britbox said:
Can you be a bit more specific with the question as I'm not sure what it is?
Is it was Federer good on clay? or something else...
As for Pete, it doesn't have to be a choice between two extremes - a) He's horrible and stunk the place out or b) He was fantastic on clay. There's plenty of scope for a view in between. Mine is he was an average player on clay and not good enough to win Roland Garros. He wasn't terrible by any stretch and had a few good wins over decent clay court players.
I was very clear in my post but I'll come to that later. More importantly though, I don't think I can afford to post here all day just to get my point across. Yesterday, it was luxury today it's too time consuming and for nothing. Most importantly, I don't like having discussions where posters tend to make general statements rather than looking at facts and perhaps be more a bit more objective in their take but they don't. They tend to be biased and nowhere near objective. I have not seen that from any Fedal fans in any case rest assured. So I'll to make it simple and to the point.
What do you mean by Sampras had a few good wins over 'decent clay court players'? By the time Sampras encountered both Bruguera and Courier at RG in 1996, this duo already had 4 RG titles between them. Courier won in 1991 and 1992; Bruguera won in 1993 and 1994. Pete met with them only in 1996 a year later and they were all almost of same age and turned pro more or less at the same time. And Kafelnikov was about to become the Champion in 1996, so Sampras ran into essentially 3 FO winners before and after in that particular year alone.
Federer, on the other hand, in 2009 beat A. Martin, Acasuso, Paul Mathieu, Tommy Haas, Monfils, Del Potro and finally Soderling to win 2009 RG. None of these players were either past or future RG winners.
So, I'll gladly take Sampras 1996 run to semi-final at RG over Federer's run in 2009 on any given day because even when he didn't win it, it has more value and meaning to it.
Moreover, if we go deeper into Sampras performance on clay, it's worth mentioning that, Sampras had some other signficant wins over some really good players who made their mark on clay and in tennis in general.
For example, while Agassi leads Sampras 3-2 on clay, the last two victories on clay went to Sampras when Agassi was supposedly playing better tennis (1998 and 2002) according to some biased fans.
Sampras leads Corretja 2-0 on clay. Corretja beat your guy in 2000 and 2001 at RG in straight sets.
Sampras leads Muster 1-0 at RG on clay (1991). Muster then went on to win it in 1995.
Sampras is tied with Kafelnikov 2-2 on clay and while Kafelnikov had that win over Sampras at 1996 RG, Sampras won the DC tie on clay over Kafelnikov in 1995. That was a remarkable victory if anyone is kind enough to remember.
Sampras and Kuerten never met on clay.
So those are some victories on clay Sampras had against some great players on clay so he's definitely not average. He lacked consistency on clay whereas Federer was very consistent but in return, Federer almost never had to play or beat a series of prime past or future champions on clay. Only Nadal a couple of times maybe but never there where it mattered the most. And the reason why Federer was able to be this consistent on clay was because, the clay field become significantly weak after 2004. 90s might have just had the strongest clay field the tennis era ever saw. As helterskelter said, having a whole host of real challengers indicates a much deeper field than having one or two contenders at the top. That doesn't make the field in general heavy but only top heavy. Because the real danger essentially lies in the early rounds.
