by Pete Sampras
In the morning, I would go to Vista Grande Elementary at eight and stay until noon. Then mom would pick us all up and take us home. I would eat lunch, change, and head over to the Kramer Club at three, where I would play a set or two with whoever was scheduled that day. There were enough fast-track kids—there’s that California tennis advantage—that partners were always in abundance. I played with Melissa Gurney, Joey Ladam, Pete Fitzpatrick, Tom Blackmore, Eric Amend, and others. Some of them, like Gurney and Amend, went on to have pro careers. Others were merely outstanding juniors. Two days a week there was tennis camp at the club, and some days—more often, as time went on—I had a lesson. My day ended around 7 P.M., when I would have dinner back at home, do homework, go to sleep, and wake up—only to do the whole thing again.
It was as regimented as it sounds—and it only became more so as I got older. But in order to be great at something, it really needs to be the focus of your life. In that sense I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t have this great social life, a big academic load, and athletic ambitions, and be able to focus on all of them. It takes a lot of time and work to get good at tennis, and those childhood years are pivotal.
It wasn’t like I neglected school, either. I was a solid student, maybe in the A– or B+ category. I worked pretty hard, was pretty organized, and was always in the advanced math section of class, as I was very good with formulas. Although I wasn’t very verbal or expressive even then, I’ve always been a good reader. I get bored quickly, though. I’ve only read a handful of books in my life. The one I really liked and remember best is J. D. Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye. I read Catcher during sophomore year of high school and was very curious about what was going to happen to the protagonist, Holden Caulfield—a kid about as different from me as you could get.
I had no “best friend” at school, or time for the kids I did call my buddies. What I had of a social life was based at the Kramer Club. We tennis kids played together, went to some of the same tournaments together, and all fit in at the club as well—or better—than we did in school. That remained true right up through high school.
The club was overwhelmingly about tennis, although there was the occasional social event, a barbecue or something. I didn’t really feel pressured to play, and I had already made this naive and, in some ways, groundless assumption that I was going to make it. I was going to win tournaments and have a lot of money and fast cars and all those trappings that ended up not meaning very much to me at all. I never felt like I had anything to worry about on that score.
I eventually moved along from Vista Grande to Ridgecrest Intermediate School. My tennis education and training continued, and when it came time to move on to high school, something pretty dramatic happened to shape my future. Most of the kids from Ridgecrest moved on to Rolling Hills High School. But for some reason, Gus and I were assigned to Palos Verdes High School. If I had gone to Rolling Hills, I would have been among all my school friends. But at PV, I knew nobody. At the same time, my tennis development was becoming more time-consuming, and that denied me the chance to make new friends.
At 11:30 A.M. every day, I would go home from school. I had nobody to hang out with, because my friends were in Rolling Hills. My life revolved around home and the Kramer Club. I was shy to begin with, but as I got deeper into adolescence, I grew even more introverted. When other kids were thinking about going out or going on dates, I was in an awkward phase. I wasn’t interested in girls, I was just thinking about tennis. Stella led a much more active social life; she went on dates, she attended her prom. But that was all okay, because I had no aspirations to be class president; I knew what I was, and what I would be in the future: a tennis player. Around school I became known as “the tennis kid.”
Tennis wasn’t a big sport in my school the way football was, despite all the tennis talent in the area. I played for the PV team and didn’t lose a match for two years. I was a bit of a loner, by circumstance if not choice. Part of it was that I didn’t have time for other people. But I wasn’t all that interested in what other kids were doing, either. I didn’t feel competitive with them, or judge myself against them. I never got in a fight and I didn’t envy the football team quarterback, who was the big man on campus. I just lived in a parallel reality that sometimes intersected with the life of an average high school kid.
Palos Verdes has some pretty well-to-do people, and some of the kids embraced that “teenage wasteland” mentality. They were unfocused and bored, but wealthy enough to have no material concerns. They were a little out of touch with the realities of everyday life, except as it pertained to the school social order, or the alternative one that existed among the kids who rebelled. Some of the kids smoked weed on lunch break, there was a little bit of that “secret life of suburbia” going on, but it meant nothing to me. Tennis was great for me in that way; it kept me clear of trouble and blunted whatever teen angst I carried around.
Knowing what my life was like, and how withdrawn I was, you could easily cast me as some kind of tennis robot. I don’t think that’s accurate, because I truly loved what I was doing. There were days when I rebelled and didn’t want to practice. When I just wasn’t into hitting balls for a couple of hours yet again. But largely, I stuck with it. A lot of that had to do with Pete Fischer, kind of by default. I mean, it wasn’t my dad telling me I had to go and play, it was Fischer encouraging me to keep at it. Dad took a more hands-off approach. He let Pete run the show. I can’t remember a single occasion when my father came down on me for not wanting to practice.
There definitely was a part of me that wanted to have fun, that wanted to live like the other kids did, but it never got to the point where I struggled with it. I was motivated, and I had all the support I needed, tenniswise. I was pushed a little bit, sure, but I never felt pressured to do anything; what pressure I did feel was self-imposed. I knew we were putting a lot of money into my development. I knew from our family dynamics that I was getting the lion’s share of attention. The entire family was there for me, doing things like driving for six hours so I could play the Fiesta Bowl junior tournament. I saw my father, who never uttered a word of complaint, playing that ATM like it was a slot machine, day after day, to finance my training. Cha-ching, cha-ching . . . That was real money, and I knew it. I loved playing, but I also felt responsible for making sure that all that sacrifice and effort—by my dad, my siblings, and my coaches—paid off. I felt it deep inside.
Most of my peers and even teachers had no idea of where I was going with my life. When I started traveling to play tournaments, I sometimes had to take a letter to my teachers, explaining why I would be away for a few days. One math teacher—a Mr. Eberhard—reading of my need to go to South Africa for ten days, rolled his eyes. I could tell exactly what he was thinking: Who the hell do you think you are, leaving school for ten days? The chances of you making it as a big tennis star are slim to none. . . . And you know what? I would have done the same thing in his shoes—the chances really are slim to none.
I can see where being “the tennis kid” might seem kind of depressing—a pretty grim, regimented life. I had no dates, no prom. I had endless lessons and practice sessions, year-round. But it was my choice, and I was happy at the time. I have an actor buddy, Luke Wilson, who’s had a pretty robust social life. I’ve often told him, “If I had met you when I was twenty-five, I’d have six majors, max.”
As a junior player between the ages of ten and fourteen, I was both a happy-go-lucky kid and an intense little dude who could lose it with the best of them in the heat of combat. I was a racket hurler, if you can believe that, and a baseline grinder with a two-handed backhand. I was always yelling, but it was more from sheer joy and effort than frustration. I remember playing my junior archrival, Michael Chang, and hitting these two-handed backhands and yelling—like, really loud. I showed a lot more of what I was feeling then than I would as a pro.
Dad was pretty strict. I’ve heard that Björn Borg’s l
egendary self-control and calm and dispassionate focus began soon after his father took his racket away for a few weeks because Björn had been such a bratty junior. Dad never took away my racket but I could feel his disapproval, and Pete Fischer’s, when I acted out, and when I sensed that from men who inspired so much respect, the message came through loud and clear.
The pivotal moment in my development probably occurred when I was fourteen, and Pete Fischer persuaded my dad that I ought to switch to a one-handed backhand. I remember that took a lot of persuading on Fischer’s part, because I was doing pretty well with the two-hander. But Fischer was a man of convictions that way—he had a big ego and a definite vision of me as the next Rod Laver. That meant winning Wimbledon, and that meant playing well on fast grass courts—something that, up to that point in tennis history, meant playing a one-handed backhand.
In order to appreciate what a difficult and risky gambit that was, you have to look through the prism of junior tennis. The competition at that level is fierce, and unregulated by social approval or media scrutiny. It’s dog-eat-dog, or puppy-eat-puppy, out there. Ambitious parents, wild-eyed coaches; they’re all jockeying desperately for the upper hand, using every trick in the book to move their kid up in the rankings and gain attention and notoriety. To some degree, the strategy pays off; you can bully, intimidate, and mesmerize your competition in the juniors, although it doesn’t work in the pros. Everyone who makes it to the top level has already become immune to most mind games.
Going to the one-handed backhand had obvious drawbacks—I would struggle (in my case, the transition lasted for two years). No junior player in his right mind, and none that I know of, was willing to take a risk of that magnitude. When you’re that young, your ego and spirit are that much more tender. If you suddenly end a winning tradition and slip back, everyone starts whispering. You hear the whispers—you always hear the whispers. And that isn’t even getting into how your parents, if they’re the hands-on type, are going to react.
Before I switched to the one-hander, I had a very competitive rivalry with Michael Chang. Michael’s parents, Betty and Joe, were very intense, but when it came to Joe Chang vs. Sam Sampras, everything was cool. They got along fine, despite the quality and intensity of our rivalry. I remember the very first time I played Michael, I won in three sets and my dad wasn’t happy that I’d lost one. He wasn’t happy about that at all. I don’t remember all he said, or exactly how he put it, but I distinctly remember that he used a word I’ve hated ever since: lousy. He said I played lousy in that set I lost. It’s a tough word. But he used to say it when I deserved it: “You played lousy.”
After I switched to the one-hander, I started losing to all kind of players, everywhere, including Michael—and that was the worst. When you’re fourteen, it’s hard to take the long view. The facts were simple: Michael and I were pretty even; in fact, I probably had a head-to-head advantage in our rivalry—until I switched to the one-hander. Then he started to hammer me. It was terrible.
What’s worse, Michael was the same age as me, and played his age division, while I “played up.” That means that when he was playing in the fourteen-and-unders, I was playing in the sixteen-and-unders. And a lot of people looked down on me for doing that: Pete’s doing that because he doesn’t want to deal with the pressure. He’s playing older kids so he’s not expected to win and he can rationalize losing. He went to the one-handed backhand, and he’s struggling, so he’s ducking the guys he needs to beat. It’s a cop-out.
You can argue the playing-up issue either way. There’s a lot to be said for taking on the pressure of beating the people you’re expected to beat day in, day out. I know, because that’s what I eventually did during my entire pro career. For me as a junior, though, the dynamic at work was Fischer’s conviction that I needn’t worry about how I fared against my peers; I had to think long term, and where the game I played would take me in the long run. Fischer was very stubborn about that, and my dad trusted him.
To us, it was always about playing the right way, trying to develop a game that would hold up throughout my career. It was a calculated risk. If it didn’t pay off, it would have shown that I was either not good enough or delusional. On the other hand, some of those juniors were like starving guys, eating everything on the table while the eating was good. They didn’t think long term, they lived and died by their daily results, ignoring the fact that what worked in the juniors (like endless soft, arcing rally shots) wouldn’t necessarily be useful on the pro tour.
There’s another factor in this discussion. The great challenge in junior tennis is avoiding pressure, because it can be huge, just huge—especially at the nationals level (the most important of the junior events, open to kids from every different USTA geographic section). By putting pressure on myself to develop a great game, I had less pressure to win. These days, I tell kids that the way I grew up, it wasn’t about winning. It was about playing well, about playing the “right” way. That approach helped me enjoy the game and develop mine to its maximum potential.
As I kept playing through that transition, I saw how much pressure to win some kids had placed on them, and what it did to their ability to compete. I can honestly say I never felt that pressure, not from my dad and not from Pete. It was never like, “Okay, you have to go out there and win this match.”
Another very valuable side effect of playing up and making a radical change in my technique was that I learned to lose. A champion is supposed to hate to lose, and it wasn’t like I was ever crazy about the idea. But I learned to deal with losing without having my spirit or confidence broken, which would help me immensely over time, not just in the big picture but even in specific matches when I found myself in a jam. Fear of losing is a terrible thing.
That may explain why I developed a trait that served me well through my entire career, although few people ever made note of it (probably because it had a lot to do with something I didn’t do, instead of something I did). I didn’t choke. Not as far as I can ever remember. Don’t get me wrong: I had bad days, matches in which I froze up because I felt overwhelmed, or in which I never got my game together. There were days when I lacked determination, and lost. But choking is different. Choking is being in a position to win, and then experiencing some critical failure of nerve or spirit. That never happened to me. And I can’t help but think it was because I was never afraid to lose.
It didn’t hurt my cause that as competitive and wound up as I could get in the heat of the moment, I was basically easygoing and had no trouble letting go of a loss. In fact, around the Kramer Club my nickname was “Smiley.” Martin Blackman, a former Stanford player who had a solid pro career, remembers playing me in the finals of the consolation round in the same tournament two years running. The first year, when I was still using the two-handed backhand, I beat him. The second year, when I was already in transition to the one-hander, he creamed me. But both of those years, he remembered, I came loping up to the net to shake hands after the match with the same goofy grin plastered on my face. I wouldn’t say that the result didn’t matter to me; I just trusted my mentors and took the losses in stride.
It’s an easy thing to overlook, but always remember that everyone is different. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for development; if there was, a dozen or more players would all stand atop the record book, with exactly two Grand Slam titles each. I wouldn’t suggest that, say, Michael Chang would have benefited from going to a one-handed backhand, or that he would have won Wimbledon if he had made the change. A lot of other factors would also have to have fallen in place for that to happen.
What I am saying is that it’s wise to look at your game and take the long view—where can your natural athletic inclinations take you in five, ten, fifteen years? Given Michael’s size and the pace he generated, it would have been silly to try to create a power-based serve-and-volley game for him. It was clear in a dozen ways that he would be most effective as a counterpunching baseliner.
Everyone is diffe
rent emotionally and mentally, too. Are you malleable, or rigid? Are you patient, or attracted to risk? Do you seek attention and approval, or are you content to work hard, keep your head down, and just win? Do you have the emotional strength to handle losing, or do you need the shot of confidence winning on a daily basis can provide? Do you have all the qualities—some of which have nothing to do with how you strike the ball, or what grip you use—that potentially add up to a Hall of Fame career?
In spite of the struggle I had making the transition from two-handed grinder to all-purpose player, the junior experience was big fun. I loved the traveling and staying in hotels. I thought that room service was the coolest thing on earth. Dad was a big Denny’s guy, so when we were on the road we always found a Denny’s, and the simple act of going out to eat—sitting in one of those Naugahyde-covered booths, with a laminated menu in hand—was a real treat. Plus, I had Stella with me. She was going through some of the same things as I was, even though she was two years older. She was really good, too, so she was a role model and a source of comfort to me.
My Southern California section had some great players in it. In addition to Michael Chang, we had Jeff Tarango and a few others who formed a team when we traveled to national tournaments like the Easter Bowl. But when I played our big SoCal event in Whittier, Chang, Tarango, and others of their ilk were my big rivals.
My dad got along with just about everybody. There are no crazy stories about Sam Sampras the way there are about some of the other parents. My dad never got into a shouting match with another parent, much less a fistfight. He always took the high road. And I was a compliant kid.