abmk, I did plug in the wrong # of total points. My bad. And I'll link to FiveO's post shortly, but suffice it to say for now that he counted rallies of 4 or more strokes, not greater than 4 strokes. That's what I meant by "4+ stroke rallies" (and what I explicitly said at the beginning of that paragraph), and that also happens to be the same method drakulie used himself for his stats, of course without accounting for the set-up shots.
well I do think he counted more than 4 strokes .... and the stats of the 4th set which I redid show it ...
Not necessarily, again because of his all-court style. Had he been somehow disallowed to attack the net he most likely would've taken fewer risks on his groundstrokes, which in turn would've likely produced less errors and more winners from the baseline.
I don't see how Agassi's passing shots would make any difference here. If anything they would skew the stats even more in his favor if you added those passes to his # of winners.
oops, my bad, you were talking about drak's method. you are right in that case of course .....
But when I was talking about that, I was including the points that sampras finished up at the net ... not just the baseline-to-baseline points , which is why I said the style of play defensive/aggressive shouldn't really be a factor
what I meant to say was basically this: sampras would benefit if you include approaches to the net this way:
baseline-to baseline winners + net approach winners - effect of agassi passing shots
I said net approach winners - effect of agassi passing shots -> this would be positive and favour sampras normally, but still won't make that much of a difference because the baseline-to-baseline margins were quite big
And another factor I haven't mentioned is his one-break mentality. As the cliche goes, Sampras was confident that he'd be on cruise control once he got that one break, and after getting the break he'd play more freely. It's hard to discern these kinds of intangibles purely from the stats. And this mentality can be an especially significant factor depending on the surface. For example, Pete has admitted on record that he would purposely not give his all to conserve his energy on the heat-friendly Rebound Ace when there was only a slim chance of breaking serve (say, 40-love on the opponent’s serve). More errors are to be expected in such cases, but the stats don't reflect this, nor would you get it unless you knew of his admission already. (BTW this is why I think Sampras' relatively decent results Down Under didn't have much to do with the surface speed per se, but that's a separate topic.) That's just one more reason not to take the stats at face value.
one-break mentality was true in many of sampras' matches, but nowhere apparent/visible in this one . Not a factor in this match
Well, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Besides those factors I've mentioned, this specific length of rallies doesn't guarantee that they were started with both players in neutral positions. Even 3- or 4-stroke rallies could be decided by baseline prowess, as you implicitly acknowledged upthread. Anyway I agree that we need 3 or 4 strokes at a minimum for these stats to have any validity.
I know which is why I did note down those points too , though it does become subjective in that case
Here's the link. Though it's quite long I'll quote the whole thing 'cause FiveO did a very nice breakdown:
The set1 stats tally perfectly if we have rallies of 5 strokes or more ... there was one 4 stroke rally that agassi won ....
sets 2, 3 and 4 , umm, don't
I just ran
set4 in fast forward at 1.5x and rechecked ( only checking stats for the rallies ,nothing else )
above 4 points rallies baseline to baseline: sampras won 4, agassi won 9
net approaches ( above 4 points ) :
sampras won 3, lost 2
agassi won 2, lost 0
therefore total above 4 shot rallies: sampras won 7, agassi 13 ( which is what I had earlier)
4 shot rallies: both won 2 each from baseline and sampras won one at the net
so overall including 4 shot rallies: sampras won 10, agassi 15 ...
This is pretty damn sure from my side, 2nd time I did it .....
I dunno how FiveO got those stats for the 4th set ....
I mean both agassi points at the net are in the first game, both forced errors from sampras, one of the BH wing and one of the FH wing , he has agassi losing one at the net and winning one at the net ???????????????????????????
Yeah, and as you also may know Sampras himself was physically and mentally fatigued in the AO final that year from the tough draw and of course the situation of his coach. So one of the two players wasn't in the best shape in either match. Which is too bad, 'cause both players were at the peak of their powers back then.
true, he was not at his best at all, which is why I LOLed on seeing that statement that sampras not at his best even somewhat held his own against his own from the baseline against a rampaging agassi on the AO surface !
I understand that, but it's still a small and unrepresentative sample. And again his method is highly questionable. I just wanted to point that out.
In any case I don't think anyone here was claiming that Sampras is a better baseliner than Agassi per se, just that Pete could and did outplay Andre from the baseline at times. That's not really an outrageous statement, if you ask me.
at times yes, many times no .....look at the statements made ... it seems from those that thalivest/davey25/annointedone is under the delusion that this happened 'many' times ... what else can you think when statements like AO 2000 was an all-out baseline-war , he held his own against agassi at the 95 AO from the baseline are made to go along with ?
sampras holding his own from the baseline vs agassi that day ! LOL !!!!! 
