CAMELOT FANTASIES

Do you recall the days of tennis on Carpet? 

Who excelled? Who was dismal? 

Talk about the players, the surface itself, whatever holds your fancy!

Enjoy!

Respectfully,
masterclass

General Hercules, by my count, he had 65 ATP wins in a row on carpet between 1983 and 1985, between the losses to Ivan Lendl in San Francisco final in September of 1983 and Joakim Nystrom in Dallas 1st round in April of 1985.  There was a walkover win toward the end, which doesn't count as ending the streak, but technically doesn't count as a win either.   

The other thing is at that time there were more than just ATP tournaments, so he may have had more wins and losses during that time, but I'm not counting those.

In any case, McEnroe ranks right up there as one of the greatest carpet players of all time.  His ATP match record was 346-54 (.844) and won 43 titles on carpet. 

It's a shame carpet was phased out.  One can only guess why. 

Respectfully,
masterclass

Yes, Pete was excellent on carpet, but overall he was probably better on hard and grass.  I think Sampras was a bit more vulnerable to big hitters on faster carpets like a Becker or Rusedski though he could win as often as not.

One correction to the above post.  The last Masters Cup to be played on carpet was in 2005 in Shanghai in an unforgettable match between David Nalbandian and Roger Federer, which Nalbandian, down 2 sets to love, came back to win in the 5th set decider:  6–7(4–7), 6–7(11–13), 6–2, 6–1, 7–6(7–3). 

Federer was nursing a sore ankle coming into the mid-November year ending championships, and hadn't played a tournament since beating Murray in Thailand near the end of September.  He was spotted still wearing crutches 3 weeks before the Masters Cup.  But he felt the pressure to compete due to many of the top players also citing injuries (Nadal, Roddick, Hewitt, Agassi, Safin).  Federer beat Nalbandian in the 1st match of the round robin phase - 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, before losing to him in the final. 

It was Federer's 4th and last match loss of the year, after 81 wins. If not for this loss, Federer would won 5 straight Masters Cups from 2003-2007, and would have tied John McEnroe's 1984  match record for best winning percentage in a single year with the same results (82-3 96.47%).   Federer's only losses were to Marat Safin at the Australian Open (SF), Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros (SF), to Richard Gasquet in Monte-Carlo (QF) and finally to Nalbandian in the Masters Cup final.

Here is a great video of the full match.  Enjoy!




I also found these videos of the 1996 ATP Tour World Championships in Hannover, Germany on carpet with Sampras defeating Becker in the twilight of his career.  Becker had just beaten Sampras in Stuttgart on indoor hard court for what would turn out to be Becker's final win in a Grand Prix Championship Series event (Masters Series) and next to last title win.  Enjoy!

English commentary


German commentary (but somewhat better quality video than the English version)


Respectfully,
masterclass

Actually, the Masters Cup was played on hard and carpet on and off but yes, it was last played on carpet in 2005 but starting from 1996, it was mostly played on hard surface.

As to Sampras and Becker - they met on carpet 13 times. It’s 7-6 In Becker’s favour. But 5-4 in Pete’s favour since 1993 Pete’s peak years. 15 titles on carpet for Sampras out of 64 titles and that's 23% so that's pretty good.
 
As to Rudeski, Sampras is 9-1 in overall H2H but on carpet it’s 1 all, hardly a sample size to measure if Rusedksi’ big hitting was an obstacle factor for Sampras.  And it was the notorious Paris event and that’s Rusedski’s only masters in his entire career. Even Ferrer won it to make a point.

Federer has only 2 titles on carpet but of course the surface started disappearing since the early 00s. Only the Challenger events may have a couple of indoor carpet here and there these days and I am not even sure about that. All the varieties and styles of play are all gone.