wb99sampras_henman

Points won by each set: | 24-31, 39-32, 35-25, 35-30 |
Points won directly behind the serve:
37 % Sampras – 44 of 118
39 % Henman – 53 of 133

Despite tremendous support of the local crowd, Henman [6] couldn’t find a solution to beat Sampras [1] in the Wimbledon semifinal for the second consecutive year. Just like a year before there was a four-setter and quite unexpectedly no tie-break in those eight sets. Sampras began their ’99 meeting in a strange fashion, he had big problems to put his 1st serve inside the boxes, already in his first service game he committed three double faults (all deuce court) and needed as many as 15 points on serve to get his first direct point! Henman broke him twice (lost his own serve in the 3rd game of the match) and made a promising 1-0 lead. The crucial moment of the match came in the 10th game of the 2nd set – Henman withstood two set points to have a game point, then lost two of the next three points with double faults allowing Sampras to get back to his normal groove. In the 4th set Henman had a break point at 4:3 – Sampras erased it with a big serve.

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