RE: [Blog] Nadal the Great, Part 1: Rafa's Window of Opportunity
Here's one for you, Clay Death. I created a spreadsheet with match-ups between the 15 greatest players of the Open Era, not counting older players like Laver, Rosewall, Newcombe and Ashe - but starting with Connors, Vilas, and Borg.
Anyhow, of those 15 players, Sampras is one of five that has a winning record against the others. His .635 winning percentage (66-38) is third after Borg (.676) and Nadal (.659).
Now one could say, but who did Sampras play? Its important to remember that Sampras was only five years younger than Edberg (8-6) and four years younger than Becker (12-7), both of whom as you can see he had winning records against. Of those 15 players he played a full 9 of them. He had winning records against all except Lendl (3-5) and Federer (0-1). Against his closest contemporaries, he fared quite well - he had a big advantage over Andre Agassi (20-14) and thoroughly dominated Jim Courier (16-4).
Of the current Big Four, Sampras only played Roger Federer once and lost. He was 30 years old and in serious decline and Federer 20 and on the rise.
I personally see no reason to believe that if Sampras was in his prime right now, he wouldn't be up there in the elite with the rest. There wasn't a comparable Big Four in his peak years, but early on there were many great players active and still in or close to their prime--Lendl, Becker, Edberg, Courier--and Andre Agassi was always good throughout his career.
I'm not saying Pete Sampras was he GOAT, but he is certainly among the greatest. I do think that Roger Federer has an overall greater record and ranks higher than him, and that Nadal is on the verge of surpassing him, but even then he's still likely the third greatest player of the last 40 years and one of the six or seven greatest of the last century.