by Pete Sampras
None of this had anything to do with the tennis part, the forehands and backhands, even though I was playing tired, erratic tennis—up one day, down the next. However, the ATP was trying to capitalize on the story, ostensibly for my benefit as much as theirs. They were asking me to do all these interviews, including prime-time European news and chat shows. That was just what I needed—to waste my energy and downtime in the evenings going on chat shows with the French Larry King.
I was really tense. I asked the ATP to leave me alone, without divulging how much I was struggling. They kept pushing, and it all came to a head when they wanted me to do this one show that, the ATP told me, was France’s most popular evening news program. I put my foot down and refused: I’ll do anything you want during the daytime, but after dark I just need to shut down. I had a big knockdown, drag-out fight with the ATP PR guy David Higdon, and ultimately even Mark Miles, the CEO of the ATP Tour, got into the discussion. Ultimately, I relented and did the show.
Unburdening myself to Paul helped, and it gave me a little extra surge of energy and confidence, even though it didn’t suddenly restore my game to its customary effectiveness. I put my all into it, and got to the final of the Paris Indoor. But again a chance to seal the deal eluded me as I lost to the hard-serving Canadian-turned-Brit, Greg Rusedski. Nothing was settled; Rios was still riding my tail pretty hard. In fact, we were heading for a showdown in the ATP Finals, with the top ranking—and my coveted record—on the line. I wondered, Did I have enough gas left in my tank?
Stockholm was next. I hoped to put a little more distance between Rios and me, but the tension was excruciating and I finally snapped. It was during my match with Jason Stoltenberg. I got so frustrated with my play that I destroyed a racket. It was very funny, in a way—people were so shocked I did it that nobody even said anything. Even the umpire was baffled; he didn’t even warn me, much less issue the appropriate code violation and fine (for “racket abuse”). I think people just blinked and said, Naw, that wasn’t Pete Sampras I just saw doing that. Pete Sampras doesn’t do that kind of thing. I ended up losing the match.
Ultimately, it was Rios himself who ended my agony. He hurt his back and pulled out of the ATP Championships after playing just one match, rendering the race moot. He couldn’t catch me if he didn’t play. It was an anticlimactic ending to one of the more interesting situations that that tour and ranking structure kicked out, and that diminished the impact of my achievement. But I couldn’t have cared less. I was glad that it didn’t come down to a final showdown; in my frazzled state I don’t know what might have happened. I felt like hopping on a plane and going home after Rios announced that he was closing down shop for the year, but it wasn’t the right thing to do. Glad and relieved, free of stress and pressure, I went on to reach the final of the ATP Championships, losing to Alex Corretja.
When I evaluate how I was able to win so many matches over so many years, a few things pop up as keys to the accomplishment. First, I trusted myself and the Gift. Throughout my career, whenever I made a critical mistake, I just wiped it off the hard drive. I don’t really know how I developed that ability to move on instead of dwell upon, but I had it. My guess is that it was some mental function, rather than an emotional one—a kind of extra-high focus on success. And a lot of it was sheer will.
If you train yourself not to let things get to you, they don’t—although you probably need to be predisposed that way for the training to work fully. I never got into it with umpires, even though seeing the guy in a chair take a pretty crucial point away from you can sting like a slap in the face. Guys lose it over that, and I know just how they feel. But I think I received just one official code violation in my entire career—many players have gotten more than that in a single, relatively meaningless match. Maybe I’m just built a little differently, but a big part of my mentality and, ultimately, success, was making a conscious decision not to lose it in front of others. Part of that had to do with keeping a competitive advantage, a lot of it also had to do with my personal pride and how I wanted the world to see me.
Distractions are another daily threat to winning matches. But nothing intruded on my mind when I was on the court, and it was as simple as that. Girlfriends, coaching problems, family issues—I was almost always able to block all of it out, and it wasn’t even like I had to work at it. That’s a huge help if you want to perform at peak level consistently. I was all business on the court, although I did draw on memories, conversations, and even vows made to myself when I needed them. It was always positive, not a distraction that blunted my focus.
Anger? I would have been faking it if I took to strutting around screaming, with the veins popping in my neck and my eyes bulging. As a kid, I threw the occasional tantrum, but as I became more of an attacking player and grew into a man, that behavior kind of dissipated somewhere along the way. It just comes to a point where you are who you are, and you recognize it. Pundits and fans sometimes wondered why I didn’t show more anger or emotion now and then, and the answer is simple: I didn’t feel it—or if you prefer, I didn’t allow myself to feel it; I internalized it instead.
But I experienced frustration and felt the sting of criticism as much as anyone. I can keep score with the best of them when it comes to remembering who’s a friend and who’s a foe. I’ve got as much of a sense of justice and fairness as anyone, but I always subscribed to that old expression: Revenge is a dish best served cold.
With rare exceptions, anger is an impediment to playing well and winning matches. I remember seeing Goran Ivanisevic lose it a few times in our many matches at Wimbledon. I would watch as he broke a few of his sticks, and at that point I always felt that I had him. The meltdown told me that I had broken my opponent’s composure and will. I now had him exactly where I wanted him.
I also didn’t want anyone to be able to read me like that. By being opaque, I may have made some of my opponents a little more cautious and fearful. But that dynamic wasn’t an orchestrated strategy. I never tried to intimidate anyone, and I never played mind games. My biggest weapon was being myself; I showed that I could meet and handle the most nerveracking of situations in a calm, focused way—my natural way. Being cool with no frills or affectations won me a lot of matches.
Early in my career, I marveled at the way John McEnroe would complain and stall, and suffer no repercussions in his game (in fact, he often played better when he was on his worst behavior). His outbursts didn’t bother me as much as they irked others, because I wasn’t easily distracted and always felt confident about how our games matched up.
Andre Agassi sometimes lost it in our matches—I remember one year in San Jose, he cracked two rackets, fought with the chair umpire, and called him a “motherf#$@&%r.” Watching that happen, I sat back in my chair and thought, Okay, Andre’s finished.
I tried very hard to keep everything simple, and that meant staying at arm’s length from many things, including nontennis relationships and activities that could distract me. I didn’t do many charity events or appearances, I didn’t respond to business overtures, I didn’t chase women. I felt I had to make certain sacrifices that others would or could not: I moved to Tampa and made it my home and base for most of my career because it was the best location for training, and it took me away from the distraction of friends and family in Southern California.
But I missed my family—often powerfully—and didn’t especially enjoy training for the Australian Open in Florida during Christmas. Maybe I should have had someone to talk to about this stuff, a therapist or something, because putting on the blinders and internalizing everything, denying myself even the simple, harmless things like Cokes and cheeseburgers, being unable to talk to anyone about feeling vulnerable in my game, or being afraid to find outlets for my feelings of insecurity lest it water down my drive took a physical and mental toll.
After I broke Connors’s record, I was free to focus on what most people thought was a greater task and more noteworthy accomplishment: besting Emerson’s
record twelve Grand Slam titles. That required as much planning, work, determination, skill, and luck as any other goal, but it wasn’t as all-consuming an assignment. I could get that record without playing at the level I had set for myself over the last six years. From 1999 onward, I didn’t worry that much about the rankings, or my performance in sub–Grand Slam tournaments. Most of the regular tour events simply ran together in my mind, win or lose. At the same time, a whole new cast of rivals was emerging and I began to lose more matches.
I was so worn out by my push to break the consecutive-years-at-number-one record that I skipped the Australian Open, and was content to tread water through the spring events. I reached just one semifinal on my way to London’s grass courts, but then I won at Queen’s Club and entered Wimbledon with a chance to equal Roy Emerson’s record of twelve Grand Slam titles at the tournament I loved best.
At this time, Andre’s final resurgence was in full swing. He made a huge statement at Roland Garros in 1999, winning the title to become just the fifth man in tennis to post a “career Grand Slam” (winning each of the Grand Slam events at least once). I had a good draw at Wimbledon with a relatively easy first week. The demands of grass-court tennis created a smaller pool of contenders than you get at, say, the French Open, although the downside is that anybody with a big serve at Wimbledon threatened to upset a contender. It was hardly surprising to me when I saw that, just as in 1998, I would be playing Mark Philippoussis to get at (probably) Tim Henman in the semis.
I knew that Philippoussis was getting ever more dangerous. The previous fall, his big forehand and powerful serve had carried him to the U.S. Open final. In our Wimbledon match, he was on fire in the first set, winning it 6–4. But he went down, hard, at 1–2 in the second set, and suffered a terrible knee injury that would severely impact his career.
Henman was next, and at some level I felt for him. He was a class act; a friend, golfing buddy, and frequent practice partner. The British hadn’t produced a male Wimbledon champ since Fred Perry, and Tim was as close as they had come. He was always in the hunt, making the quarters or better, but the big upset, combined with a little luck in the way of opponents, always eluded him.
Some pundits trashed Tim for not making that big breakthrough, but I felt that given the hopes of the Brits and the pressure that put on Tim, he not only handled the situation with great dignity, he actually played above his head at Wimbledon. I sat him down at the tournament myself three times (twice in late rounds), and the next best thing to winning a tournament is losing to the champion. People sometimes asked me if it was tough to douse my friend’s dreams as often as I did, and I have to confess: not one bit. It was like beating a buddy at darts, or a game of H-O-R-S-E. You just played, the better man won, and that was it.
The last man standing between me and equal status with Roy Emerson was my main rival, Andre. It had rained on the Saturday women’s final, so the match between Lindsay Davenport and Steffi Graf was scheduled to finish on Sunday, as a prelude to our final.
A Wimbledon final abounds in traditions and rituals that can really add to the pressure you feel before you go out to play. There’s that whole thing about having to wait in the small holding room, looking at that sign bearing the Kipling quote above the door. Then, when you’re finally sent on court, it’s with empty hands—an attendant carries your racket bag for you, all the way to your chair. It’s a nice gesture, but it makes you feel even more exposed and vulnerable. As you walk out there to play a Wimbledon final, arms dangling at your sides, you realize there’s no turning back. There’s nowhere to hide. This is the test of your tennis life. That’s part of what makes winning Wimbledon so special.
Centre Court is the epicenter of Wimbledon’s mystique. It’s a cliché, but the place really is like the cathedral of tennis, and entering it you quickly get a sense of your own smallness in the grand scheme of things. But unlike the world’s great cathedrals, Centre Court is surprisingly small (before the ongoing renovation, it seated about twelve thousand), and the roof over the stands adds even further to the sense of intimacy (for 2009, Centre Court will have a retractable roof that covers everything).
In comparison, the Rod Laver Arena at the Australian Open is antiseptic, featureless, and, seemingly, vast. When you’re standing at the baseline looking across the net, it seems miles to the wall at the far end of the court. And that makes the actual court seem smaller than it really is. I always preferred architecture that made the actual court of play seem larger.
The Philippe Chatrier Court at Roland Garros is also huge, with a lot of space around the lines of the court. That always added to my feeling that I couldn’t really control what went on in there—it was too much territory. That uncomfortable feeling is somewhat legitimate, too, because on clay you actually do play on a much larger court—at least in terms of how much space you use. You often play from much farther behind the baseline on clay, you chase balls farther than on any other surface, and you’re often pulled wider from side to side.
That leaves Arthur Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, and while it’s the most imposing of the Grand Slam venues, the court and space around it, surprisingly, are just about right. I guess those towering walls make the court feel smaller. Many players beef about how hard it is to concentrate in Ashe because of the restless, chatty New York crowd, but that was never a problem for me. However, I liked the old Louis Armstrong Stadium court (which was the main court before Ashe was built and is now the secondary feature court) even better, probably because it felt a little smaller—although nothing like Centre Court.
There was a definite psychology at play in this. The smaller a court appeared to be, and the closer the far side seemed to be, the faster the court seemed to play. And that always gave me extra confidence, because I liked fast tennis. I wonder if the illusion affected my opponents as well.
At Wimbledon, the court is completely and inescapably the center of attention—there’s no plane noise and no JumboTron or complicated digital scoreboard to distract you with stock prices, NFL scores, or ads. The space around the court at Wimbledon is limited, and the backdrop is dark, with very little advertising or busy features. The dark background also makes the pale green grass look extra-inviting; aesthetically, grass courts have it all over a dusty stretch of clay, or bland hard courts.
I enjoyed the relative “softness” of the court; it was terrific to feel that sod gently give way beneath my feet with every step. I felt catlike out there, like I was on a soft play mat where I could do as I pleased without worry, fear, or excessive wear and tear. Centre Court always made me feel connected to my craft, and the sophisticated British crowd enhanced that feeling. It was a pleasure to play before them, and they inspired me to play my best. Wimbledon is a shrine, and it was always a joy to perform there.
As it turned out, Lindsay upset Steffi, and the crowd didn’t seem to know how to react. The atmosphere as Andre and I took the court was muted, and a little strange. It was the kind of thing that rarely happens at Wimbledon, where they know how to give every match its due. But because of the rain, things were a little off. There was still an abundance of empty seats because many people decided to take a break between matches. Those in the stands were probably still trying to process what they’d just seen, and weren’t ready to focus on something else.
Andre and I felt our way into the match gingerly, just like the fans. We held serve to 3–all, but then Andre got hold of my serve a few times and had me pinned, love–40, in the seventh game. I somehow survived that scare. Andre served the next game with new balls, and a funny thing happened. He missed a few easy balls and I hit a few good returns. It might have been that he was distracted by having let me off the hook in that previous game, but whatever the reason, just like that, I had a break and I held serve to go up a set. It was a classic grass-court reversal of fortune.
My confidence was ignited, and Andre’s style of play fed the fire. He was my most dangerous career ri
val, but he was also one of the few baseliners I played in a Wimbledon final. He gave me a little more time to play my game than I got from the likes of fast-court heavies like Richard Krajicek or Goran Ivanisevic. As much as I enjoyed dominating with my serve, I also liked playing points on grass, especially engaging in rallies that stretched my legs and tested shots like my running forehand.
Andre liberated my game, and that felt great. On grass, if I was playing well and my opponent was not, and on top of that he was also staying in the backcourt—well, that made things seem pretty easy for me. As well as Andre was playing that year, and as great a returner as he was, I felt no real pressure to hold my service games. I knew that even in the event that he broke me, I’d have chances to break him back. When I played Andre, I always knew I could get into his service games.
The beginning of the second set was the backbreaker for Andre. I got an early break and drifted into the zone, that place where you play as if clairvoyant, in a calm trance and with all the time in the world to make your shots. I served huge (first and second serves) and pulled the trigger on fierce backhand returns. That enabled me to take control of the backcourt, which turned the conventional wisdom about my confrontations with Andre upside down.
There was an interesting technical reason for why I was able to get into rallies with Andre on grass and still feel on equal footing. On a hard court, Andre’s ball always came in quicker; I often felt a little rushed. But on grass, despite the reputation of the surface, Andre’s shots sat up a bit. I felt I had a fraction of a second longer, which was just enough time for me to get a good look and crack at the ball.
This effect was most pronounced on Andre’s second serve. When he kicked it on a hard court and got it up high, I would either have to chip it or play it defensively, because I couldn’t get over on it. But on grass, which deadens the bounce, that serve doesn’t get up as high. So I was able to drive through those returns from a more comfortable position. If I got hold of his serve with a good return to start a rally, it was like, Here we go—let’s see who moves better. I always felt I was a little better of a mover and athlete, even in the backcourt—especially on grass.