For any player, there's nothing better than going into the offseason after winning your final match. It's even better when that final match produces your first Masters Cup title and moves you to No. 2 in the world for the first time in your career -- as it did Roger Federer on Sunday.

For three years, I've been raving about Federer and the tennis that he eventually would play in his career. We saw it happen at Wimbledon, and we saw it this week in Houston. If he can somehow harness all of his talent and summon it at the majors, Tennis Masters Series events and the Masters Cup, we could see him dominate the game for the next several years.

When comparing Federer's game to his peers -- including Andy Roddick, Juan Carlos Ferrero, David Nalbandian and Guillermo Coria -- Federer has the full package while each of those players possesses a glaring deficiency somewhere in his game.

Very seldom in the past 15 years have I seen players frustrate and break down Andre Agassi like Federer did in Houston. That's not a knock on Agassi but a tribute to Federer.

Besides, Agassi continues to amaze with what he is able to do in the game year-after-year at his age. Whenever I begin to think that maybe his best years are behind him, Agassi suddenly produces a year like 2003 -- winning the Australia Open and reaching the final of the Masters Cup to finish the season ranked No. 4.

At some point, Agassi's body or his mind is going to tell him to put tennis down and move on to other things. But the way Agassi looks today, if he wants, he can compete for titles for the next two or three seasons, well into his mid-30s. Interestingly, no one would have been making that statement 10 years ago. His dedication to his game in the latter years of his career is commendable.

It's been a great 2003 with the new generation of players pushing their way to the forefront and commanding the top spots.

Looking ahead to 2004, next season really begins in this year's offseason for the top players.

For Roddick, this offseason really will be the first time that coach Brad Gilbert will be able to work on specific things to improve Roddick's overall game. It's very difficult to work on major deficiencies in your game in the middle of the season, which is when Gilbert took over. Roddick must continue to improve his all-around game, specifically his front-court game. Plus, it would be a good idea to hire a physical trainer to work specifically on improving the speed in his first step.

For Juan Carlos Ferrero, it's very similar in that he, too, can improve his transition from the baseline to the net. We know that he's always going to be successful on the red clay of Paris, but he needs to be more versatile on faster courts if he expects to beat Roddick and Federer.

It's difficult to see one specific area of Federer's arsenal that needs improvement, but if he can become more stable mentally on the court and figure out ways to win when he's not playing his best tennis, it will do wonders for his future.

Of the three top-ranked players, any one of them can win a match while playing at peak level. The trick for Federer is to win matches when he's not. Federer is so talented that when he's not cruising through matches, he sometimes gets frustrated. If he can improve that, he'll actually become a better player, which is hard to believe.

MaliVai Washington, a tennis analyst for ESPN, reached the 1996 Wimbledon final.