{"id":1230,"date":"2025-06-21T03:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T03:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1230\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T03:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T03:13:09","slug":"andy-roddick-says-what-completely-changed-about-pete-sampras-whenever-he-faced-him-at-a-grand-slam-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1230\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Roddick says what completely changed about Pete Sampras whenever he faced him at a Grand Slam tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pete Sampras is a 14-time Grand Slam champion, ranking fourth in the all-time leaders in majors, trailing Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sampras<\/a> won seven Wimbledon<\/a> titles, two Australian Open crowns, and emerged victorious at his home major, the US Open, five times. <\/p>\n

The American held the world number one position for 286 weeks, the third longest of all time, and finished as the year-end number one six consecutive times on the ATP<\/a> Tour. <\/p>\n

Before the \u2018big three\u2019 came along, he was widely considered to be the greatest tennis player of all time, having dominated the 90s. <\/p>\n

Speaking on the legend\u2019s career recently, former US Open champion Andy Roddick<\/a> said Sampras\u2019 game changed completely when it came to Grand Slam events. <\/p>\n

\"Pete13 MAR 1995: PETE SAMPRAS HITS A BACKHAND IN HIS FINALS MATCH AGAINST ANDRE AGASSI DURING THE 1995 NEWSWEEK CHAMPIONS CUP IN INDIAN WELLS, CALIFORNIA. SAMPRAS WENT ON TO WIN THE MATCH 7-5, 6-3, 7-5. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Dunn\/ALLSPORTAndy Roddick says what changed about Pete Sampras at Grand Slams<\/p>\n

On the Tennis Channel Live Podcast, Roddick said of Sampras: \u201cI didn\u2019t play him on grass. I\u2019ll tell you this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won the first two matches against Pete, and I kind of was like, okay, my kick serve gets up on his backhand, you know, maybe he\u2019ll miss that side sometimes. I can protect my serve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played him in small events. I played one in Miami, and then in a small event in Houston, and then I played him at the U.S. Open in 2002, the last tournament that he ever played, and he beat the crap out of me, Steve.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrand Slam Pete was a different animal than Houston clay court final Pete. I promise you. And he drilled me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I might win the U.S. Open that year, and Pete had other ideas. He was an absolute animal, might be the most clutch player of all time. <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe not the best player that I ever played, and he doesn\u2019t get talked about enough, by the way. It\u2019s like we\u2019ve forgotten the fact that he won 14 grand slams. When we\u2019re talking about everything these days.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut under the lights, chips down, you have to have someone get out of jail with a second serve. My money\u2019s with Pete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy Roddick\u2019s head-to-head record with Pete Sampras<\/p>\n

Roddick played Sampras just three times in his career, with the treble of clashes coming from 2001 to 2002. <\/p>\n

They first faced off against each other in the round of 32 at the Miami Open in 2001, where Roddick was granted a wildcard. <\/p>\n

Sampras, the number four seed, was aiming to defend the title he had won the year before, but lost to the youngster in straight sets, 7-6, 6-3. <\/p>\nMatchWinnerScore<\/tr>\n\nUS Open 2002 Quarter-Final<\/td>\nSampras<\/td>\n6-3, 6-2, 6-4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nUS Men\u2019s Clay Court Championships 2002 Final<\/td>\nRoddick<\/td>\n7-6, 6-3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nMiami Open 2001 Third Round<\/td>\nRoddick<\/td>\n7-6, 6-3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

In Houston, the next season, Roddick emerged victorious again in their only non-hard-court meeting, winning in straight sets once more on clay.<\/p>\n

Their final bout came at the US Open in 2002, which went the way of Sampras, who went on to win the tournament, beating Andre Agassi<\/a> in the final. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pete Sampras is a 14-time Grand Slam champion, ranking fourth in the all-time leaders in majors, trailing Roger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1710,1479,1711,62,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-1230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andy-roddick","9":"tag-atp","10":"tag-pete-sampras","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114719175692652988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}