It was perhaps fitting, given that this was the last major singles tournament of the millennium, that the best player of modern times won it so emphatically. Andre Agassi has had a truly memorable year but, when it came to the crunch, Pete Sampras murdered him to win his fifth ATP Tour championship 6-1 7-5 6-4. It was not a lingering death.

A match-rusty Sampras had lost their preliminary encounter on Wednesday, but one roundrobin victory did not make an Indian summer for Agassi. As he had in this year's Wimbledon final, Sampras explosively raised his game to crush his fellow American.

Agassi, who won this title in 1990, had displayed small but significant signs of mental weariness in Saturday's semi-final win against Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov during which he lost five successive games. Sampras came at him yesterday afternoon like a mighty rushing wind.

Agassi knew the hurricane was coming and, no doubt, had mentally boarded up anything loose accordingly, but the damage was done immediately and violently. The shutters rattled, came off their hinges, and Agassi imploded. And great was his disappointment.

Presciently, perhaps forbodingly, he had warned on Wednesday that "the guy can improve like nobody, so I have no doubt what he is capable of". But this did not make defeat any easier. Agassi had desperately wanted to be at his very best yesterday. He wasn't, and Sampras went for the jugular.

That 6-2 6-2 round-robin defeat had clearly rankled with Sampras, the 11th time he had lost to Agassi in 27 meetings, stretching back to 1989. His pride had been hurt, not so much because he had lost, but because of the severity of the defeat. "I was humiliated," he admitted yesterday.

Agassi, once more watched by Steffi Graf, was instantly under enormous pressure. He had said at the beginning of the week that although he would finish it as the world's number one, no matter what the results, he would not feel like the number one "unless I win against Pete".

Hence his obvious disappointment. There were no kisses to the crowd afterwards, no bows and no on-court interview. And this, in itself, was also a disappointment.

The first set was over in under half an hour, Agassi's serve being broken in the second and fifth games. And so the major question was raised. Could Sampras, for whom this was only his sixth match since he pulled out of the US Open with a back injury, stay the pace? When Agassi opened up a 3-0, second-set lead, with Sampras completely losing the rhythm on his serve, it appeared his stamina was about to be tested to the full. But crucially Agassi squandered a further two break points for a 4-0 lead.

Sampras, who pocketed just over Stg£850,000 for the win, eventually levelled at 4-4. "When you let Andre into a match and give him some confidence he can kind of steamroll you," Sampras said. "Once I broke him back, it changed the momentum within a minute." A desperately poor service game by Agassi at 5-5 - "I played a real, real bad game" - virtually sealed things although there was a brief swan song in the final set when Agassi fitfully found his form of the French and US Opens.

Of their 28 matches between the pair, 13 have been finals with Sampras holding an 8-5 advantage. More significantly of their four Grand Slam final encounters, Sampras has won three.

Small wonder that after losing to Sampras in the final of the 1995 US Open, Agassi never fully recovered, his psyche seemingly permanently damaged by Sampras's dominance.

This year's resurrection was obviously aided by Sampras's continued wretched form on clay - he lost in the second round at Roland Garros - and his absence from the US Open. Quite how yesterday's defeat will affect Agassi next year must remain a glorious uncertainty, with next January's Australian Open being the acid test.

Agassi came to this tournament determined to underline his place at the top of the world. Sampras, who finishes the year ranked number three, came in order to see "how I was physically". The conclusion has to be that even a half-prepared Sampras remains too good for Agassi just as an out-of-form Sampras was too good for Henman at Wimbledon.