Sure, why not? I'll bite. It's been fun before and I'm sure it will be this time. And there are only a few opinions on these boards I worry about - most of you are mere children and people who ride the bandwagon of the US guy with the most Slams.
Funny that these threads materialized more often when Fed is poised to get 1 Slam closer to Sampras' 14. If there's any 'hate' maybe it comes from the Sampras 'athletic supporter' sniffers who can't face reality. Of course you also get the 'Fed's competition isn't anything like Sampras' was - that Pioline - what an animal!'
His backhand was below average for an ATP pro. I watch at least 50, if not 100 of his matches on TV, and often remember him *****ing them, or hitting them with a weak sidespin or just a Steffi-like slice. When Agassi said "there's no where to go with him (Fed)", he might as well have said "if you could get in a rally with Pete and work his BH, he was very easily beatable." His return of serve was nothing to write home about. If his ground game was as strong as you guys claim he would have won at least 1 French. And he didn't have someone like Nadal owning the French like Fed has.
If in '96 Pete had wandered over to UCLA and asked to rally with their #1 player at the time - no serves, no volleys, just groundies - and you flew in a few people from Tibet who'd never seen tennis, no way they'd know who was the #1 player in the world with a bunch of Slams and who was the wannabe. In fact, depending who the college kid was (no clue who the #1 was at UCLA at the time), more may have picked him.
If Sampras was a "serve only" player his career would mirror that of Goran Ivanesivic. People who label him as such don't know what they're talking about.
Name calling - sure sign someone isn't very comfortable with their argument
No one ever said he was a "'serve only player"', you were the one that made the random statement, then countered it.
I have my own statement...Federer is a "forehand only" player. Wait, he has an awesome serve, volley and backhand too. Very impressive for a "forehand only player".
I said it - in the past - but I added 'volleyer' to it.
It's a bad exaggeration to say anyone on the ATP tour was only a serve especially Sampras. You simply can't get that far on being good at one aspect of the game.
Sure you can. If it's the thing that starts the point.
Anybody who says that Sampras was only serve is nothing but a Sampras hater. Sampras was an all court player just like Federer. The only difference being is that Sampras preferred to finish points at the net whereas Federer prefers to finish points from the baseline.
More name calling. I dole out my hate sparingly - for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, murderers, kidnappers, etc. With Sampras it's more of a lack of respect. Similar to the Williams clan, it's all about them. If Pete was 'bored' (what he said when he decided to come back to the Fossils' Tour) why didn't he instead call the USTA and ask them what he could do to help grow the game? Why? Because there's NOTHING in that for him. Just like the 'Anatomy of a Pissed Off Champion' story in Tennis Magazine, where he whined (and had members of his team do it for him afterwards) about not getting the same respect from the media and fans that Jordan and Gretsky (sp?) got. I also remember Pete deciding not to go to play the Australian Open at the last minute - wanted to play the Bob Hope Pro-Am golf tournament. Too bad for any fans who saved their money and bought their tickets and made their travel plans. I also remember him entering tournaments he had no desire to play late in the year (at least two years) to secure the season-ending #1 - like that was some big deal that would finally get the non-tennis press to hail him. I'm sure Americans would have been p*ssed if the tennis season ended on clay (and had a disproportionate number of fast court tournaments) and some S. American or Euro did the same thing.
