We all know the greatness that is Roger Federer. We know that, at this point, literally every match he places bares some kind of historic significance.

“I never played (Stefan), just watched him on TV, but I loved all his matches, of course, at Wimbledon, and I love the way he played,’ said Safin, the 2000 US Open champion. “He’s in great shape. He serves well and moves around pretty good. He’s good. He’s really good.”

Stefan Edberg once again came back from the brink of defeat at the BNP Paribas Zurich Open to dash the title dreams of Goran Ivanisevic and lift his second ATP Champions Tour winner’s trophy. Edberg, who saved match points in his round-robin match against John McEnroe earlier in the week, again had the unenviable task of facing two match points, this time on the Ivanisevic serve before winning 3-6, 6-3, 12-10 (Champions’ Tie Break).

“I started playing pretty good at the end and it’s too bad I blew it,” he said. “Any time you’re up 5-0 in a tiebreak you should certainly win it. It was a pretty exciting match though and fun to be part of it. To me what’s important is to feel like I’m playing good and at the end there I felt like I had him on the ropes so I ended stronger than I started which was good.”

Pete Sampras sent the message that if a player were talented, self-disciplined and professional, he could exceed the seven or eight majors that seemed to be the best one could hope for in a career.

I don’t want my columns to sound as though they are a few connecting sentences holding together sayings from fortune cookies, but there is an old saying in sports about one needing to never get too high after a win or too low after a loss.

“This is a message for Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg, Goran Ivanisevic and all of you other guys,” McEnroe delivered in a warning. “I’m not coming to London to lose.”