Watch his drop shot!

It was neither a moment for faint hearts nor an overexaggerated lob.

But at least Andre Agassi and Roger Federer could boast they were on top of their game.

Resembling from a distance tiny figures on a Subbuteo table football pitch, the players faced each other across a net strung 700ft above Dubai's Jumeirah beach.

An artificial court had been especially laid on the helipad of the £750-a-night Burj Al Arab hotel, the sail- shaped profile of which dominates the skyline.

The stars - competitors at ground level in this year's Dubai Duty Free Men's Open - were following in the footsteps of golfer Tiger Woods, who teed off at the same spot last year before the Dubai Desert Classic.

The problem, as Woods himself found, was that if the ball disappeared over the edge it would have taken a ballboy on an extra-long bungee rope to retrieve it.

' This is not a service we would normally offer to our guests,' joked a spokesman for the hotel. 'Once the ball has been hit out of play, it tends to stay out.'

The Burj Al Arab, the only seven-star hotel in the world, was erected on a purposebuilt island in the Arabian Gulf five years ago.