Federer won his 14th Grand Slam Sunday, cementing his place as the greatest tennis player of all time. At least that’s what Pete Sampras, the only other male tennis player with 14 slams, believes.

“Regardless if he won there or not, he goes down as the greatest ever. This just confirms it,” said Sampras.

Sampras oozes class. He always has, even when he was piling up Wimbledon titles every year and was clearly the best player of his generation. Some in the media used to complain that he was bland, too boring to be a star athlete in today’s all-about-me world. Humble would have been a better description. The two hall of famers, one from California, the other from Basel, Switzerland, will forever be inter-twined in tennis lore. Both are humble — though Federer does get much more pub from the likes of GQ — and both men are wonderful ambassadors for tennis.

What has endeared Federer in the eyes of many has been the way he responded to his first taste of adversity as a professional. For four years he owned the ATP like no one has owned a league since Michael Jordan. Federer was the number one player in the world by miles. So many miles, in fact, that 60% of Federer would have been the second best player in the world…by miles. That all changed when the Bull from Mallorca, Spain, Rafa Nadal, stepped onto the court.

Almost overnight Federer went from the talk of the ATP to the back burner. The new kid in town was all the rage, especially on clay where he was damn-near unbeatable. After four consecutive losses to Nadal at the French Open, people in the tennis community assumed the French would dog Federer the same way it dogged Sampras. Adding insult to injury, Federer would suffer the ultimate loss in his professional career, losing to Nadal at Wimbledon, the house of which he has occupied since Sampras retired. The loss rocked the tennis world, with Nadal sending the clear message that a new king had arrived.

Before winning the Madrid Masters event earlier this year, Federer had gone 11 months in between tournament wins, easily the longest drought of his career (he upset Nadal, ending his ridiculous 33-match win streak on clay). That victory gave tennis fans the hope that, should the two meet in the French Open final once again, a rematch of last year’s final would be far more competitive than the hammer-job Nadal gave Federer in 2008 when Club Fed lost in straight sets, winning only four games.

Sadly for sports fans across the world, Nadal would suffer a massive upset to some dude you’ve never heard of — Robin Soderling — leaving the door wide open for Federer to conquer his clay demon. Sadly for Federer, the French Open title will always have a faint asterisk attached to it. Much like the NBA titles won by the Houston Rockets when Michael Jordan retired to play baseball, Federer’s win seems almost tainted. Tennis fans wanted to see the ultimate final. The best individual rivalry in sports, played out on one of its grandest stages. You know NBC, Nike and every other sponsor wanted it, save for maybe Lotto, who sponsored runner-up Soderling. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead we saw a veteran Grand Slam champion lay the wood to a newbie. An all-time great dismiss the one-who-didn’t-belong. It made the day bitter sweet as a tennis fan. Yes, one of the truly good guys in sports achieved historical greatness, but it came in a match that was hardly great.

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