Roger Federer’s Wimbledon bout with Pete Sampras in 2001 marked the transition point between two golden eras of tennis.
In the fourth round at the All England Club that year, Federer clashed with Sampras for the first and only time, with the 19-year-old prodigy ultimately coming out on top in a classic five-set thriller, knocking out the defending champion.
As the American legend’s playing days neared their end, the Swiss star embarked on a Hall of Fame career, in which he would go on to capture 20 Grand Slam titles.
Federer and Sampras took tennis to new heights in their respective eras and were both guided to success by the same coach: Paul Annacone.
Annacone, who coached Sampras from 1995 to 2002 and Federer from 2010 to 2013, once pinpointed a big difference between the two greats.
Paul Annacone’s comparison of Roger Federer and Pete Sampras
As per Express Sport in 2017, Annacone said: “For Roger, he has done an amazing job of keeping a similar perspective throughout his career.
“When I was with him, starting in 2010 and even talking to him this year, seven years later at 36 years of age, he generally perceives the losses very similarly to what he did when he was younger.
“When Pete got to the end of his career, he went through something that I think most people do, which is the losses start to hurt more, and the winning doesn’t feel as good.
Is Roger Federer the greatest tennis player of all time?
“That’s because, and this is how I felt too as a player, the winning feels normal. You get to a certain level and you expect to win. So it doesn’t feel as good.
“But when you lose and you see the window of your mortality starting to close, the losses start to hurt a little bit more because you feel like the clock is ticking.
“Yet with Roger this year in particular, he did an amazing job of being able to absorb and soak in that euphoric feeling of winning.
“And the few losses that he had – he only lost five times this year – he knew how to lose with a perspective very similar to what he did when he was younger. And that is because he has such a great sense of self.
“He has had such great good fortune in what he has been able to achieve that he is able to realise that ‘look, if I win great and if I lose, I lose and go on to the next tournament’.
“Neither of these things are really going to have a huge impact in a negative way on what his legacy is. Roger has an incredible sense of self and of what he has done.
“Whereas Pete, at the end of his career he had a great sense of self, but he went 25 months without winning a tournament.”
After winning Wimbledon in 2000, Sampras endured a 25-month-long title drought, which lasted until the 2002 US Open, where he claimed his 14th Grand Slam in his final professional match.
Annacone continued: “So he was getting to a situation where he really wanted to finish on a strong note, and so frustration was starting to creep in.
“And Pete, being Pete, he had an amazing way to focus and regroup, which is what he did at the end of his career to win that US Open in 2002. That was the last match he ever played, beating Andre in the final of the US Open.
“That was poetic for his career because 12 years earlier, that was the stage where he jumped onto the global tennis scene when he beat Agassi at the US Open. Roger is in a different mindset and a different mode about his tennis.”
Serena Williams picked Roger Federer as the G.O.A.T.
Roger Federer’s achievements with Paul Annacone in his corner
Federer appointed Annacone in July 2010, following a slump in which he fell from world number one to three, the lowest he had been in the rankings since 2003.
After seven years of making the Wimbledon final, Federer lost in the quarterfinals of the championships that year, which urged him to make the switch-up in his team.
With Annacone in his corner, Federer reached the final of the 2011 French Open before clinching the Paris Masters title later that season.
Then, in 2012, he finally ended his two-year drought at Grand Slams by beating Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final.
Federer also picked up three more Masters titles in 2012, emerging victorious in Indian Wells, Madrid and Cincinnati.
In October 2013, however, Federer slipped to seventh in the world rankings and parted ways with Annacone.
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