The years 2004-2007 will be remembered in years to come as The Reign of Fed. In each of those years, Roger Federer won at least two, but usually three majors and was an uncontested No. 1 in the world.
His domination, plus his quiet personality and seeming effortless style have led many to compare him to the time of Pete Sampras, whose most dominant years were 1993-1995, and then again in 1997.
There’s just one problem with comparing the results of the two players, however. Every single one of the Fed’s years during The Reign was better than any year Sampras’ produced.
Take 2007, for instance: By the middle of that year, after Fed had been upset early at the Italian Open by Filipo Volandri, the buzz was that Fed was in a “slump,” seeing as how he’d also lost at the Master’s Series events of Miami and Indian Wells.
Like Sampras at the same point in 1997, Federer had won the Australian Open, but not won any all of the year’s Master Series events. Sampras had won two second tier events on faster surfaces and Federer one, but unlike Sampras, Fed had reached the finals of a clay-court Master’s Series event in Monte Carlo.
Both would win Wimbledon, an assorted pair of Master’s titles and the year-end championships. A key difference is that, unlike Sampras, Federer reached the finals of Roland Garros and won the U.S. Open. He won three majors to Sampras’ two, and yet ’97 is considered one of the Pistol’s best seasons, whereas ’07 was a slightly off year for the Fed.
Sampras, for all his greatness, never created a standard that high. Sampras never won three majors in a season. Even in 2005, when Federer “only” won two, he still put up a win-loss record of 81-4, which was the best winning percentage of anyone since John McEnroe in 1984.
At the time, calling Fed the best player in the world didn’t seem to be enough: It was simply ludicrous to believe that there was anyone better than him. Only on clay, and only against Rafael Nadal was it reasonable to expect Federer to lose, and even then the polls at Tennis.com put them at about even.
A couple of things changed in 2008. Mainly, he was beaten by Novak Djokovic in Australia and Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon. One can hardly blame him for falling to a rapidly rising star like Djokovic, especially after an illness as severe as mono, or for losing an epic 9-7 final against Nadal, who finished the year No. 1.
However, those results seemed to put Fed in freefall, hitting many of the rungs he scaled over earlier in his career. After Miami, Andy Roddick could say that nobody, nobody beats him 16 out of 17 times.
After Indian Wells, Mardy Fish got some revenge for all the “Federer reels in Fish” headlines published at Yahoo Sports in the last five years. At the Olympics, James Blake improved his batting average against Fed from .000 to .111.
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