Deep Tennis: The Gods at War

Here's my latest Deep Tennis Q & A post from over at No Mas. I've got a Davis Cup preview post up at ESPN.com.

"Steve, I was really into those Sampras/Fed matches, and just the concept of two dudes who have a... well not just a claim, pretty much a complete ownership right now of the Best Player Ever debate going head to head. Other than the Sampras/Fed Wimbledon match, are there any other matches historically where two guys with such a claim played each other competitively?”

The Roger and Pete show has been better, more competitive, and more buzz-generating than any fan had a right to think it would be. But that may have been part of the plan, as they have another match scheduled for Madison Square Garden next March. A win by Sampras this weekend just made that one a lot more enticing, wouldn’t you say?

Men’s tennis has a long history of aging legends going down valiantly to the big dogs of the day. In the Pre-Obscene-Money era, the best guys hung around as long as they could and often overlapped with the next generation. You can trace a line of descent from Bill Tilden, who dominated in the 1920s, to Federer in just five matches.

1941: Tilden, 48 and 10 years past his prime, plays 25-year-old Don Budge, who had won the Grand Slam two years earlier, in a 58-match tour. Tilden loses 51, but wins seven.

1957: Budge, 41, beats the No. 1 pro in the world, Pancho Gonzalez, 29, in straights in L.A.

1971: Gonzalez, 43, beats 19-year-old Jimmy Connors in three sets, also in L.A.

1989: Connors, 36, beats Sergi Bruguera, a future French Open champion, in Germany

2000: Bruguera, 29, rolls an 18-year-old Federer 6-1, 6-1

Tilden: five times as good as Federer!

As far as all-time greats going at each other face to face, that tends to happen as one is on the way up and the other on the way down. By definition, there’s room for only one alpha dog at a time—if Fed and Sampras had played over the same years, neither would own as many Slams as he does today. Perhaps that explains why the Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon matches are so well remembered. At the time, Borg was beginning to be called the greatest player in history; three years later, many polls had McEnroe as the Goat (greatest of all time). Their rivalry is the only time I can think of where two guys at that very, very, very top level went head to head in their primes.

Here’s a list of a few of the other legend vs. legend face-offs from the relatively recent past.

Rod Laver d. Pancho Gonzalez, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4, U.S. Pro Championships, 1964

Until the Open era, a top player would typically ascend to a position of dominance in the amateur ranks and then, to make a buck, he’d disappear into a pro tour that consisted of one-nighters held in gymnasiums across the world. It’s too bad these events weren’t better covered, because they featured big tournaments and hundreds of matches between all-time greats—one decade’s best player would have to dethrone the previous decade’s. The biggest annual event was the U.S. Pros, at Longwood, outside Boston. By ’64, Gonzalez, the reigning champion of the 1950s, had won eight U.S. Pros. He went for his ninth in a massive storm against Laver, who had won his first (amateur) Grand Slam two years earlier. They played through the rain and wind—men were men, etc.—and by the time it was over the world had a new best player. Laver would go on to win the event five times.

Laver vs. Bjorn Borg

I had no idea until I looked it up yesterday that these two had even played a real match. But by the ATP’s calculations, they faced each other seven times from 1974 to ’78 , as Laver was aging and Borg was rising. Borg got the better of him in five of those matches, including the last four. The first time they played, on carpet in Barcelona in ’74, the baseliner Borg sent the net-charger Laver home 6-1, 6-1. (I wonder how many times in his career the Rocket lost by those scores?) Their best match came in Dallas the following year, also on carpet. It was a long five-setter won by Borg.

I’ve seen a tape of a semi-exhibition tournament they played in Hilton Head in 1977—watch two minutes of it here (with Pancho commentating; talk about a Goat-fest). I remember Borg, so it was the 30-something Laver who was the revelation for me. I haven’t seen many clips of him, and I was awed by the consistency of his shot-making—he could do anything with the ball—and his high-energy, all-court attack. (Check out that low forehand volley from no-man's land.) You could see that John McEnroe learned a lot from watching his fellow lefty as a kid. On this day, neither Borg nor Laver seemed to have a distinct advantage over the other. Like Federer and Sampras, they were from slightly different eras, but they belonged on the same court.

Borg vs. John McEnroe

As I said, we remember this rivalry well because it was that rare moment in sports when two of the best ever are at their peaks at the same time. No wonder Borg quit when McEnroe took his spot at No. 1—he may have realized that there was only room for one Goat at a time, and he couldn’t conceive of himself as anything else.

As far as how their games matched up, I think my fellow TENNIS editor Pete Bodo had the best take on it: Borg made himself virtually unbeatable because he was willing to play longer points and hit one more ball into the court than his opponent; McEnroe came along and negated that advantage by ending points as quickly as possible. Borg couldn’t counter it, and their 1981 U.S. Open final, which McEnroe won in four sets, sent the Swede into retirement at age 26 and spelled the end of the last golden era of men’s tennis. It would take McEnroe a couple of years to adjust to not having another Goat to play. He could never respect Ivan Lendl the way he did Borg.

Pete Sampras vs. Ivan Lendl and McEnroe, 1990 U.S. Open

The next era-shattering event occurred at the Open nine years later. I’ve written here before about Sampras’ mind-boggling quarterfinal win at 19 over Lendl, who had reached the previous eight Open finals. But Sampras followed it up by ending McEnroe’s last real chance at a Slam in four sets. McEnroe had been usurped by Lendl five years earlier, but the two played what could be called the same game—they were flip sides of the same 70s-80s coin. In this match, Mac was playing against a new type of player. Sampras brought the Big Heat, and all of McEnroe’s chips, spins, and angles couldn’t hold it back. He was done for good. Power tennis had just gotten a little more powerful.

Sampras vs. Federer, 2001 Wimbledon

Funny how these things go in decades, isn’t it? Eleven years after Sampras announced the future at the Open, he faced it himself at Wimbledon. This was the only time the two current Goats played each other for real. Federer won a long, winding, intermittently brilliant five-setter. He broke down afterward, and Sampras gave him what I’ve always thought was the most dignified handshake in the history of the sport—class of the titans, I guess you could call it. Here's Sampras post-match interview

Playing-wise, what sticks out now is how often Federer came to the net. The grass was a little quicker then, and it was still the consensus wisdom that you had to serve and volley to win at Wimbledon (Lleyton Hewitt would put that idea to rest the following year.) Plus, against Sampras you had little choice. Unlike today’s players, he could take the net from you if you didn’t take it from him first. The differences in their games are clear during this match: Sampras hit a heavier, more penetrating ball; Federer was smoother and more consistent all around. The new all-baseline era was about to begin.

Sampras vs. Federer, 2007

That brings us to last weekend’s exhibitions. There’s only so much you can take away from an exo. Not only are the players not giving their absolute best, they’re not even really allowed to; a lopsided win is the ultimate faux pas in these things. Still, I was struck by one thing: Sampras’ serve. I’d forgotten that it was the most effective single stroke in the history of tennis. Smooth, efficient, technically dead on, it was still good enough five years later to keep Sampras in these matches by itself. I know Federer wasn’t going out of his way to break Sampras, but I was surprised he didn't get a better read on his serve. I’m used to seeing Federer handle even the most lethal deliveries with nonchalance.

Over the past year, I’d gradually begun to believe that Federer in his prime was a better player than Sampras in his—Fed just has more ways to beat you. I’m not going to change back because of three exhibitions on fast courts, but seeing that Sampras serve again was enough to make me say, “Hmmm, not so fast…” It’s classic hedgehog-fox: Federer knows lots of ways to win, but Sampras knows one big way.

Honorable Mention

Andre Agassi vs. Jimmy Connors, 1988 and ‘89 U.S. Opens; Andre Agassi vs. Roger Federer, 2004 and 2005 Opens

As an 18- an 19-year-old, Agassi beat an aging, angry Connors twice at the Open, the second time in five sets. As a 34- and 35-year-old, he lost two close matches to Federer, the first time in five sets. The standard line in tennis is that you can’t compare eras, that there’s no way that 5-foot-8 Rod Laver with his little wooden racquet could have stood on the same court with the 6-foot-2, midsize-wielding Federer. I’ve always agreed, but Agassi’s career—and, to a lesser extent, the Borg-Laver and Fed-Sampras exhibitions—makes me wonder whether that concept is as self-evident as we think. Agassi, who was never a candidate for greatest-ever, was there to finish the former No. 1 Connors off when he was a kid, and he was still there to challenge the next era's No. 1 two decades later. (In fact, he gave Fed his biggest challenges at the Open each of those years.) Who knows, maybe tennis’ eras aren’t as different as we think, and the very best would have found a way to compete on their own terms in any of them. Maybe all we can say about Laver, McEnroe, Sampras, Borg, and Federer is: Once a Goat, always a Goat.