It’s a favorite pastime of sports fans to compare great athletes of different generations. Perhaps it’s the safety of debating ultimately unanswerable questions that keeps us passionate. For every stat that seems to point to one guy, there’s always the counter argument: “yeah, but he never had to play against…”
But on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, Roger Federer did play Pete Sampras, and just as it was the one time they played on the pro tour and the three times this past November they played similar exhibitions in Malaysia, it was riveting, it was decided by a narrow margin, and it got us no closer to answering the question: which one of these two geniuses of the court is the greatest to ever play?
In fact, it was an evening that probably did more to fuel the debate than to settle it. In tennis years, ten is a whopping number, and Pete Sampras is ten years older than Roger. Oh, but can he still play! Six years of retirement haven’t done anything to temper the lightning in his right arm, and I’m sorry, but exhibition sportsmanship isn’t the reason the mighty Federer has a tough time with Pete’s serve. There just aren’t other guys on today’s tour––on any day’s tour, for that matter––who do what Pete can do. With all due respect to booming serves like Andy Roddick’s, there’s a silkiness to Pistol Pete’s delivery that’s just mesmerizing. And then, though not quite as quick as he was in those glorious years of the 90s, he’s on the net, attacking, pressuring, knocking down volleys like a gunslinger shooting cans. Indeed there’s a depth of talent after Federer in the men’s game today, but there’s no one with the specific kind of firepower that Pete Sampras still seems to have in ready supply.
In the end, though, it was Federer. Any other outcome would’ve seemed phony. Much of the evening seemed about the show. Whether they were trying hard to or not, Sampras and Federer kept it close, treating us to a some wonderful rallies that, in fairness, might have ended a little sooner had this been the U.S. Open.
But you don’t get to be Roger Federer or Pete Sampras without a competitive drive ultimately impervious to any notions of exhibition play, and with a set each in hand, the level of play started to rise noticeably. Whatever nerves apparent in Pete’s first few games were gone, replaced by a familiar rhythm of spellbinding serving pulled straight out of 1997. A few laser beam forehands later and Sampras had raced to a 5-2 lead in the deciding set––a call to arms for Federer, who responded as Roger Federer.
And as they came round the final turn deadlocked at five-all, then six-all and into the tiebreaker, they just played. And suddenly the question of who’s the greatest faded away, yielding to a far more compelling question––what if? What if instead of the ten years––the near miss so incredible that even the men in question understand the importance of exploring it––they had met both in their prime, battling for the lawn of the All England Club and spotlight of New York at night summer after summer? What if Roger Federer and Pete Sampras had really gotten to play each other? For a fleeting few minutes, it was simply breathtaking.
