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Originally posted by cricman
Guys remember Sampras at 32 whipped Roddick 6-2 6-2 6-2 at the open.
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This is a horrible attempt at historical comparison of tennis players.
When Sampras was 32, Roddick just joined the pro tour and was only 19. Roddick was not even at his peak at that time and didn't have enough experience.
On the other hand, entertain this fact: both Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin, when they were only 20 and relatively inxperienced, won their respective first Grand Slams beating Sampras, a 11-year veteran of sport and 10+-times Grand Slam champion at the time when he played them. What does this fact signify? That Hewitt and Safin are better than Sampras in terms of skill? That Hewiit and Safin possess talents at an young age that Sampras couldn't even muster even having won so many slams? No! This kind of approach to historical comparison is wrong. You CANNOT take a win or a loss in one single match and based on just that match make proper historical comparisons.
Maybe when Lleyton and Safin beat Sampras in US Open finals, Sampras was relatively off his form. We cannot be sure of even that. If he was off form, then how did he manage to reach the final in the first place? Maybe Sampras's playing level at 32 years old was not quite the same as his playing level at 25 years old. This seems more plausible. We need to compare statistics of his first service, 2nd service, ace counts, unforced errors, etc. from his early years and later years. Then we will begin to have an inkling of a true historical comparison.
Accordingly, one needs to analyze Federer, Safin. Roddick, Hewitt's entire career stats to understand their career evolution, the peaks and lows of their form.
For example, before 2003 Federer had a losing record against Hewitt and Safin, now he has a solid winning record against them. Couple this with the fact that Hewitt and Safin have not dropped form since their early years but have actually improved in skill, stamina, competitive nature, etc. since 2000/2001, and you arrive at a pretty logical conclusion that Federer at his peak simply plays way better than any of these guys. It's not the lack of competition that makes Federer good, it's because Federer is SO good that his competition seems relatively lacking.
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There are only 3 other right now that i can say that can beat federer. Hewitt, Safin and Nadal. Where as in the sampras era i could name you 10-15.
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Just plain bad analysis.
You are compring the ENTIRE Sampras career with Federer's peak performance period (which is now). The scope of you analysis is wrong. Of course Sampras lost to a lot of people over his whole career. So has Federer before he reached his peak (pre-2003 fall) and so will he in the future (we don't know when it will start). When Sampras was at his peak (1993-1995), very few people beat him. It was AFTER 1996 that Sampras started to lose to more players, mostly because he had to change his playing style because he developed a medical condition called Thalassemia minor.
Federer is unbeatable now not because his competition is lagging. Another entirely plausible reason (and I am pretty sure that this IS the reason) is that Federer at his peak plays at such a high level that it is difficult for other players to beat him; he has taken the game to a whole new level.
In fact, that's exactly what Agassi has acknowledged right after this year's US Open final. He said that Federer is a better player than Sampras was. Agassi is probably the perfect man to assess and compare the two players. He actually played high-quality, extremely competitive tennis against both of them and having played Sampras around 30 times and Federer around 20 times, he knows their games inside out. Agassi's career span (1987-2005) contains Sampras (1988-2002) and Federer's (1998-2005) entire career span. I will take Agassi's testimonial against anybody else's when it comes to the comparison of Federer and Sampras.
Edited on, September 22, 2005, 9:25 AM GMT, by Arnab.