PRIORITY ONE

Don’t expect much from Andre Agassi in this week’s Mercedes-Benz tennis tournament at UCLA. Also, don’t be surprised if he wins.

Such is the way with “legends,” the label he has been given in the recent United States Tennis Assn. promotion that is designed to stir up interest in the series of events leading to the Aug. 29 start of the U.S. Open.

There are posters all over the place here, branding and marketing run amok. Different players get different designations. There is The Rocket Man (Andy Roddick), The Boss (Roger Federer) and even The Stud (Tommy Haas).

And then there is The Legend, certainly a different connotation than Rocket and Stud. In sports more often than not, the legends come to events in walkers. Or watch on TV from the Assisted Living Center.

Not Agassi. Not this legend. He’s still building on his.

He will open play in the featured match here tonight at 7:30. He is seeded No. 1, ranked No. 6 and, at 35, still the straw that stirs the drink when his sport holds an event. Yes, Federer is younger, better, stronger, faster and, perhaps, destined to win even more Grand Slam events than Agassi’s eight. But Agassi’s star has been a long time in the building, and will be a long time in the fading.

He is currently injured, so much so that he lost in the first round of the French Open and still hadn’t gotten his sore hip into a kind of playing shape that would have allowed him to be competitive at Wimbledon, so he withdrew. He didn’t step onto a tennis court until last Monday, but he says this is the best time and place to start back, to begin that run for one last U.S. Open title, which would make a total of three.

“After eight weeks of not playing,” he said, “I can’t think of a better place to get back out there. There are lots of good memories here.”

The best, of course, are his wins in 1998, 2001 and 2002.

The tennis of Andre Agassi is one element of his legendary status. His heart is the other.

The evolution has been incredible -- from a long-haired renegade who once laughed at the need to even play at Wimbledon and once called a revered French tennis official a “bozo,” to the player now giving back more than any other to his sport and his community.

During a news conference Monday, in which one of the topics was his sponsorship change, from Nike to Adidas, he said the reason for the change was because Adidas had shown more willingness for involvement in his foundation, which has raised millions for underprivileged children in his hometown of Las Vegas. Translated, Adidas’ contribution will be bigger, probably for longer.

Agassi took the high road on Nike.

“They are great business people,” he said. “They make great shoes, they have a business to run, and I understand that.”

But his priority is clear. It is his foundation and his kids.

“I have been fortunate enough to not have to worry anymore about taking care of myself,” he said. “But I still have to worry about the kids.”

At various other times during the press session, Agassi used words such as “the people I’m responsible for” when talking about the youngsters in the school he has started from the funds of his foundation. And he said that, even though the evening of his annual foundation fundraising event in Las Vegas (Oct. 1 this year) is built for great personal satisfaction, the best for him is just visiting the school and seeing third-graders, who were way behind months before, catching up on their schoolwork.

“There’s nothing like it when you see that,” he said.

He isn’t just generous on his own behalf. He was the star of the annual charity event Monday night at UCLA, Tennis at the Net, for a charity called MusicCares Foundation.

It was a schlocky show that started half an hour late and dribbled on endlessly through check presentations to dull dignitaries while awaiting the arrival of a rock band that was apparently redoing its pancake makeup.

The disorganized proceedings were kept alive only by the efforts of Mrs. George Lazenby, five months pregnant with twins and also known as Pam Shriver in her tennis life. She sat in the umpire’s chair, and tried out some one-liners while lots of yuppies with headphones and clipboards ran around and Hollywood types took pictures of other Hollywood types with their cell phones.

Finally, 92 minutes after the evening’s proceedings were scheduled to begin, they introduced Agassi, to the biggest applause of the night. Finally, they had the promised celebrity tennis match that had been the centerpiece of this event for years. Shriver got them going -- “The team of James Blake and Jon Lovitz has won the toss and elected to have Lovitz not serve” -- and once it started, Agassi kept it going on the court.

He is, after all, a legend. Even if, by most standards, his charitable duties had taken him, and everybody else, well past a legend’s bedtime.

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A closer look

Career highlights for Andre Agassi:

* Born: April 29, 1970, in Las Vegas

* Career prize money: $29,874,275

* Career singles record: 844-263

* Career singles titles: 59

* Career doubles titles: 1

* Turned professional: 1986

* 2005 prize money: $507,596

* 2005 singles record: 22-9

* 2005 singles titles: 0

* 2005 doubles record: 0-1