March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Seven years and 29 Grand Slams have passed since tennis was played in Madison Square Garden, where it once was as much a part of New York City as fresh bagels and midtown sidewalks clogged with tourists staring at skyscrapers.

Roger Federer, the world's No. 1 player with 12 victories in the sport's top tournaments, faces Pete Sampras, a Hall of Fame retiree with a record 14 Grand Slam titles, in an exhibition before 19,000 fans at the Manhattan arena March 10.

The match brightens a winter for New York sports fans who are watching the Garden's main inhabitants fall short of expectations. Basketball's Knicks are last in their division with an 18-43 record, and hockey's Rangers are sixth in their conference after starting the season with a league-high $51.8 million player payroll. New York needs this match, says the event's promoter.

``Tennis was thriving when it was at Madison Square Garden,'' said Jerry Solomon, who is producing the event with former world No. 1 player Ivan Lendl. ``We think that it's been a big loss for the sport not to be at the Garden.''

Solomon wouldn't say how much Federer and Sampras will be paid for the match or how much promoters expect to make. Tickets ranged from $50 to $1,000 each.

Pop Culture

Before the sport abandoned the Garden for venues abroad, New York glitterati played the game and rushed to get the latest designer tennis duds, said Mark Mason, who ran the tennis concession at the Garden then.

``We carried lines from Italy that were very popular with celebrities, like Fila, Ellesse, and Tacchini, and everybody would wear the warm-up suits to the events,'' said Mason, 59, who owns Mason's Tennis in Manhattan and will be selling his wares at the Federer-Sampras match. ``There were so many celebrities playing then.''

Mason's memories of the sport's boom years include outfitting a 1979 tennis fashion show at Studio 54 and regular matches with actor Robert Duval at the now-defunct East River Tennis Club. Duval unleashed a raging temper when he lost, Mason said.

``On the next court was Robert Redford, and Dustin Hoffman would also play,'' Mason said in a telephone interview. ``You had all these stars who were so into tennis. It's sad now that we don't have that anymore. That was a heyday.''

Moving Away

Those Italian tennis suits, spun from Egyptian cotton and fine wool, are now made in China and Vietnam from inferior materials, Mason said. New York's season-ending tournaments played each December or January long ago moved overseas as well.

J. Wayne Richmond, a former executive vice president of the ATP Tour, said economics forced the men's Masters championship to move to Frankfurt in 1990. After stops this decade in Lisbon, Sydney and Houston, the event, now named the Tennis Masters Cup, is held in Shanghai.

``The ability to grow the event financially was in Germany and then ultimately into China, which is not unlike a lot of American companies,'' said Richmond, the tournament director for the Federer-Sampras match, in a telephone interview.

The WTA Tour's season-ender was held at the Garden for 22 straight years before also moving to Germany in 2001.

Bud Collins, ESPN's tennis analyst who has covered the sport on television since 1968, said the WTA should have kept the event in the city. It hurt the U.S. Tennis Association, the sport's national governing body.

``Here were the two great tournaments in New York and the USTA should have said, `We're going to keep them here, they belong here,''' Collins said. ``Nobody was really thinking much of the future. They just thought these tournaments would go on forever.''

Exhibition Series

The March 10 match will feature two of the most dominating players in the sport's history. Federer, a 26-year-old Swiss, has won the past four U.S. Opens. Sampras, 10 years older, retired from the tour in 2002. The American now plays exhibitions, World Team Tennis and seniors tournaments.

Their only meeting in a tour event was a five-set match at Wimbledon in 2001 won by Federer. They played three exhibitions in Asia last November, Federer winning 6-4, 6-3 in Seoul and 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-5) in Kuala Lumpur before Sampras won 7-6 (10-8), 6-4 in Macau.

Sampras returns to the Garden for the first time since a 1996 exhibition, his only other match there. Federer has never played in the arena.

``It's exciting for me at this stage of my life to go out and play in front of a packed house in New York,'' Sampras said. ``This gives the American fans a chance to see both of us, him a little bit more on the lighter side, a fun side, but also a competitive side.''

Tracy Austin, who won the WTA's year-end event in 1980, said she still remembers her first visit to the Garden as a 15- year-old, seeing pictures of Muhammad Ali and Frank Sinatra that lined the corridor walls.

``I clearly remember seeing those photos and thinking this was a really special place,'' Austin said in a telephone interview. ``They were very educated fans and came to the Garden appreciating tennis.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Mason Levinson in New York at mlevinson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 7, 2008 00:07 EST