19-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer and his idol, Pete Sampras are quite different from each other in one department, the duo’s former mentor Paul Annacone has revealed.
Annacone, who was the architect of Pistol Pete’s many Grand Slam crowns and guided Federer to the 2012 Wimbledon title believes that while Federer can swallow a bitter loss, even at the age of 36, Sampras didn’t have such a quality during the twilight of his career.
“For Roger he has done an amazing job of keeping a similar perspective throughout his career,” Annacone told Express Sport.
“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.
“And 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 the 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.”
