So would Federer vs. Sampras have been the great rivalry that everyone fantasizes about? After following the current exhibition series between the two great champions, my hunch is “No”. This may surprise and disappoint a lot of people – a lot of others would completely ignore my hypothesis and write me off as a know-nothing without much thought. However, personally I believe that it would not have been as great a rivalry as Sampras-Agassi or even Federer-Nadal for that matter. This is because their games do not complement each other. They compete with each other. They are very similar in so many respects – the actual similarities though interesting, in their own right, are irrelevant to the discussion here – what is important is the idea that the game of tennis at its best is more than a sport – it is a spectacle, it is a piece of art that requires the two players or artists (note, artists, not opponents) to co-operate to make it a masterpiece while competing at the same time - In a manner in which Federer’s precision blends with Nadal’s power, Sampras’ serve blends with Agassi’s return.
I am not saying that either one of the players would have dominated the other had Federer and Sampras played in the same era. They would have probably won roughly an equal number of games. It is merely that their games might not have been the classics that Sampras-Agassi games were (ref. Wimbledon 1999 to name just one) or Nadal-Federer games are (ref Wimbledon 2007).
