I didnt see in the prompt its 5 with old racquets I retract my statement and say then it's obviously 5-5. Crazy thought here. The amazing athletes who trained their entire lives to be as great as they could with their racquets on the surfaces they played on would win in the conditions they trained for.
Fair enough. I don't know how many of votes took this into consideration the OP's 2nd post rules or it just some vacuum were they play at the exact same level they did in W 1999 vs W 2015 or W 1994 vs W 2011 or whatever chosen year.
BOOMThis is pretty true actually
I've seen Sampras fans here over the years claim that Novak is better than Fed despite all of his Wimbledon victories being against a 30+ year old Fed.
Of course when then those same Sampras fans are confronted by the argument of 29 year old defending champion Pete losing to teenage Fed (in a pretty high quality old-school grasscourt match BTW, Pete had 70% 1st serves in), they completely excuse that loss away and put it down to Pete being old (without even blinking lol). Sports fandom, what can you do, double standards are the norm.
That said I do think Novak's underrated on grass by Fedal TTW fandom to be honest. At his best, his serve/return combo, sheer athleticism (which is something Agassi lacked and why he wasn't a bigger threat to Sampras) and underrated serve +1 make him one tough customer on grass. Handling someone like 2015 Fed (not prime Fed but still very dangerous, as Murygoat can attest after getting slaughtered in the semis) in almost routine fashion was pretty impressive in my book, can't do that if you're not great on grass. He's not Pete/Fed level but he's legit great on grass, and yes better than the Nadal.
I see Djokovic as a similar type player to Agassi but with much more consistency in his game and a better serve. On grass Agassi could not really get close to Sampras. I just cannot see Djokovic beating Sampras on grass if we are talking peak v peak. Sampras enjoyed playing baseliners on quicker low bouncing courts, he struggled more with aggressive players on faster courts so a better poll would be Sampras v Federer, which i think is much harder to call, and probably goes to peak Federer although id back off peak Sampras v off peak Federer on grass.
This has been discussed before I think, but the 2015 SF is possibly Fed’s best ever serving performance, it was almost completely unplayable (and Murray was always the best returner of Fed’s serve). It was a miracle performance that he was never going to repeat in the final… and didn’t. The big problem with 2015 Fed was that as well as the serve dropping off, his own return sucked in the final compared to the SFThis is pretty true actually
I've seen Sampras fans here over the years claim that Novak is better than Fed despite all of his Wimbledon victories being against a 30+ year old Fed.
Of course when then those same Sampras fans are confronted by the argument of 29 year old defending champion Pete losing to teenage Fed (in a pretty high quality old-school grasscourt match BTW, Pete had 70% 1st serves in), they completely excuse that loss away and put it down to Pete being old (without even blinking lol). Sports fandom, what can you do, double standards are the norm.
That said I do think Novak's underrated on grass by Fedal TTW fandom to be honest. At his best, his serve/return combo, sheer athleticism (which is something Agassi lacked and why he wasn't a bigger threat to Sampras) and underrated serve +1 make him one tough customer on grass. Handling someone like 2015 Fed (not prime Fed but still very dangerous, as Murygoat can attest after getting slaughtered in the semis) in almost routine fashion was pretty impressive in my book, can't do that if you're not great on grass. He's not Pete/Fed level but he's legit great on grass, and yes better than the Nadal.
Sampras on medium-fast courts was deadly from the back of the court, could out rally anyone, he bullied Courier and Agassi from the back on quicker low bouncing courts.
LOL
Lol
This is pretty true actually
I've seen Sampras fans here over the years claim that Novak is better than Fed despite all of his Wimbledon victories being against a 30+ year old Fed.
Of course when then those same Sampras fans are confronted by the argument of 29 year old defending champion Pete losing to teenage Fed (in a pretty high quality old-school grasscourt match BTW, Pete had 70% 1st serves in), they completely excuse that loss away and put it down to Pete being old (without even blinking lol). Sports fandom, what can you do, double standards are the norm.
That said I do think Novak's underrated on grass by Fedal TTW fandom to be honest. At his best, his serve/return combo, sheer athleticism (which is something Agassi lacked and why he wasn't a bigger threat to Sampras) and underrated serve +1 make him one tough customer on grass. Handling someone like 2015 Fed (not prime Fed but still very dangerous, as Murygoat can attest after getting slaughtered in the semis) in almost routine fashion was pretty impressive in my book, can't do that if you're not great on grass. He's not Pete/Fed level but he's legit great on grass, and yes better than the Nadal.
The good thing though about references to Sampras as a serve bot is assists separating out those who only started following tennis in 2011 and those who have followed the game for decades.
i mean a lot of the Vesely matchup is about Djokovic not handling the unusually disguised lefty serve with great placement (Ivanisevic would probably beat Djokovic at least once at Wimbly if their careers aligned, even in Djokovic's prime), and the Wawrinka matchup is more about Wawrinka having elite rally and shot tolerance than necessarily just his power
that's mostly because Hurkacz is an unusually weak hitter. big server and big hitter Fritz has been pigeonized harder than either by Djokovic so idk that you get much in modern terms anyway lol
Sampras could rally well from the back, but he generally looked to disrupt his opponent's rhythm rather than go with it.
What sort of hold rates do you predict for Sinner on this surface this year?
So he’s winning then?
I wouldn’t guarantee a win. But it wouldn’t surprise me either.
I predicted this for him this year:
This is pretty true actually
I've seen Sampras fans here over the years claim that Novak is better than Fed despite all of his Wimbledon victories being against a 30+ year old Fed.
Of course when then those same Sampras fans are confronted by the argument of 29 year old defending champion Pete losing to teenage Fed (in a pretty high quality old-school grasscourt match BTW, Pete had 70% 1st serves in), they completely excuse that loss away and put it down to Pete being old (without even blinking lol). Sports fandom, what can you do, double standards are the norm.
That said I do think Novak's underrated on grass by Fedal TTW fandom to be honest. At his best, his serve/return combo, sheer athleticism (which is something Agassi lacked and why he wasn't a bigger threat to Sampras) and underrated serve +1 make him one tough customer on grass. Handling someone like 2015 Fed (not prime Fed but still very dangerous, as Murygoat can attest after getting slaughtered in the semis) in almost routine fashion was pretty impressive in my book, can't do that if you're not great on grass. He's not Pete/Fed level but he's legit great on grass, and yes better than the Nadal.
Umm, Agassi took the AO pretty seriously late in his career?
Source: trust me bro
You don’t need to trust me, I’m not the one making imposible-to-prove predictions
It’s really fun to go back only a few years and see how Federer in ‘18, ‘19, was still able to basically toy with 99.8% of the tour.
So did Fed who didn't need breaks
Remember when you kept spamming the Novak news thread with 22>20? So much for your analytical powers
They’re all in it for the money
