What to Learn from Federer-Sampras
Pete Sampras and Roger Federer are playing a short series of exhibition matches across Asia this week. It’s a chance for each player to earn some money, have some fun and promote the sport to new tennis fans in different cities that don’t see a lot of professional tennis. However, for hard-core tennis aficionados, it’s also a chance to analyze how Sampras tries to play against Federer. Sampras, who has watched Federer’s
matches on TV from his couch at home, talked about playing Federer in some of the same ways he played the “greats” of his time, e.g. Andre Agassi. Sampras’ strategy against Federer seems to be to try to both overpower him with his serve and also by forcing the play a lot with his heavy ground strokes and attacking serve returns, e.g. pressuring Federer’s second serve. In a way, it is reminiscent of how Brit, Tim Henman, played successfully against Federer, i.e. coming to net a lot on first and sometimes second serves while also hitting out on and chipping and charging on Federer’s second serve. At the top of men’s tennis these days, there are no strong serve and volleyers such as Sampras to challenge Federer. Nonetheless, one can learn from these exhibition matches successful strategies that could be employed by tennis players against Roger Federer in the future.
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