MELBOURNE, Australia -- After playing for 2½ hours and watching 34 aces fly by, Andre Agassi stood three points from defeat, daring Pete Sampras to hit yet another service winner.

	"He outplayed me," Pete Sampras, left, said of Andre Agassi.

Sampras couldn't summon one up, and Agassi ripped a backhand that forced Sampras to lunge desperately for a volley that landed a few feet wide.

That point, for 4-4 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, turned out to be the opening Agassi needed to turn the match around and advance to his fourth consecutive Grand Slam tournament final with an exhilarating 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (0), 7-6 (5), 6-1 victory at the Australian Open on Thursday.

Ending that tiebreaker with a forehand crosscourt winner off a short Sampras volley, Agassi pumped his fist as if delivering a knockout blow. Girlfriend Steffi Graf jumped up to applaud near the front row.

Sampras, who managed only three more aces after that turning point, said, "I got a little down on myself and he just took advantage of it."

After a pulsating match considered too good to be a mere semifinal, Agassi will come back Sunday and play the winner of the other semifinal Friday between defending champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov and No. 12 Magnus Norman.

Agassi is the first man to reach four consecutive Grand Slam finals since Rod Laver won all four in 1969.

Agassi won the French and U.S. Opens last year, in between losing the Wimbledon final to Sampras, whom he replaced later as No. 1 in the world. Sampras is still trying to break Roy Emerson's record of 12 Grand Slam titles.

"You don't want to play a great match only to give it away at the last second," Agassi said of the fourth-set finish. "I had a good shot to win."

In the second game of the final set, Agassi started with a spectacular point -- hitting a service return down the line, following with a half-volley to the same corner, then racing across court to put away a forehand volley. Another forehand service return down the line gave him the key break.

"It was an emotional match," Sampras said. "In the span of five minutes, the whole match changed."

He smiled when asked about his first defeat in nine five-set matches at the Australian Open.

"I was doomed," he said.

"I'm disappointed but I'm not walking out of here with my head hung down," said Sampras, who serves reached 129 mph and played a perfect tiebreaker in the third set.

"I was a spectator" during that 7-0 stretch, Agassi said.

Serving for the match, Agassi saved one break point when Sampras hit a backhand long, and ended the 2-hour, 47-minute match with a serve that Sampras blocked wide.

Agassi bowed and blew kisses to the crowd after his 12th victory in 29 meetings against Sampras, who beat him four times in five meetings last year, including the ATP final.

"The match was so close to being won in the fourth set," Agassi said. "You can't expect him to be perfect. He was in it until then, but I just went away with it in the fifth.

"You only get a couple of chances against Pete. I let a few opportunities slip by in the second set. He let a few go by in the fourth. In the fifth, I played well at the right time."

Sampras said he would need an examination of a right hip muscle he strained early in the first set.

"It took me a set to figure out how I was going to deal with (the injury)," he said, but adding that he lost because Agassi "outplayed me."