by Pete Sampras
A
CHAMPION’S
MIND
For my wife, Bridgette, and boys, Christian and Ryan: you have fulfilled me in a way that no number of Grand Slam titles or tennis glory ever could
Introduction
Chapter 1
1971–1986 The Tennis Kid
Chapter 2
1986–1990 A Fairy Tale in New York
Chapter 3
1990–1991 That Ton of Bricks
Chapter 4
1992 My Conversation with Commitment
Chapter 5
1993–1994 Grace Under Fire
Chapter 6
1994–1995 The Floodgates of Glory
Chapter 7
1996 My Warrior Moment
Chapter 8
1997–1998 Wimbledon Is Forever
Chapter 9
1999–2001 Catching Roy
Chapter 10
2001–2002 One for Good Measure
Epilogue
Appendix
About My Rivals
Acknowledgments / Index
Copyright
A few years ago, the idea of writing a book about my life and times in tennis would have seemed as foreign to me as it might have been surprising to you. After all, I was the guy who let his racket do the talking. I was the guy who kept his eyes on the prize, leading a very dedicated, disciplined, almost monkish existence in my quest to accumulate Grand Slam titles. And I was the guy who guarded his private life and successfully avoided controversy and drama, both in my career and personal life.
But as I settled into life as a former player, I had a lot of time to reflect on where I’d been and what I’d done, and the way the story of my career might impact people. For starters, I realized that what I did in tennis probably would be a point of interest and curiosity to my family. If and when my children (and the members of my large extended family) want to experience and understand what I was about, and what my times were like, I’d like them to experience it through my eyes. As I write this, both of our sons, Christian and Ryan, can already throw a ball straight—which my father, Sam, said was my own first sign of athletic talent. And I’d like for my fans, and tennis fans in general, to see it through my eyes, too. This book is my legacy.
And there was something else: my ability to fly pretty low beneath the public’s radar was a great benefit to my career; it helped me stay focused and out of the limelight. That’s how I wanted it. But that also meant that my career would only be known in a piecemeal way. I liked the idea of pulling all the bits and pieces together, putting them in perspective, and making the connections that were ignored or not noticed.
In the course of writing this book, I realized that I led a pretty eventful career without ever letting individual events overtake it. My first coach spent time in jail; the mentor who was instrumental at the time when my mature game was really emerging was stricken by cancer and died at an early age; I lost one of the closest friends I had among the players to a tragic accident. I had some stress-related physical problems and at least one career-threatening injury—at a time when I was poised to overtake Roy Emerson as the all-time Grand Slam singles champ. I had my tiffs with fellow players and even my sponsors and the tennis establishment. Yet those aren’t the things that come to most people’s minds at the mention of my name. I’m glad and proud of that, but I also want to acknowledge those events and incidents, and reveal what they meant and how they affected me.
This isn’t one of those score-settling books, though. From the outset, my goal was to write a tightly focused tennis book—one that tells my story in a way that also celebrates the game, and the period in which I played. Truth is, I’m a live-and-let-live guy. My lifelong tendency has been to deal with things head-on and then move on.
I played tennis during a time of sweeping changes. It started with a burst of growth in the level of international competition, and included features like the revolution in equipment, the intense commercialization of the game, the first high-profile performance-enhancing drug scandal in tennis, and the slowing down of the speed of the game—a process that began at the tournament I loved best and where I probably played my best, Wimbledon.
It was a glorious period, my time, especially for American tennis. My generation included four Grand Slam champions (Michael Chang, Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, and me), and players from other nations proved to be some of my most fierce and determined rivals. That high level of competition has continued as Roger Federer, a Swiss who has become a good friend, has emerged to pick up Grand Slam titles at a record-breaking clip. Time seems to move slower or faster as events change, and the time came for me to add my story, told in my words, to the record.
Ted Williams, the great Boston Red Sox slugger, once said that all he wanted out of life was that when he walked down the street, people would point and say, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.” Early in my career, I adopted a similar attitude. It may strike some as arrogant, but that’s the kind of fuel you need to really reach the heights of achievement. There were times in my career when I would step up to the service line at a crucial moment in the heat of combat in a big match and pause to drink in the atmosphere. Fired up by adrenaline, I’d look toward the crowd and defiantly say to myself, All right, everybody, now I’m going to show you who I really am.
Most champions have that kind of aggression, that competitiveness. It comes with the territory. You don’t survive long with a target on your back without it. But there’s this, too: in our sport, the best of players and fiercest competitors are often also gentlemen—good sports and role models. Just look at Rod Laver before my time, and Roger Federer after it.
This book will tell you, in a broader and less intense way, who I really am.
LOS ANGELES, JANUARY 2008
A
CHAMPION’S
MIND
I’m not sure you need to know who you are and what you want from the get-go to become a great tennis player. Different players have arrived at that destination in different ways. But me, I knew. I knew, almost from day one, that I was born to play tennis. It may not be mandatory, but knowing who you are and what you want—whether it’s to play a violin in a concert hall or build great big skyscrapers—gives you a great head start in reaching your goals.
I was born in Potomac, Maryland, on August 12, 1971, the second youngest of four kids. Gus, my brother, is four years older than me. My sister Stella—the other serious tennis player among my siblings—is two years older, and the baby of the family is my sister Marion.
My father, Sam, is of Greek stock. When I was born, he was working in Washington, D.C., as a Defense Department mechanical engineer. With a wife, Georgia, and four kids to support, he also was part owner—with three brothers-in-law—of the McLean Restaurant and Delicatessen in suburban McLean, Virginia. Although it wasn’t a Greek joint per se, my family brought a Greek flair and love of good food to the establishment, so it was very successful.
I have almost no memories of life in Potomac, but I do remember getting hold of an old tennis racket and taking to it like it was the ultimate toy or something. I hit against anything I could find that was hard enough to send the ball back. Mostly it was the cement wall of a nearby Laundromat. Eventually I gravitated toward a local park that had some courts, and I took a lesson or two. I just fell into it, but I believe there was a reason I was drawn to it, just like there was a reason why Tiger Woods picked up a golf club, and Wayne Gretzky a hockey stick.
My dad remembers that some guy came up to him in the park in Potomac and said, “Your son—he looks like he can really play tennis.” I think Dad took that to heart, even though he wasn’t a huge sports fan and we had no real tennis tradition in the family. We were Greek America
ns, firmly connected to our roots in many ways. Some small nations in the Western world, like Croatia and Sweden, have a rich tennis tradition. But Greece isn’t one of them. Culturally, tennis was completely off our radar.
Dad knew nothing about tennis, so he had no aspirations for me until I displayed interest in the game. He also was utterly unfamiliar with the tennis scene, which is insular and mostly made up of people whose families have been involved in the game for multiple generations. But he noticed that I had a strong athletic bent. Even as a toddler, I could kick a ball well and throw it straight. That stuff just came naturally to me.
When I was seven, Dad had the opportunity to transfer to the Los Angeles area, a traditional hotbed for the aerospace and defense industries. Tennis was probably the furthest thing from his mind. Unbeknownst to us, but very, very fortunately, Southern California is also the epicenter of U.S. tennis culture—especially the populist branch of it. Tennis in the United States always did have two faces. It was a preferred sport of the wealthy, especially in the Northeast in places like Boston, Newport, New York, and Philadelphia, which traditionally hosted most of the major events, including the U.S. Open. The game there was laden with tradition, and up until shortly before I was born, grass was the major surface. California was a different story altogether.
The sunny climate on the West Coast made tennis a year-round, outdoor game that anyone could play with limited resources, and there were no socially intimidating overtones. There was plenty of space, so public courts sprang up all over the place. Most of those courts were made of cement, because they were cheap to build and easy to maintain. California evolved into a major tennis location. The earliest great players to come out of the West Coast were guys like Ellsworth Vines, who is still legendary for his awesome serve, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzalez, Stan Smith, Billie Jean King, and Tracy Austin.
The big serve and an aggressive style of play were the underpinnings of the “California game.” Techniquewise, tennis is played a little differently by region and on different surfaces. The contrasts are pronounced enough so that the most common grips used in tennis—the Continental (European), Eastern, and Western—are all named for the regions where they were popular and suited the courts in use.
Part of my legacy—or so I’m told, anyway—is that I came close to being the model all-around player. I had a big serve and aggressive baseline game, which was pure, populist California. But I eventually embraced serve-and-volley tennis and did my major damage on foreign soil at the greatest—and most elite—tournament in the world, winning seven men’s singles titles at Wimbledon. The only surface I never entirely mastered was slow European clay, insofar as I never won the biggest clay tournament, the French Open.
In my style and results, I transcended my regional and even national background to a greater extent than some of my predecessors as the world number one player. Take my countryman Jimmy Connors. Although he was from Illinois, he relocated to California at an early enough age to mature his game on the hard courts there. He “only” won Wimbledon twice, clinging to his all-court style, although that game was good enough to earn him five U.S. Open titles, three on his beloved hard courts.
The most important thing about California was the opportunity presented by that strong, diverse, deeply rooted tennis culture. Lacking a strong family background in tennis, we were going to have to play it by ear and make it up as we went along. Thankfully, we were right in the eye of the Open-era hurricane that started in 1968, when professional players finally were invited to compete with the amateurs at the four “majors,” or Grand Slam events (the Australian, French, and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon). That shift to Open tennis ensured that all the good players in the world could compete in the same tournaments, so you would end up with a true champ, and it launched a tennis boom that brought the game to millions of new players and potential pros.
By the time I moved to California, the state was teeming with world-class players and prospects, and it offered great development, training, and playing opportunities. It was mind-blowing—or would have been, had we been aware of all that. But we were not.
Anyway, my father cashed out of the deli business. It was getting old for him, what with brothers-in-law for partners. He had done very well and he needed a break. He finally felt secure enough to take the plunge that so many newly minted Americans and immigrants had taken before him. He was going west, following the American Dream to California. After a few trips to the coast to establish our home in Palos Verdes, he returned to Potomac and gathered us up.
One fine morning in 1978, he got us all packed into the car. I remember we had a tiny blue Ford Pinto, a bare-bones economy car (the Pinto later became famous when somebody discovered that if you rear-ended it, the car blew up). We piled into the Pinto—all six of us—and headed west. Wait, make that seven, because we were also taking our parrot, Jose. If you’re familiar with the classic Chevy Chase movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, you’ll know all you need to know about our situation.
I hit the ground running when we arrived in Palos Verde and moved into our modest 1,500-square-foot home. As the oldest child, Gus had his own room, and I ended up sharing with Marion—in fact, I didn’t have my own room until I was fifteen or sixteen. Shortly after we got to Palos Verdes, we found out that it was a tennis-rich environment. The Jack Kramer Club, which had been instrumental in developing so many fine players (including Tracy Austin), was nearby in Rolling Hills. And then there was West End, where I began taking lessons from one of the all-time great coaches, Robert Lansdorp.
I was a shy, introverted kid, but if you “took” from Lansdorp, you were right in the thick of things and a lot of people checked you out. It seems weird now, but we were told shortly after I started working on my game that I was going to be a great tennis player. Almost immediately, people were comparing me to guys like Eliot Teltscher, saying I was as good at fourteen as Eliot, a prodigy, had been at sixteen. (He went on to have a great pro career, becoming a perennial world-top-ten performer.)
By the time I reached my teens, I assumed that I was going to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, which was a real reach. A lot of kids are told they’re great, believe it, work toward it—and eventually fall by the wayside. They may not have the right temperament or long-term physical assets; they might not be able to handle the expectations, they may have insurmountable flaws in their technique, their dedication, or approach to their career. The idea that none of the things that could go wrong would go wrong is borderline preposterous—except when it isn’t.
But maybe the assumption that I was going to be as great as everyone suggested helped me become what I am. Deep down, I knew. I had that confidence. The amazing thing is that nothing happened to break it, tone it down, or take it away—and I went through a lot that could have robbed me of that sense of destiny.
Not long after I started playing at the Kramer club, my dad became acquainted with a member named Pete Fischer. He was a successful pediatrician originally from New York, and he looked the part and played tennis like it. He was thickly built, with a big belly, and had one of the most horrific tennis games anyone ever laid eyes on. But he was a very smart, stubborn tennis visionary—a true tennis nut.
Fischer looked at me and saw some kind of supernatural talent, so he befriended my dad, who would take me to and from lessons, and ultimately convinced Dad to allow him to become my coach. In retrospect, “coach” is not exactly the right word for Fischer, because his greatest asset was knowing what he didn’t know. He was a hacker tennis player who masterminded my tennis development in a wise way—by having various coaches and specialists bring their unique skills to my development. He had grand, almost preposterous plans for me. He was like a combination of mad scientist and general contractor—one who was in charge of building the all-time Grand Slam champion.
Fischer’s smartest move, by far, was convincing my dad to let him take charge of my tennis career. He became our adviser, confidant, and tennis go-to guy. In hindsight, th
e thing I valued most about Pete is what he did for my relationship with my dad. He kept tennis out of it. Pete was in the driver’s seat. My dad, who would have been the first to admit he knew nothing about the game, did not have to take on the responsibility of my development. The lines between parent and coach would never blur; my results, or lack thereof, never caused strain or tension. My dad was always present in my development and career, but he was in the background. As Robert Lansdorp later put it, “He was the guy on the other side of the Cyclone fence, standing back, just watching.”
This was an especially good approach because of the kind of man my father is. He isn’t a hugger, and he’s not a big communicator. Like most of the Sampras men, including Gus and me, he’s reserved. It takes some time for us to warm up to people and we’re more likely to linger in the background than to step out and be the life of the party. We share a sarcastic streak. It’s not an ideal temperament for dealing with the nature of the pro tennis tour, where you’re constantly moving, meeting new people, making chitchat, and trying to remember names. On the other hand, our natural shyness and reticence makes it easier to stay above the fray and avoid getting sucked into distractions. That’s a huge asset once you become a top tennis player.
I didn’t see much of my dad as a child, because he worked two jobs—he was all about supporting the family while my mother took care of us, physically and emotionally. But as I got deeply involved in tennis, the game became a way to spend time with my dad. He would take me to and from tennis lessons after work, or to junior tournaments on weekends. But even then, it wasn’t like my father and I talked a lot. My confidant was my sister Stella; she was a little older, so I looked up to her, and she was the only other serious player in the family. Occasionally the entire family would travel to a junior event. For a while, we traveled around in a beat-up Volkswagen van.