Roger Federer and Pete Sampras put on a show in Madison Square Garden on Monday night. What did it mean?

Everybody is hunting down Roger Federer these days. David Nalbandian beat him back to back in Madrid and Paris last fall. Novak Djokovic took him out in the semifinals at the Australian Open. Andy Murray dropped him in the first round at Dubai last week.

If that’s not bad enough, the past is hunting him down too. Just as Federer gets close to Pete Sampras’ record of 14 slams, Sampras wants to remind everyone that he used to be the greatest player of all time. He knows how it is. We have short memories. The player we see today is the best ever because we forget the player of yesterday. Pete wants us to remember

You know what, that’s bull.

Sampras has exhibitions with Marcelo Rios and David Nalbandian next month. What does he have to prove to them? Nothing. No, something else was going on.

The Garden was crammed and all the big people were there: Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Stan Smith, Ivan Lendl, Roy Emerson, Billie Jean King (in a nice suit for once, God love her), Tiger Woods, the Davis Cup – yes, the Cup was the guest of honor. The courtside reporter was Justin Gimelstob and therein lies the story.

ESPN will not be broadcasting Indian Wells or Miami. Both tournaments will be broadcast on Fox Sports Net. This is how far tennis has fallen in the U.S. Instead of listening to Patrick McEnroe, Cliff Drysdale, and Mary Jo Fernandez in the broadcast booth, we’ll be listening to rookie Gimelstob and Chandra Rubin.

There is evidence of a resurgence of tennis in the U.S. – more people are playing the game – but the measure of popularity is always in the advertising numbers and clearly tennis’ numbers are not keeping up with the rest of the U.S. sports world.

ESPN can talk about wanting to focus on March Madness instead of Miami and the inconvenience of the Davis Cup schedule – Davis Cup has already migrated from ESPN to Versus – but that’s pure politeness. If tennis brought in enough advertising income, Indian Wells and Miami would still be on ESPN. At the very least, ESPN would be sharing the broadcast schedule with the Tennis Channel. By the way, the ATP year end championships have moved to Fox Sports Net too.

In my opinion, the match at the Garden was an opportunity to remind us how big tennis used to be in the U.S. It was like a prize fight. Everyone turned up for the spectacle. Everyone wanted to be seen there.

Like many prizefights, the match itself wasn’t necessarily that entertaining. The organizers set the Sampras – Federer exos up with a handicap for Federer. He didn’t have his right hand tied behind his back but the matches were played on faster surfaces than he sees on tour and that meant Sampras’ could stick to serve and volley and be competitive.

I’m not sure why people like John McEnroe say that Sampras could do some damage at Wimbledon. The grass courts at Wimbledon have slowed down since Sampras retired and the ball they now use is bigger and fuzzier. The Garden court on Monday night was so fast that four games passed before there was a substantial groundstroke rally. Sampras couldn’t get away with that at Wimbledon.

Sampras was a nervous wreck in the first set and couldn’t keep anything in the court. Federer fooled around in the second set. He gave Sampras a point on an out ball that the ballperson missed and he kept hitting slices for passing shots. It did get interesting in the third set though.

Federer went from a break up to a break down. He went through a sloppy patch but managed to gather himself to the tiebreaker. Just so you know how fast the court was, Federer hit four straight aces at one point in the third set. How often does he do that in the real ATP world?

Federer won the third set tiebreaker 8-6 to win the match, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), but we’re no closer to knowing whether Federer is slipping or not, we won’t know that until he faces Murray or Nalbandian at Indian Wells. And we already know that Federer will surpass Sampras even if he stops at 14 slams because he has two French Open finals and Sampras has none.

No, this match was a celebration of U.S. tennis history and its possible future. More tennis events are planned for the Garden. For now, though, as Federer said, “The winner was tennis. The winner was tennis in America.” I hope so.