But I think both of us will have this match in a little corner of our mind. It will be one of my advantages.?

---

Men?s qualifiers are set

Men?s qualifying action wrapped up today. The only surprise of note was young American Brian Vahaly, who breezed by Olivier Rochus. Vahaly is the only unseeded player from the ?qualies? to make it into the main draw. Nonetheless, Rochus advances as a lucky loser thanks to Agassi?s withdrawal.

Through a quirk of fate, all but one of the qualifiers landed in the top half of the draw, and five of the qualifiers/lucky losers wound up in the second quarter of the draw. This means that the bottom half appears to be the tougher portion, despite Agassi?s withdrawal. The seeds there include Henman, Federer, Moya, Roddick, Schuettler, Grosjean and Nalbandian. Plus, there are a number of dangerous floaters in the bottom half, such as Kuerten, Ríos, Enqvist, Blake, Malisse, Youzhny and Gambill.

We made a point of looking in on the Vince Spadea victory over Magnus Norman. Not every qualifying match features a former top 20 player against a former world number two. Norman in particular has had an awful time of it the last two years, undergoing hip surgery two years ago and two knee operations in the last six months. The Swede appears to be coming around nicely now, moving well and playing some strong baseline points. But he seems to lack confidence in the key moments of the match. For example, in the first set tie-break he gave away two crucial points with a completely botched volley and a shank off the frame. Spadea was quite sharp, and errors such as these ultimately proved too costly to Norman.

Here are your happy qualifiers:

• Sargis Sargsian (10th seed) (def. Nicolás Massú, 5-7, 7-6, 6-1 -- will play Juan Carlos Ferrero).
• Michel Kratochvil (5) (def. Gastón Etlis, 7-5, 6-2 -- will play Arnaud Clément).
• Karol Beck (6) (def. Luis Horna, 6-3, 6-2 -- will play Jiri Novak).
• Nicolas Kiefer (7) (def. Kristian Pless, 6-4, 6-2 -- will play Mario Ancic).
• Robbie Ginepri (8) (def. Franco Squillari, 7-5, 6-0 -- will play fellow qualifier Hyung-Taik Lee).
• Hyung-Taik Lee (2) (def. Jean-René Lisnard, 6-3, 6-4 -- will play fellow qualifier Robbie Ginepri).
• Brian Vahaly (def. Olivier Rochus, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 -- will play Fernando González).
• Vince Spadea (1) (def. Magnus Norman, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 -- will play Paradorn Srichaphan).

---

Quotable quotes

Emmanuelle Gagliardi is a good friend of Martina Hingis, so we expected her to be asked about Hingis?s absence from the tour. While Gagliardi refused to say whether she thought her friend?s hiatus is motivated by more than just her ankle injury, she did say this: ?I think her expectation was always so high that she didn?t want to come back and not be up to the task of being number one again. Maybe she didn?t feel like it anymore.?

After Daniela Hantuchova's 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 win over Katarina Srebotnik, we couldn?t resist asking the defending champion about the suspicion that she is even thinner than she was last year. ?I have grown a little bit in the last couple of months. That?s why maybe you think there is something different. You know, I thought I was finished with that, and it came again.?