Twenty years ago, US tennis greats Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi's rivalry peaked on home soil as they went head-to-head in the 1995 US Open final.
Heading into that final their head-to-head record was identical at 8-8 but a Sampras win in that final saw the personal advantage swing firmly to him and proved an important marking point.
Tonight on Off The Ball, we spoke to The New York Times' Christopher Clarey about the nature of the duo's rivalry, how tense it got and how it affected both players, who had very different temperaments.
"Pete was his measuring stick in many ways," said Clarey of Agassi, whose career took a downward spiral after the 1995 defeat. "Andre knew he could beat him off the court and he knew he had that celebrity, attention and that focus that was on him. On the court, he was really very confident against Pete because he knew Pete had those weapons the court and the courts were faster in those days too. It wasn't the medium speed hard courts of today. The courts were faster so in some ways the deck was stacked a bit in Pete's favour already from the start.
"Also Pete was a little bit of a better athlete as well so I think all that came into play and I think Andre building up to that match - he already had a lot of wins over Pete that year - but the US Open's the big one for an American player and to lose it after the work he put in and all the improvement he thought he had made was devastating. But he had a lot going on in his life too ... the break-up of his marriage to Brooke Shields and many other things going on too."
As for the personal relationship between the two, there seemed to be tensions when they faced each other in a charity match five years ago alongside Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, and Clarey says: "There's definitely some needle there and I think at times in their career, they didn't get along well at all. There's no question about that. But there were also times when they came together for different causes."
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