by Pete Sampras
I was picked apart by Fabrice Santoro in the second round at the big Monte Carlo tournament, so I returned to the States and scooped up a win on the green clay of Atlanta. Green clay, or HAR-T RU, is a U.S. phenomenon. The loose surface dressing is more granular and slippery than the brick dust of red clay, so the court plays slightly faster. Along the way, I beat a nice clay-court player from Paraguay, Ramon Delgado, in two tiebreaker sets. Buoyed by my win, I returned to Europe and got to the third round of the Italian Open before my countryman Michael Chang sat me down. I felt all right about my game going to Roland Garros.
I was reasonably confident, and I had a kind draw in Paris, starting with my pal Todd Martin in the first round. However a match with Todd went, I was always comfortable playing him, and this time I was on my game and I rolled into the second round in good shape. I found myself up against Delgado, the clay-court expert I’d beaten handily on clay just a few weeks earlier in Atlanta.
During the match, all of my unresolved issues with clay-court tennis began to play on my mind. Paul sat by, horrified, as I lost a first-set tiebreaker and then went down winning just seven games over the next two sets. It wasn’t just that I lost, it was how I lost—I looked like a fish out of water, flopping around in the dust on the floor of the Philippe Chatrier Court Centrale. I was playing a guy who was barely inside the top hundred, and who would eventually fall off the ATP computer-ranking chart without ever winning a singles title (his career record in singles was 94–103). Yet I was the one who played with slumped shoulders and a lack of fire in my belly. It was one of the most negative performances of my career.
I had survived and overcome difficult moments before, but this time I really recognized that my time in Paris was running out. I had plenty of good results to call upon from the past to try to change my own mind, but that didn’t work. I could neither convince nor fool myself. That Delgado match was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as Roland Garros went for me. Even for me, thinking about Roland Garros raises more questions than it answers.
One thing I know for sure is that the year when I actually made a big effort to do all I could to win in Paris was a mess. In 1995, I had set up my tournament and training schedule with an eye toward doing well at Roland Garros. I did it partly to placate critics as well as friends, all of whom thought I had to target the event if I wanted to unlock its mysteries. The strategy didn’t just backfire, it blew up in my face when I lost my first match to Gilbert Schaller. Tim and I had expected to make a run in Paris that year, and the loss really hurt my long-term confidence as a clay-court player.
The situation was perplexing. I periodically put up some fine results on clay (I had won the Italian Open and Kitzbühel, and led the United States to that key 1995 Davis Cup final win in Moscow), but it was almost like they came out of the blue. Tim died shortly before the 1996 French Open, and that inspired me to make what would be my best run there. But let’s face it, that was an extraordinary circumstance. The cold reality is that after 1996, I was never really a factor in Paris—even if I happened to go a round or two.
My problems on clay were related to my versatility, and the confidence that was so helpful to me on hard courts. I could win from the back—I had beaten French Open champs like Jim Courier and Sergi Bruguera from the baseline. So I was reluctant to heed the advice of Paul and others who thought my only chance to win was through attacking. Sometimes I did feel obliged to attack, and felt comfortable embracing that game plan. At other times, I tried to feel my way into matches from the baseline, not entirely confident but hoping I’d hit upon something that would help me crack the clay-court code.
I never really evolved in Paris, never made progress toward a comfort zone. I was accustomed to feeling totally in control of my game—that’s how it was at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. On grass and hard courts, I just had this mentality: bring the gas—serve big, push the action, notch it up, and see if the other guy can take it. On clay, though, you have to back off the gas a little, even when you’re playing attacking tennis. You need to be more patient, awaiting your opportunity. I didn’t really feel comfortable playing within myself that way. When I played well on clay, it was because I was reasonably calm, and just felt my way around in matches—it wasn’t that different from how I played on hard courts.
But there was always pressure on me, some of it self-imposed, to win in Paris with an attacking game. A part of me wanted to come in all the time, the way Stefan Edberg did. His daredevil attacking style carried him all the way to the final one year, which was further than I ever got. But when I rushed the net behind every decent serve, I’d often feel uncomfortable, like everything was happening too fast. I don’t think I was a great mover on clay, and that was a subtle factor in my struggles. I found the surface was a little slippery and uncertain underfoot, so I played a little too upright, at least compared to a guy like Yannick Noah (the Frenchman who won Roland Garros by attacking the net in 1983). Noah played from this crouch, like a big cat always ready to pounce. I was often ill at ease, even up at the net.
Paul was always after me to attack the net in Paris, but I resisted his advice. In fact, the year I beat Jim from the backcourt, it was as much to prove my point to Paul as anything else. But the reality was that I couldn’t win from the back consistently enough to beat the very top players in the three or four successive rounds it takes to win a major. One year, I decided to embrace the chip-and-charge strategy that Paul thought might work, but I was picked apart by Andrei Medvedev. So much for that.
Clay gave my opponents additional advantages. They could expose my backhand—my weaker shot—by getting to it with high-bouncing balls. Having to hit those high backhands gives one-handed backhanders fits—just look at the problems Roger Federer has had on clay with Rafael Nadal. In Roger’s case, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that Nadal is a southpaw. Late in my career, technology was also starting to catch up with me. I played my entire career with that extremely small-headed racket. Not only did I ignore the potential benefits of evolving racket design, the advances in rackets helped level the playing field for opponents who were more inclined to adapt.
Because I never settled into a clay-court game plan, every match was like a Rubik’s Cube. I always had to start from square one. I confess that after my loss to Delgado, I never saw Roland Garros through the same eyes. It seemed like it just wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t like I just mailed it in—that wasn’t my way, and there was too much to gain from winning in Paris—but after that Delgado match I had the gnawing feeling that I’d run out of options.
In the end, maybe the truth just caught up to me. Maybe I just plain wasn’t good enough on clay to win Roland Garros, and I never caught the lucky break or hot streak that might have landed me on the champion’s podium even for that one critically important time.
At Wimbledon, I had a good run, beating Mark Philippoussis and my friend and frequent practice partner Tim Henman in back-to-back matches starting in the quarters.
In the final, I was up against Goran Ivanisevic—again. But this time, there was something funny in the air. Underneath my calm, confident exterior, a part of me sensed that maybe it was Goran’s time. He’d come so close, so often. Wimbledon was the tournament that mattered more to him than anything else; he was bound to break through at some point. Although the speed of the surface was changing by then, he and I were going to bang aces even if we played with water balloons. We still had that mentality, and maybe that was a big part of why we were able to play that way despite the changing times. Goran had put on a fierce display of power serving in his semifinal, outlasting Richard Krajicek 15–13 in the fifth—after he had failed to capitalize on two match points in the fourth set.
Goran won the first set of our final in a tiebreaker, and he had two set points in the second set. My premonition seemed about to come true, but then he missed a critical shot by inches, and I ended up squeaking out the set in a tense tiebreaker. Getting out of that jam to even the match at
a set apiece was huge, and it left me feeling better. Maybe my instincts were wrong. Goran had chances to really put down the hammer, in classically brutal grass-court fashion, but he had faltered.
With Goran, I always expected a lapse here, a sloppy error there. The name of the game was staying focused and eager enough to pounce on those opportunities. We continued to trade bombs and split the next two sets on the strength of one break each time. In the fifth set, I could see that fatigue was getting to Goran. He hit just two of his total thirty-two aces in the fifth set, and I closed it out comfortably, 6–2 in the fifth.
Goran was disconsolate after the loss—he blamed it on a loss of energy stemming from his inability to close out Krajicek in four sets in his previous match. I made a point of expressing my sympathy for Goran in the press conference afterward, saying: “There was almost nothing that separated Goran and I from each other at this stage of the tournament. I just managed to squeak this one out.” But like me, Goran was a realist. He knew he’d had me and let me off the hook. As he said afterward, “This time, I had the chance, because he didn’t play well. In ninety-four, we played two sets, and then the third set, he killed me. [The scores in that final were 7–6, 7–6, 6–0.] But today was very close—a lot of everything. It was interesting, but now it’s the worst moment of my life. You know, I’ve had some bad moments, when you are sick or when somebody dies, but for me this is the worst thing ever, because nobody’s died yet.”
Although there were undercurrents of discontent following this typical grass-court service battle, more people seemed to appreciate the icy, minimalist majesty that Goran and I produced in our Wimbledon matches. They were unlike most of the other matches that either of us had played there. One of the career statistics that gives me the most pride is that I was 3–1 at Wimbledon against my most consistent and dangerous rival, Goran.
I was within one match of Emerson’s record twelve Grand Slam singles titles as I left Wimbledon, and there was no better place to equal his mark than at the U.S. Open. But I lost at Flushing Meadows to the swashbuckling Australian with the samurai topknot and zinc-oxide war paint, Pat Rafter. I would have made the rest of my life that year a lot easier if I had managed to win in New York, because it would have spared me having to undertake a late-season push to clinch the number one spot for a record sixth consecutive year.
As I looked at my prospects for the fall of 1998, I realized that I had no appetite for the indoor European events that take place after the Grand Slams are all done. Six or seven years earlier, I wanted to win everything. For years, the mileage on my odometer had been building up, and while my engine hadn’t lost any pep, my shocks were getting worn and things were beginning to break. For an athlete, that means injuries, or moments when the mind just snaps and fails to focus in the correct, relaxed way that helps you win tennis matches. All those years at number one took a lot out of me, and had me thinking a lot more about peaking at the right, choice times of the year—meaning, for the Grand Slams.
Nevertheless, I was determined to make a push for that ironman record of most years at number one. It may not be as spectacular a record as the Grand Slam singles title mark, but in many ways it’s more significant because greatness begins and ends with going out there, day after day, and getting the job done, learning to live and survive with that target on your back. The essence of greatness is consistency.
I’m often asked to name the GOAT (Greatest of All Time), and to me there are five guys in that conversation if you count guys who played at least a significant portion of their careers in the Open era that began in 1968. In all honesty, I just don’t feel qualified to judge the great players of the amateur era, when top players turned pro and were barred from playing the Grand Slams. My five guys are Rod Laver, Björn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Roger Federer, and—no arrogance intended—me. My reasoning is pretty simple: to me, the GOAT was not just a guy who won X number of titles, or who finished on top X number of years; he’s also the one who came closest to dominating his main rivals throughout his career.
Some people may ask, “Lendl?” Well, yes, because Ivan really transcended the game in his time. His record against Connors was an amazing 22–13 and against McEnroe he was 21–15. How do you argue with that? And Connors had a nemesis in Borg, while McEnroe was manhandled frequently by Lendl. The only thing Lendl lacked was good PR, and the charisma people want in a great champion. He was in the final of the U.S. Open eight consecutive years—and the Open is thought by many to be the most demanding of the majors. So those are my top guys, with all due respect to Connors, McEnroe, and Andre Agassi, whom I put in the second five of my all-time top ten.
It’s interesting to compare the feat of breaking Emerson’s singles title record (twelve Slams) with the accomplishment of finishing at number one for six years in a row. A player can equal Emerson’s record by winning two majors a year for six years. That isn’t too great an ask, given that a great grass- or clay-court player could win just one tournament on a less desirable surface to get those two majors. Six years is a pretty reasonable window, given that McEnroe is the only one among the great players who won all of his majors in a span of fewer than seven years (Connors won majors almost ten years apart). Seven years is twenty-eight Grand Slam events; to win twelve is a massive achievement, but not unthinkable.
So you’re really talking about a month of great tennis out of every year and you have your twelve majors. The rest of the time, you can hide, relax, or plot your strategy while marshaling your resources. But you can’t do that if you want to finish number one. You don’t get that top spot unless you play and win a lot of tournaments and matches over the course of the year. Most players would trade majors for consistency any day, much like most baseball players would rather be on a World Series winner once than a team that finishes tops in its league for years but never takes the fall classic. But the best of players win big, and they win often. They grind.
Ultimately, it was grinding that almost undid me in that period in 1988 when I was driving to capture that sixth straight year-end number one ranking. I played seven post–U.S. Open events in Europe in the fall in an attempt to hold off Marcelo Rios, who was making a big push for the top ranking. At the start of the year, I had no intention of playing some of those events (Vienna and Stockholm pop right to mind), but I ended up asking for wild cards into them. As the year progressed, Rios kept closing on me, and I became borderline obsessed with the record.
The European circuit in the fall is no picnic, even at the best of times. It’s cold, it gets dark early, and you’re playing night matches in massive arenas under artificial lights. At the end of the long, hard Grand Slam season, that ambience can leave you feeling like you’re living in some strange, parallel universe. That last big push to secure the record started on a down note when I lost to Wayne Ferreira at Basel. I bounced back and won Vienna. I pulled out of Lyon with a minor injury, but then lost a heartbreaker of a semifinal (in a third-set tiebreaker) at Stuttgart to Richard Krajicek. To make matters worse, I could have clinched the year-end number one ranking by winning that event.
So it was onto Paris, which is where I started to lose it a little bit. The general fatigue that contributed to my inconsistent results was starting to get to me at a deeper, psychological level. The stress was causing my hair to fall out in clumps. Yet nobody in the States seemed to care—there wasn’t a single reporter representing a U.S. newspaper or magazine covering this drive. By contrast, the European press was all over it. It was the dominant story of the fall season, and it just brought that much more pressure to bear on me.
Finally, realizing that I just couldn’t internalize it all any longer, I called Paul’s room in the hotel from my own and asked him to come by. This was a watershed moment for me, because I had never before showed the kind of vulnerability I was about to exhibit. Paul came into my room, wondering what was up. I confessed, “Paul, I’m struggling here. I feel like I need a therapist or something. This race is so close, I’ve worked so hard
to get this record, but I’m thinking these crazy things, like, What if I don’t get it? How am I going to deal with that?”
Paul looked at me, dumbfounded. It wasn’t an easy situation for him—it ran utterly counter to the relationship we had established over many long years. He didn’t know what to say at first, but in reality, he didn’t need to say anything at all. I was the one who needed to say things—I just had to articulate and off-load all that anxiety. I explained that this was an emotional thing I was going through. I felt this huge sense of pressure, a different kind than I had felt trying to win a major title, or as I closed on Emerson’s record. I dreaded what might happen if I didn’t get the record. What was there to dread? Good question.
There was a sobering practical dimension to this, though. My effort to set a new mark was six years in the making, and if I failed, it wasn’t like I could try again the following year. This was the most all-or-nothing situation I’d ever been in; if I didn’t accomplish my goal, it would be a career shortcoming that was bound to haunt me for life, and more rather than less because I had come so close to achieving it. This hunt had grown into an obsession; it became a weight I carried around in my chest all fall, getting heavier and heavier. Eventually, I needed to exhale.
Paul took that information and went and thought about it, and then set about getting me ready to run the last leg of the race. It’s not like there was a lot he could do, but understanding how much I had tied myself in knots over this would lead him to maybe deal with the situation on his end a little differently. Basically, Paul provided a place where I could go to be vulnerable, and his quiet encouragement and understanding of what I was going through were very welcome. I felt better after talking with him. To the extent that I needed an emotional anchor—an unfamiliar need, for me—he became it.