by Pete Sampras
Andre, Jim, and I had all agreed to play Davis Cup in 1995, and as soon as the draw kicked out USA at Italy in the second round, it spelled trouble. The quarterfinal tie was scheduled for the out-of-the-way city of Palermo, Sicily, at the end of March—right after the two big U.S. hard-court tournaments (Indian Wells and Key Biscayne) left contenders like us tired and looking for some downtime before the European clay-court season.
The three of us all wanted to do what was best for Davis Cup, tennis, and ourselves. The bottom line was that nobody really wanted to go and play the Italians right after Key Biscayne, but there was pressure from various factions for us to win the Cup—how could you not win the Cup when you had Sampras, Agassi, Courier, and Chang as potential team members? It was sure to be a public-relations disaster if all of us skipped the event because we had other, more important fish to fry. We would look selfish and unpatriotic.
There was this, too: after Andre beat me in the 1995 Australian Open final, we both had the sense that the two of us would be battling it out for the number one ranking in the coming months and years. Very honestly, neither of us wanted to make a Davis Cup sacrifice that would ultimately improve the other guy’s chances at the big tournaments, or over the long hunt for the number one ranking.
At Indian Wells in the late winter with Davis Cup looming, we all recognized we had a problem, so we took the unusual step of getting together—literally, in the same room—with Tom Gullikson (who had taken over as Davis Cup captain) and a few other advisers to talk things out. And we decided, face-to-face and right on the spot, that if nobody wanted to go to Italy but somebody had to go, the only fair thing was for everyone to go.
So we made that decision and held a big press conference, saying that Andre and I were both going to Palermo, with Jim waiting in the wings if needed. Over the next few weeks, Andre and I split the Indian Wells and Miami titles. With his win over me in Key Biscayne, Andre stripped me of the number one ranking. I’d end up chasing him all summer in hopes of getting it back.
But right after our Miami match, we hopped on a plane to New York—actually, we hopped on Andre’s chartered jet, and that night paid his new girlfriend, Brooke Shields, a surprise visit on the set of her Broadway play Grease. We spent the night in New York, then flew by Concorde to London and took another private plane to Palermo for the tie.
The tie against Italy was a mismatch. The Italian singles players, Renzo Furlan and Andrea Gaudenzi, were solid top-fifty players, but nothing more. Granted, they were playing at home, on clay, before an Italian crowd that could be very vocal and unruly. But the way to neutralize that was to keep it from becoming a battle. That’s just what we did, winning the first three matches to clinch by the second day of play.
We didn’t have to worry about the semifinal tie until September, when we would be meeting a tough Swedish team led by Mats Wilander. At least we would get them at home—for Andre, literally at home, in Las Vegas.
With Davis Cup on the back burner for most of the spring and summer, and Andre much on my mind, I went to Europe with high hopes. Tim Gullikson knew how much it would mean, historically, for an attacker like me to win at Roland Garros, so we had worked extra hard on homework and preparation.
I played four events leading up to Roland Garros, and lost my very first match at three of them (I made the semis at Hamburg). At the main event at Roland Garros, I lost 6–4 in the fifth, in the first round, to Austrian journeyman Gilbert Schaller. It was a difficult time; I felt things pressing in on me from all sides. Andre was a new threat; he had snatched away the number one ranking that had been mine for two years. I was still recuperating from my ulcer, and, with the United States still alive in Davis Cup, I felt overcommitted. And then there was the Tim situation. He’d been unable to travel to Europe, and I missed him.
The good news was that my relationship with Paul Annacone was growing better all the time. Tim was still officially my coach, and it would stay that way until Tim made a miracle recovery—or the worst-case scenario came to pass. Paul and I knew that we had to prepare for the latter. I visited Tim a few times, and he put on a brave face, but he never looked better than the time before. We just wanted to make his life as productive and fulfilling for as long as possible while he fought his lonely battle.
In June, shortly after Roland Garros, Andre and I filmed that series of “guerrilla tennis” commercials that would punctuate the upcoming summer on the hard courts of the U.S. Open. Soon thereafter, I atoned for my poor showing on clay by winning the two big grass events, Queen’s and Wimbledon. The Wimbledon title was my third straight, and while my four-set win over Boris Becker was unremarkable, I see it as a tipping point in my relationship with the grandest tournament of them all.
The first year I won Wimbledon, I was boring, and Jim—the guy I beat—was boring. It was a personality thing. The second year I won Wimbledon, the tennis was boring—the way Goran and I played in the final was boring. It was a technical, game-based thing. But by 1995, the club had gone to a slower ball, and while I survived another brutal, five-set serving contest with Goran in the semis, briefly reigniting the furor over power tennis, the final against Becker was played in such a glow of camaraderie and good sportsmanship that it pleased even the most sour of pundits.
The British loved Becker, and in this match he seemed to be passing the generational baton to me. The crowd must have felt that if Boris had such respect for me, I had to be okay. It also didn’t hurt that despite the controversies in which I had been embroiled at Wimbledon, I spoke of the tournament only in superlatives—and meant every word I said. I was slowly winning the Brits over. I was gratified by the way the degree of respect increased, because my own affection for Wimbledon had increased by the year, regardless of my image or how Wimbledon fans felt about me. It was a great feeling to love the place—and finally to feel loved in return.
In my first few years at Wimbledon, I stayed at the St. James, which was one of the official player hotels right in the heart of London. But the smart guys, ever since the Bjorn Borg era, had found that the best thing was to rent a house in Wimbledon Village, an upscale suburb just up the hill from the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (that’s the official name of the place where they hold Wimbledon; the tournament unofficially got its name from the town, much the way the U.S. Open, back in the day, was often referred to as Forest Hills). The house I first rented and then stayed in for many years was on Clifton Road, and it was—I still laugh when I think about this—owned by people called “Borg.” Honest.
The Borgs were no dummies. They did nearly as well as their tennis-playing namesake because of the tournament. I paid around £10,000, which in some years was close to $20,000, just to stay there for the two weeks of Wimbledon. Over time, I paid more and started to take the place for a month, from just after the French Open through Wimbledon. I believe Roger Federer took over the Borg house after I opted out of our contract one year, and how could you blame him, with that history?
I’ve always been a little neurotic about air-conditioning; I like to sleep in a cool, dark room. So one of the first things I did when I set up shop on Clifton Road was go out and get a portable air-conditioning unit (the British don’t like air-conditioning at all). I set that up in the bedroom, and it was waiting for me, year after year. I had a good shower at the house. Early in my career I had seen a French player relieving himself in the shower at a tournament, and from that day forward I never used the common locker-room showers. I always waited until I returned to my apartment or hotel, whatever the conditions, before I finally showered after a match.
I also had a chef, Kirsten, who was from South Africa, and whose more recent gig was cooking for Tiger Woods during the British Open golf tournament. Kirsten cooked my meals, and I was pretty easy to please: waffles and maybe a scrambled egg and one cup of coffee in the morning. She would sometimes make me a sandwich and I would brown-bag it to work, especially on days when it didn’t make much sense for me to leave the grounds after
a hit and before my match. The dinners she cooked were healthy, nutritious, and simple: chicken and fresh vegetables, pasta with homemade sauce, that kind of thing.
Once in a while, I’d go out to the village, or down another hill to the town of Wimbledon and the San Lorenzo restaurant, an Italian place that has been a fixture with the players for ages. Once in a while I might hit a movie, but that would be it. I’d go out maybe twenty-five percent of the time. Occasionally, I would go to the huge park called Wimbledon Commons, where I would train or sometimes just have a walk. It was nice and peaceful in the Commons, and the village itself, while lively, was surprisingly devoid of press and paparazzi.
Paul, meanwhile, stayed in a rental flat in London. It was because both of us needed our space. We were around each other all day, and it was nice to wake up in the morning and have privacy. I liked that, but I felt lonely at times, too. Sometimes I had nobody to talk to but Kirsten, with whom I’d chitchat a little, but that was it. My existence was a little monkish, my only break with routine consisting of inviting friends for dinner—guys like Paul or Todd Martin and his coach, Dean Goldfine.
I made a pretty famous crack once when I was asked how I liked London. I said that I couldn’t wait to get back to the States, where I could get ESPN on television and a cheeseburger and fries at a diner. I was only half-kidding. British television improved over time; the dark, early years when there were only four channels, three of them showing six-hour documentaries on things like the Belgian lace doily industry, quickly gave way to the satellite age. The Borgs actually went and got a satellite dish and one of the first flat-screen televisions. When I saw it, I wondered, How can they afford this? And then I realized . . .
Kirsten made sure I got all the protein I needed in my meals. And for all my boasting about cheeseburgers, I always kept myself on a very short leash. I had one little ritual of indulgence. Every year on the morning after the final, I had Kirsten make me the classic English breakfast, which includes bacon, eggs, fried bread, sausage, beans, French fries, all this yummy greasy stuff that tasted great but always made me feel sick after eating it.
My other indulgence in years when I won was to return to my U.S. base in Tampa and immediately go to the local Checkers fast-food franchise for one of their great burgers and fries. I didn’t drink wine at all, except at the Wimbledon Champions Ball. I drank mostly water, but treated myself to a Coke every now and then. And this wasn’t just at Wimbledon; it was pretty much everywhere I played. I had very good discipline on the nutrition front, and I must say I often felt I had an edge when I saw these pros in the player’s restaurant loading up on pasta with rich cream sauces, big steak-and-potato lunches, and cake and ice cream.
A maid would come in to do laundry and the beds three times a week in London. I liked wearing tennis gear that had been laundered at least once before. Usually when Nike introduced a new line (always right before a Grand Slam, so you had three or four new lines a year), they would send me fifteen to twenty shirts and pairs of shorts, and I would wear that stuff until the next new line came out. I wasn’t like Ivan Lendl, who would wear a brand-new shirt for every match. It was funny; you would see Ivan sitting there in the U.S. Open locker room before he went out to play a big semifinal or something, and he would be messing around, trying to get that stupid little string and tag off the button on the new shirt.
I had a thing about tennis shoes, going all the way back to the time I paid dearly for changing to the new Nike Air models. Clothing and shoe companies often wanted you to switch to shoes that matched whatever line they were promoting, but I wouldn’t have it. When I found the Nike Air Oscillate, which was pretty light but had good stiffness and support, I stuck with it. Nike sold plenty of them, too.
All the shoe manufacturers make special shoes for the grass-court pros, ones with a grid of little stubs on the bottom. They were like soft, tiny cleats. I didn’t want the stubs to get too low (from wear), but I also didn’t want to wear a new pair of shoes for every match, like some guys did. In general, I loved wearing worn-down shoes on most courts, but not on grass. So I would take a new pair of shoes, practice with them, and play one or maybe two matches wearing them. Then I would throw that pair away and break in a new one. So the most wear I got out of a pair of shoes at Wimbledon was one practice and two matches.
With Nike, it was important to stay on top of the company because as they changed lines and factories, you just never knew what you would get, sizing-wise. Jim Courier and I used to piss and moan about that. We’d say, “Do what you want to the color or pattern, but don’t change the length of the hem on the shorts or the cut of the foot bed in the shoe.” Sometimes I’d get a batch of shoes that came from a different factory than the last batch, and I could barely get my custom-made orthotic inserts into them. Of course, top pros tend to be more particular about things like the precise fit of their shoes or clothing, and we must have driven the Nike guys to distraction with our quibbles. Perhaps surprisingly, they didn’t make custom shoes for us.
I was almost never hassled in Wimbledon Village. One time a couple of kids came to the door and knocked, asking for an autograph, which I happily gave them. Each day, I’d just call the All England Club for my courtesy car, and in moments it was there. It took all of five minutes to get to the club to practice or play. The club itself was very cozy, even after the renovation binge in the late 1990s. The tradition there until the remodeling was that they had two locker rooms—a fairly big, well-appointed one for the seeded players (the “A” locker room), and a smaller one that wasn’t even part of the main clubhouse/Centre Court complex for the journeymen, juniors, and others.
I made it into the A locker room pretty quickly, but the crazy thing was that it was not just tight, it was probably more crowded than the B locker room. You had all the seeded players in there, plus their coaches, and you had the former champions, some old guys, and club members. It was jammed. The guys would sit in there playing backgammon or cards, or telling stories. I’d mostly sit and listen. The most memorable thing about that locker room to me was it was a very short walk down a set of stairs and through a small holding room and there you were—right on the hallowed Centre Court.
That holding room is where they have that famous Kipling quote above the door: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same . . .” Everyone talks about that plaque and how much it means, how it sends chills down the spine of a player waiting to walk out there. It’s pretty dramatic, because when you’re in that room, you can look out the open door and see that green patch of Centre Court, all aglow in the sunlight, beyond the short, dark gangway. But the thing I remember most is the trophy—the singles trophy, which was always sitting right there to the left of the door.
Steve Adams is the attendant in that little room; his official job title is Master of Ceremonies and his task is to hold the players there until everything is ready. Usually, once you stage with your opponent, Steve walks out onto Centre Court first to make sure everything is okay—that everybody in the Royal Box is seated, that the chair umpire is ready, that the crowd has settled, and that the net has been checked and secured. Then he returns and says, in this chipper, matter-of-fact voice: “Okay, we’re all set, gentlemen. There is royalty; you must bow . . .”
Later in my career, Adams would sometimes turn to the poor guy standing next to me and say something like, “Oh, just follow Pete; he knows what to do.”
And I’d be thinking, How’s that supposed to make this poor guy feel?
My third consecutive Wimbledon title was quickly overshadowed in 1995 by Andre’s amazing resurgence, which picked up steam during the hard-court season. I was just another of his many victims as he went on a twenty-match summer tear that stunned all of tennis. Andre beat me in the Canadian Open as he went on a four-tournament run to enter the U.S. Open as the favorite. But that also put him under a lot of pressure. If he lost to me, all twenty-five of the matches he had won over the summer went right
into the toilet, and the fact that he was number one went into the wastebasket. Andre, like me, played for the big moments and the big tournaments more than for the numbers and rankings.
So that created pressure, and I also felt that Andre knew I would be very tough at Flushing Meadows. I had the game, I had the motivation, I had the experience. I had everything needed to spoil his magical run. I was confident, despite Andre’s superb level of play. The situation made great fodder for the press. But for me the bottom line was that I enjoyed playing Andre. Good as he was, and no matter what the score on a given day might be, he didn’t really move me far out of my comfort zone if I was on top of my game.
We marched to the final to a drumbeat of inevitability and media hype. The weather on the day of the final was tricky, although you may not have known it if you were just watching, or even sitting in Louis Armstrong Stadium. It was a little breezy, and we started off feeling each other out, a little like two heavyweight fighters. I could sense that this was a huge occasion because the A-list celebrities had come out: John F. Kennedy, Jr., was there; so was Arnold Schwarzenegger and a host of others.
Andre and I jabbed at each other and built a feeling for the ball, game after game; both of us knew that as the set went on, one or the other would have an opportunity. At 5–4, set point to me, we had a nineteen-stroke rally, much of it forehand to forehand, that I remember as if it had just happened yesterday. It was one of the most important and significant points I ever played, and I won it with a sharply angled backhand winner.