The clash of times is now over. In conjunction with Malaysia’s 50th year of independence, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer were invited for an exhibition match on the 22nd of November. I’ve always been a huge fan of Sampras, but I didn’t want to go and watch the exhibition. After all, he retired ages ago, and he would be playing against the current world number one! As it turned out, T got free stadium passes from his cousin who works in ntv7, and he really wanted to go, so I ended up following him.

We arrived when the two of them were warming up. We didn’t have seats, but we managed to get a place to stand, and the view was pretty great. It was probably even better than those people sitting way up in the second tier! I brought my camera, but from where we were standing, they looked pretty tiny. T’s cousin went down as far as he could go, but as my camera wasn’t a canggih one, you can see the net that was erected to stop the balls from flying out of the court. These were the best shots that we managed to get.

Although it was a thrill to see Sampras live, he looked very slow at times. He never was the best mover, even when he was actively playing, and now, he looks even slower. However, his serve seems to be even faster now! Apparently, he said that with the new technology, his baseline strokes are more powerful, as well as his serve. He was consistently hitting serves at about 215 – 220 kmph! He tried to do his ‘basketball’ jump a few times, but the balls that Federer sent over were generally too high and landed out of the court, so I didn’t manage to see it.

They played one exhibition match in Seoul a few days earlier, where Federer defeated Sampras with a score of 6-4, 6-3 or something like that. This round, Sampras was never broken, although Federer still won 7-6, 7-6. I just heard on the news that Sampras managed to defeat Federer in the third round of the exhibition in Macau, 7-6, 6-4. Somehow, I doubt that Federer was playing at his best. It’s probably in their contract, or something like that saying “You must not humiliate your opponent.” Otherwise, it’s speaks volumes of the quality of today’s game if a 36 yr old former number one was able to defeat the current world number one so easily.

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