Federer Versus Sampras... NYC Style
Pete Sampras and Roger Federer renewed their global exhibition rivalry on Monday night in New York City at the famed, Madison Square Garden. Federer won again (he’s now 3-1 in their exo series and 1-0 in real tournaments matches having won their lone encounter at Wimbledon) by coming back from 2-5 down in the third set to win in a tie-breaker. Apparently, there may be a future exhibition in London which is great for tennis fans. One could debate whether the match was “real tennis” and whether they were both “playing for keeps” the whole time, but clearly they were at times. What
was impressive was how effective Sampras’ serve was more than five years removed from his Grand Slam days. At the same time, that is precisely why these exhibition matches “work.” Sampras managed to serve quite well overall and hit some strong forehands, but the rest of his game, e.g. volleys, backhand and movement, were not as solid as in his heyday. Nonetheless, a strong serve can go a long way and also allowed Sampras to gamble much more on Federer’s serve because he definitely didn’t want to trade ground strokes with Federer. There was discussion about staging this “tennis night” at Madison Square Garden again in 2009. However, the reality is that there are only a couple former top players who could compete with Roger Federer even in an exhibition. Boris Becker with his booming serve is one such player if he were in good enough shape. Goran Ivanisevic is possibly another. However, many other tennis stars such as Andre Agassi or Jim Courier would face a lot of challenges competing against a top player like Federer right now. The main reason is that they couldn’t count on a couple cheap and short points from strong serves each game. It takes a lot of practice and matches to be able to walk out and outhit Federer from the baseline and hold serve through tough rallies. In their primes, many players could potentially handle this assignment, but when they only practice a couple times a week and rarely compete, it would be a tough task.
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