Interesting thoughts from Annacone. Roger’s coach is completely impressed how well the Maestro is coping with his career.
Paul can compare Federer and Sampras because he has been the coach of both of them and he is amazed to see how Roger has much more fuel in the tank than Sampras had when he was the same age.
”The biggest similarity is that they’re both great and very driven,” Annacone said ”And the biggest difference is they’re very different people, and Roger is much more in the middle of his career at 31 than Pete was at 31. And Roger just loves the game and loves the life, and his life is the road. He loves it, his family loves it, and he loves tennis, he loves who he’s become.”
”I think Pete – with all due respect at that age, to him – was a little bit tired, and had achieved what he wanted to achieve. Pete was his own barometer, and he felt like he didn’t have to prove anything to himself any more, so he preferred to be home and kind of go into a different phase of life. He was very different at that age than Roger is.”
“With Roger it’s kind of an endless pool of youthful exuberance that he has for the game that’s really amazing to be around. Roger, with all due respect to the smaller tournaments, wins a small tournament and is emotional and loves it, where Pete, I don’t want to put words in his mouth but Pete would be, ‘Why are you even playing that tournament?’ And so he loves the game; he’s at a different stage but a similar age.”
Does it mean that Roger will retire at 40? It would not be a surprise!
