If Palpatine ever had to face someone wielding a lightsabr I always imagined he’d do something similar to what he did in Dark Empire;

The elderly Palpatine with a lightsaber just seems weird to me. The fight with Mace in ROTS, even when I watched it at age 13, just seemed silly and weird. An actual duel seemed to me to be below him,and not necessary. I always imagined his Dark side powers to be far beyond the need for a duel. The same goes for Yoda.

(I’m actually kind of amused by Lucas’ claims that he wished to go back to more artsy films, especially when athefight between Palpatine and Yoda was a golden opportunity to get weird and abstract with the Force. A “Force Battle” in my mind should be a more aggressive version of the Dagobah cave scene in ESB.
This is another thing that I liked about Dark Empire; it made the Force into an interesting and very abstract weapon. Yes it did resort to a Palpatine vs Luke duel, but it made Palpatine younger, thereby knocking him down to Luke’s level. When Palpatine was old, and even when he was young, he would use the Force in some pretty creative and crazy ways.)