Tennis Channel in the United States, formerly known as The Tennis Channel, has been showing the three Roger Federer – Pete Sampras exhibitions in Asia last month on its website.
Viewing the matches makes it pretty clear that Federer was nowhere near his top form and that, combined with quick surfaces that kept points shorts and did not expose Sampras’s fitness, made it possible for Sampras to win the third match in Macau, China.
They are scheduled to play again in March in Madison Square Garden in New York but, except for the money and the nostalgia of seeing two great champions meet, it will not really prove anything.
Two weeks ago, Federer was exhausted and not at all quick off the mark in the Asian exhibitions, coming as they did at the end of a long season and just a couple of days after he won the Masters Cup in Shanghai, the most important event of the year after the four Grand Slams.
The confrontation that would make a lot more sense and be more compelling to watch would be Sampras against old rival Andre Agassi.
Although Sampras’s last regular tour match was the 2002 U.S. Open final against Agassi, he has played some Team Tennis and senior tour matches the past two years and is in reasonable shape.
Agassi, a year older at 37, retired after last year’s U.S. Open and would logically be closer to top form because Sampras basically did not touch a racquet between mid-2003 and mid-2006. Agassi has played exhibitions, including against Marcelo Rios in Chile last March, and it shouldn’t take him long to get in a form that would be good enough to challenge Sampras.
The two met 34 times as professionals with Sampras winning 20 times. They also met nine times in Grand Slam events with Sampras winning six of those, including all four meetings at the U.S. Open.
One would think Sampras would be eager to re-assert that dominance and Agassi keen to try to get some revenge.
Surely some promoter will try to make it happen before they get too much older and are not able to produce a quality of tennis similar to their heydays. It would seem like a ‘no-brainer’ match-up – Agassi and Sampras playing three, four or five times in various cities in United States.
Both players are still fresh in the memories of tennis fans and both would surely enjoy the financial rewards and the re-stoking of the competitive fires that would come with an exhibition series.
Forget about the trumped-up Sampras–Federer match-up. While Sampras seems interested in playing again, bring on Agassi so there can be a Pete vs. Andre one more time.
Stat-of the-week: 13-feet-7 inches. That is the combined height of John Isner (6-foot-9) of the United States and Ivo Karlovic (6-foot-10) of Croatia. According to reports, Isner claims they intend to play doubles together at the 2008 Australian Open.
