Posted on: September 14th, 2002
The US Open finals
- petepage[Sep 14, 2002 Zenaida A. Amador] SUNDAY before last, tennis fans witnessed an unprecedented finals game between contenders Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.
That was the kind of finals tennis fans wanted to see. The contest between two champions who had previously met 33 times before. Sampras had beaten Agassi 19 times and lost 14 times. In order to get to the finals both had to defeat the young and very powerful contenders, among them Hewitt of Australia who was the defending champ. Sampras is 31 years and Agassi is 32. To get to the finals they both beat powerful 20-some-year-olds. At around 30, you see, a tennis player is considered old because you can see even by watching only one game how much punishment the body takes during play. Modern tennis players now rely a lot on power and it is beautiful to watch a finals where it is not just power but brains and game plans that are on show.
Ultimately, as the commentator said, the finals were not a question of the game or the power, it boiled down to character. Both Sampras and Agassi are men of character. First off, they are both gentlemen of the sport. They never indulged in tantrums or raucously contested line calls which anyway is a futile exercise. Also both players have tremendous respect for each other and they played their games beautifully. It was a classic tennis game. People stood and cheered for good points whether from Sampras or Agassi. Of course in the end one had to win and one had to lose. Sampras won and Agassi lost the game. But the grace with which Agassi accepted his defeat spoke so well for himself and for the sport of tennis.
In my view both of them won the day.
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