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Jet sets for Pete – Sampras, Courier play new venue
By: Rikki N. Massand, amNewYork
July 27, 2007
For once, Pete Sampras’ serve wasn’t the fastest thing at a tennis match.
With Maseratis and a private jet parked outside an airport-hangar-turned-court, Sampras beat longtime rival Jim Courier, 7-5, 7-5, in a spirited exhibition match.
A crowd of affluent onlookers cheered the players on at Farmingdale’s Republic Airport on Thursday, just four weeks before the kickoff of the U.S. Open.
The American greats renewed their 1990s rivalry on a blue court that occupied the parking spot of a not-yet- released Hawker 4000 jet owned by Talon Air, the luxury charter airline that sponsored the event.
Sampras, 35, and Courier, 36, met in eight Grand Slam finals in the 1990s, and Sampras won six of their meetings. But this wasn’t the dazzling Pistol Pete of old
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