Posted on: April 04th, 2003
A Rivalry To Remember: Courier Analyzes Agassi vs. Sampras [Apr 4, 2003]
- petepageThey are two of the greatest Grand Slam champions of all time and over the years their riveting rivalry has produced some timeless tennis and tireless debate among fans over which will own the more prominent place in history.
Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi began the 2002 U.S. Open as the two oldest seeded players in the draw and concluded it with a climactic clash that saw Sampras capture his 14th career Grand Slam crown with a 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 victory over archrival Agassi.
It was the 34th and perhaps final meeting between the old rivals. The 31-year-old Sampras won 20 of those 34 meetings. In a rivalry that spanned 14 years, the pair played each other in 16 finals with Sampras winning nine of them and holding a decisive 4-1 record in their Grand Slam final meetings. Sampras' six straight years as the season-ending No. 1 player - an achievement unmatched in ATP history - supports his status as his generation's top player.
"I can definitely say that there's nothing like it in my career that compares to playing Pete," Agassi said. "Pete, in my opinion, is the best that I have ever played against. That forces you to get that rush of blood that makes you do a little something special."
Though Agassi's eight Grand Slam titles place him behind Sampras (14), Roy Emerson (12), Bjorn Borg (11), Rod Laver (11) and Bill Tilden (10), Agassi's all-surface ability distinguishes him from other Grand Slam greats in that he he has won Slam titles on hard court, grass and clay - a feat only Jimmy Connors, who won U.S. Open titles on three different surfaces - can match.
History shows Agassi and Sampras have secured their spots among the game's elite and in some respects they have used each other as the measuring stick. They shared the court together and share a deep mutual respect for each other.
"I have a lot of respect for Andre," Sampras said during the 2002 U.S. Open. "He's the best returner in the game. It's a great clash. When we play, it is always one to remember."
It is a classic clash of styles and temperaments matching Sampras' superb serve-and-volley skills against Agassi's baseline brilliance. It pits of the top servers in tennis history in Sampras against perhaps the game's greatest returner in Agassi. It's a momentous matchup between two titans of tennis who always seem to bring out the best in each other.
Their styles couldn't be more different, but their skills brought them together again and again over the course of their careers.
"I've played some of the most memorable matches of my career against Pete - come out on both sides of that," Agassi said. "We're just opposite. We're opposite in everything we do. Out there on court, we're two styles that are going against each other. It allows for many aspects of the game to kind of reveal themselves. And it's exciting to play against it because every point, something special seems like it can happen."
While Sampras has not played a professional match since producing his fantastic Flushing Meadows fortnight, the ageless Agassi has continued to show the superb skills of a champion who shows no signs of slowing down.
With his 33rd birthday approaching on April 29th, Agassi may be playing the best tennis of his career. His commitment to conditioning, striking strokes, extraordinary execution and remarkable eye-hand coordination that enables him to pounce on serves in excess of 120 mph and pound punishing returns past astonished opponents continue to absolutely astound current and former foes.
"Andre’s hand-eye coordination I think is unmatched in anyone that I’ve ever seen either on tape or in person, male or female," said former No. 1 Jim Courier, who trained with Agassi at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy when the pair were promising juniors. "I just don’t think anyone’s ever seen the ball the way that he sees it. And picked up the ball earlier and been able to time it. It’s cool man. Where have we ever seen a guy consistently over his career have (such great) ground strokes and be able to half volley from the baseline? It’s just that kind of ability is really once in a generation if not once in a century. Now that has been baffling to me to watch over the years, having seen him since he was 12 years old do it. You know, that is incredible."
Courier's comments came in a conference call with the media conducted last week to promote his upcoming appearance in The Miracle Match Foundation's Matches For A Cure charity tennis events. Courier clashes with John McEnroe in a battle of former top-ranked players set for the Donald Reynolds Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 9th and at the SBC Center in San Antonio, Texas on April 10th.
A four-time Grand Slam champion, Courier has confronted both Agassi and Sampras in Grand Slam finals. Adjusting his position on the return of serve after a Roland Garros reign delay, Courier rallied from a two sets to one deficit to defeat Agassi, 3-6, 6-4, 2-6, 6-1, 6-4 to claim his first Grand Slam championship in the 1991 French Open final. Two years later, Sampras scored a 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3 victory over Courier to win his first Wimbledon crown.
Asked to analyze the Sampras-Agassi match-up, Courier said the record supports Sampras' edge in head-to-head play, but qualified his answer by pointing out any accurate comparison must take into account the surface the pair played on.
"That’s really a tricky question to say because I think that clearly the match up favors Pete if you look at the results," Courier said. "A great serve and volleyer against a great base liner on the hard, fast surfaces will win. Of course if they played the bulk of their tennis on clay the record would be reversed. So that’s really an unanswerable question. I think they’re both brilliant tennis players and they both have their strengths and weaknesses. I mean Andre doesn’t volley very well, adequately, but Pete on the ground (strokes) is pretty vulnerable too."
Suggesting Sampras' success was more dependent on a single shot - his serve - Courier gave Agassi the edge in a hypothetical match-up that takes away the players' biggest weapons.
"I think if you take away their best shot, Andre’s a better player," Courier said. "If you take away Pete’s serve, and you take away Andre’s return, I think Andre’s going to beat Pete. That’s my feel. But that’s irrelevant because you can’t do that."
Sampras' sensational serve, particularly his devastating second delivery, which in his prime was regarded as perhaps the best in history, makes his former Davis Cup captain, John McEnroe, place the seven-time Wimbledon winner and 11-time Grand Slam champion Rod Laver as the premier players in tennis history, with Agassi and Borg a level below them.
"Laver was my idol, and he won the Gram Slam twice, so it’s hard to put anyone above him," McEnroe said. "But I sort of put (Sampras and Laver) in the same boat. And after that, it’s like another group of people -Agassi has come up, and he’s shown to be one of the greatest, and Borg when he won the six French and then five Wimbledons - and it’s so difficult to do that together. And I’m not as familiar with Don Budge. I knew Don Budge as a person, he’s a great guy, but I didn’t see Don Budge play. And I didn’t see Lew Hoad, who I heard was a great player. Certainly Pete is up there. Like to me, it’s like him (Sampras) or Laver is like the greatest player. Pete's got the greatest serve in the history of tennis."
Neither Agassi nor Sampras remember much about their first meeting in a junior tournament when Agassi was 10 and Sampras was nine except that Agassi was taller than Sampras at the time. They can look back on their shared past knowing they took that each helped the other take tennis to new heights.
By Richard Pagliaro
Source: Sports Media Inc
Recent Headlines
April 01, 2012
November 20, 2011
October 29, 2011
October 01, 2011
July 13, 2011
- "Li Na and Friends" to square off with Sampras and others at two-day tennis event in Wuhan - petepage
June 18, 2011
May 04, 2011
Back to News