{"id":1027,"date":"2009-07-27T22:35:35","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T06:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2009-07-27T22:35:35","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T06:35:35","slug":"pete-sampras-talks-about-freakouts-babies-and-roger-federer-at-the-la-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/pete-sampras-talks-about-freakouts-babies-and-roger-federer-at-the-la-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Pete Sampras Talks About Freakouts, Babies, and Roger Federer at the LA Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Pete Sampras took some time to talk to the media before his exhibition with Marat Safin at the LA Open and he had a lot to say about his friend Roger.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?term=sampras&#038;iid=5310112\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/6\/0\/8\/5\/The_Championships_06c6.jpg?adImageId=2024677&#038;imageId=5310112\" width=\"380\" height=\"175\"  border=\"0\" alt=\"The Championships - Wimbledon 2009 Day Thirteen\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the first day of the Los Angeles Tennis Open presented to you by the Farmers Insurance Group. Last year it was the Countrywide Classic but the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bank_of_America_Home_Loans#Subprime_mortgage_crisis\">subprime mortgage crisis<\/a> threw a wrench into that arrangement. Apparently Farmers didn\u2019t put up tons of money else we\u2019d be having the F.I.G. Open this week.<\/p>\n<p><b>Vince Spadea<\/b>, the dead serious rapper\/author who usually provides our entertainment at the LA Open, suffered a discouraging double bagel loss to <b>Robert Kendrick<\/b> this afternoon. Not to make Vince feel worse or anything but that\u2019s only the third double bagel at this event in the Open Era (1967 forward).<\/p>\n<p>I love Vince because he thinks nothing of taking on other players <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Break-Point-Secret-Tennis-Player\/dp\/1596703245\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1248759177&#038;sr=8-1\">in print<\/a> or in the interview room while no one else will say boo. He\u2019s probably still mad that <b>Patrick McEnroe<\/b> chose <b>Mardy Fish<\/b> over him for the 2004 Davis Cup team. Still, that score was pretty embarrassing and Vince isn\u2019t making it out of qualies these days so maybe he should think about starting a family.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of family, <b>Pete Sampras<\/b> is on the premises to play an exhibition against <b>Marat Safin<\/b> tonight &#8211; you could call it a rerun of Safin\u2019s 2000 US Open title courtesy of Pete.  I asked Pete about <b>Roger Federer<\/b>\u2019s instant family.<\/p>\n<p>Roger\u2019s wife Mirka gave birth to twins last week and I asked Pete if he thought to himself, \u201cUh oh, twins,\u201d when he heard the news as in one new child is manageable on the ATP tour but two is pushing it. Despite joking that Roger would immediately hit the road to escape two screaming babies, Pete said he didn\u2019t think it would affect Roger\u2019s career at all: \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to affect him. I don\u2019t see Roger changing diapers at 4am in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He may not being changing diapers at all but Pete considers raising his two sons his fulltime job so I\u2019m not convinced that it won\u2019t affect Roger. I feel bad for Pete, by the way. Not only did he lose his grand slam record to Roger but now his media sessions consist almost entirely of questions related to Roger.<\/p>\n<p>When someone asked Pete to compare his era to Roger\u2019s era, Pete said that \u201cno one scares\u201d Roger because everyone stays back \u2013 meaning that Roger doesn\u2019t have to face serve and vollyers at Wimbledon. Does Nadal scare Roger? \u201cNot the way I felt playing Goran [Ivanesivic] on grass, that scared me a little bit,\u201d Pete answered. Having said that, he does think Roger realizes that he\u2019s met his match in Nadal and as for losing to Nadal in the Australian final this year: \u201cI think it sort of freaked Roger out a little bit in Australia. Wow, maybe this kid\u2019s better than me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that being freaked out is a pretty close companion to being scared and this is not anything we couldn\u2019t have figured out ourselves. I think a lot of people were freaked out when Nadal beat Roger in Australia and Roger himself was so distraught he could barely bring himself to speak at the awards ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>But this info comes from a guy who is a good friend of Roger\u2019s who regularly exchanges texts with him and that\u2019s a big deal because Roger is not likely to publicly admit that Nadal may be better than he is anymore than he\u2019s likely to say that he was ever freaked out by anything less than a tsunami or maybe a world war. That kind of stuff does leak out in personal communications, though, and Pete is not always the most revealing guy so I pay close attention when he does reveal something.<\/p>\n<p>Safin managed to stop fooling around long enough to pull out the exhibition in a supertiebreaker in this, his last year on tour before heading back home to Moscow for good. Somehow I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll be seeing him sitting in the guest box at Wimbledon or any other slam and we\u2019re not likely to see him hanging around Los Angeles unless he gets a movie role as a tortured superhero which is actually not a bad idea. But I do expect him to take on some projects, unlike Sampras who hasn\u2019t figured out quite what to do with himself post-tennis, I just can\u2019t imagine what they\u2019d be.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any guesses or maybe even a suggestion or two? I\u2019d be happy to pass any suggestions directly on to Safin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pete Sampras took some time to talk to the media before his exhibition with Marat Safin at the LA Open and he had a lot to say about his friend Roger. Welcome to the first day of the Los Angeles Tennis Open presented to you by the Farmers Insurance Group. Last year it was the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}