Sampras takes on Federer tonight

Roger Federer and Pete Sampras will continue their head-to-head exhibitions Monday night, this time at a sold-out Madison Square Gardens in New York in the Netjets Showdown.

The match will be carried live on The Tennis Channel at 6:30 p.m. CDT. It will also be webcast online at www.stargamesinc.com.

``Look, Roger Federer obviously is a huge favorite, just based on the fact that he's 10 years younger and is playing full-on. He certainly is not going to go out there in front of 19,000 people in New York City and want to lose to Pete Sampras,'' U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe told the Associated Press. ``And Sampras is going to want to show that he can still play. ... Will it have the same intensity as a U.S. Open final? No. But it will be very competitive. Both guys will want to play as well as they can.''

Federer won two of three exhibition matches against Sampras in Asia in November. They only played each other once on tour, in the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2001, when Federer beat Sampras in five sets. That came after Sampras had won the last of his seven titles at the All England Club, and before Federer began his current streak of five consecutive championships there. It's the first men's professional tennis match at the New York arena in a dozen years. The Tennis Channel will also show the 2001 Wimbledon meeting between Sampras and Federer following tonight's exhibition.

Federer is coming off consecutive losses, in the Australian Open semifinals and the first round of an event in Dubai, so there hasn't been much activity of late for a guy accustomed to playing all the way to the end of tournament after tournament.

It wasn't until Friday that word emerged from his camp that Federer was diagnosed last month with mononucleosis, an energy-sapping infection caused by a virus.

``The good news really is to be certain of what has occurred,'' Federer said in a posting on his Web site. ``The bad news is that I have quite some catching up to do in terms of fitness as I am not in the physical state that I would normally be in at this time of the year.''

Breakdown
Pete Sampras vs. Roger Federer
Age: Sampras 36; Federer 26.
Major singles titles: Sampras 14; Federer 12
Year-end No. 1 rankings: Sampras, 6; Federer 4.