{"id":37550,"date":"2025-04-21T05:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37550\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T05:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:48:07","slug":"he-was-the-player-who-modelled-his-game-on-pete-sampras-and-left-roger-federer-completely-stunned-at-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37550\/","title":{"rendered":"He was the player who modelled his game on Pete Sampras and left Roger Federer completely stunned at Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Roger Federer is renowned as the master of Wimbledon and nobody has won the men\u2019s singles title more than the Swiss superstar in the competition\u2019s history. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The elegant performer won the competition eight times and with Novak Djokovic<\/a> stuck on seven titles at the All England Club, he might just keep his sensational record intact for a little while longer. <\/p>\n

Federer<\/a> was an absolute maestro when it came to the grass-court season. Very few got close to him at Wimbledon, much like very few got anywhere near Rafael Nadal<\/a> on the clay. <\/p>\n

As is usually the case with sport, however, there is always a slight blemish in any legendary player\u2019s career and in 2013, Federer was left stunned at Wimbledon<\/a>, losing in the second round to an opponent who was relatively unknown. <\/p>\n

\"PhotoPhoto by Zhe Ji\/Getty ImagesSergiy Stakhovsky stuns Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013<\/p>\n

On paper, this was a mismatch of epic proportions. Stakhovsky came into the match having won 12 matches in his entire career on grass, whilst Federer had won 13 titles on the surface. <\/p>\n

However, the script was thrown right out of the window by a player who never actually reached the second week of a Grand Slam across his entire career in stunning style. <\/p>\n

Stakhovsky went and defeated Federer in four sets in the second round, ending Federer\u2019s remarkable run of 36 consecutive quarter-finals at Grand Slam events on a court where he is considered the best ever. <\/p>\n

Stakhovsky was ranked as the world number 116 when he sent Federer into a spin and ended his quest for another Wimbledon crown in 2012, with the Russian even shocking himself. <\/p>\n

Perhaps even more remarkably, he lost the first set to Federer too. Stakhovsky lost the tie-breaker before rallying and running out a 6-7, 7-6, 7-5, 7-6 victor to leave Wimbledon stunned into silence. <\/p>\n

Stakhovsky modelled his game on Pete Sampras<\/p>\n

The player who never went any higher than number 33 in the world rankings was quizzed on who his role model was growing up and starting out in tennis after this win over Federer. <\/p>\n

It perhaps won\u2019t come as a surprise that Sampras \u2013 and Pat Rafter \u2013 were the names that he\u2019d previously considered as players that he actually looked up to as he was starting out in the game. <\/p>\n

When quizzed on Sampras and Rafter being his role models, he said in his press conference: \u201cYes (I was a fan of Sampras). That\u2019s how I try to play. But, sometimes you have to adapt to the tour and you have to play from the baseline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sampras was himself beaten by Federer at Wimbledon and perhaps the most surprising element of this defeat for the eight-time champion was that he simply got caught cold. <\/p>\n

Federer normally bles his opponents away at SW19 but he did manage to rediscover his dominance after this defeat and would win three more Grand Slam titles before his career came to a close in 2021. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Federer is renowned as the master of Wimbledon and nobody has won the men\u2019s singles title more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[13325,79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-37550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-roger-federer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennis","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114374384320232410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}