A Champion’s Mind

by Pete Sampras

  I had my hands full and then some: I lost my nerve a little and Pat won the first-set tiebreaker 12–10. The next set went to the tiebreaker as well. When Pat jumped to a 4–1 lead, I thought I was going to lose the match. It was a shame—my parents had come all the way to London, and it looked like I would fail to produce a win again. But Pat, faced with a match that could become the highlight on his résumé (you know how those Aussies are about Wimbledon), faltered. He had two set points at 6–4 up in the tiebreaker, but he failed to convert either. I guarantee that if he’d won either of those points, he would’ve won the title.

  When I wriggled out of the jam and won the tiebreaker, the complexion of the entire match changed. Deep down, I felt I was going to win, even though it’d been a grueling, grinding battle to that point. That premonition lifted my spirits and game just a bit, while I felt that Pat’s went down by a similar small margin. But that’s the way momentum works, and that’s grass-court tennis.

  I was in control, but my foot was killing me. I wasn’t exactly playing on one leg, but it was getting awfully close to that. The adversity just got me more fired up, once I sniffed the finish line. I reveled in the emotions I felt in those last few games. I was so into the moment that I actually enjoyed the pain. I had a fierce desire to drain every ounce of meaning and every sight, sound, and smell out of the moment. It was like, This is it. Screw it, I’m going to get it done right here. I’m so into this. . . . Nobody said it was going to be easy anyway.

  I finally won it, 6–7, 7–6, 6–4, 6–2. It was dusk by then, and flashbulbs went off like a thousand lightning strikes. I looked over at Paul in the players’ box. He gestured up toward the area where we knew my folks were sitting. I was disoriented, but I knew what to do next—I climbed into the stands to find and hug my folks. And those flashbulbs just kept exploding. The scene was surreal.

  I learned later that Dad had been so nervous that he had left the match to go for a walk in Wimbledon Village. When he returned, he told me, he saw people milling around the grounds and he assumed that the match was over—that Pat had won. But that was just the crowd, preparing to come back into the stadium after the rain delay. The holdup also pushed the conclusion of the final into prime time in the U.K., ensuring that an amazing number of British people saw the end of the match.

  Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have climbed into the stands. Thinking about it in advance, I would have said, “None of us likes to make a really big scene, and my parents would find it embarrassing. I don’t think I’ll do that.” But when Paul signaled me, I knew immediately it was the right thing to do. Much like when I had been asked to speak at Tim Gullikson’s funeral, my first reaction was to avoid drama and attention. But when the moment arrived in both those cases, I knew enough to do the right thing. As Paul said later, when I asked him why he had thought to signal me, “How often do you get to break the Grand Slam record, at a place that’s been so good to you, in front of people who have been so good to you?”

  The paparazzi got a picture of me hugging my dad. The image was printed far and wide, and it became well known. The following morning, Dad phoned from his hotel in central London and, sounding kind of amazed, told me that all kinds of people in the street recognized him—Sam Sampras!—and congratulated him.

  Because of the magnitude of my accomplishment, I had all kinds of responsibilities right after the match. The ATP Tour officials were buzzing around, sifting through all these offers in what was a PR bonanza for both them and me: Charlie Rose, David Letterman, Larry King, Today. . . . Everyone wanted an exclusive interview. Because of the demands on my time, I was barely able to make the very end of the Champions Ball—in fact, I went there still dressed in my warm-ups. I made a brief speech and hurried back to my house in Wimbledon to have a shower and a glass of champagne with Bridgette, Paul, and my family.

  Finally, I had a chance to unwind. It was just one of those moments in life when I sat back and, despite the pain in my foot, I had a big you-know-what-eating grin on my face, and I thought, Life isn’t perfect, but sometimes it’s pretty damned close.

  We were due to fly out the next day. Meanwhile, the calls and faxes were pouring in, both at the house in London and my home in Los Angeles. I came late to the cell phone party, so those were the only two numbers where people could reach me. Todd Martin, Jim Courier, and Andre Agassi called to congratulate me. Michael Stich sent a fax, and so did Monica Seles.

  Actually, Monica sent me lots of faxes throughout my career. We had an odd relationship that began in Los Angeles, shortly after Tim was diagnosed with cancer. Someone—it might have been a guy from IMG (the management firm that represented both of us)—called to say that Monica wanted to talk to me.

  So within a few days, I was at a Los Angeles Lakers game and there she was, sitting nearby. We approached each other to exchange pleasantries, and in the course of the conversation I told her that I was flying back to Tampa the next day on a chartered private jet. She asked if she could hop on with me—at the time, she also was living near Tampa. I told her, “Sure, we’re leaving out of Van Nuys tomorrow at noon.”

  I was a little surprised that she had invited herself along like that—after all, I hardly knew her. But I learned her reason soon enough. She wanted to reach out to me and talk because, just like I was losing Tim, she was losing her father, Karolj—also to cancer.

  This was after Seles had been stabbed in the back by that crazy German fan, and I could tell that she was going through some difficult emotional times about that as well. I was touched that she could reach out to me at a time when she was going through so much herself. And while I’ve never been very good at talking through things like that, we discussed our sick loved ones, and we talked a little about the stabbing incident. I realized that she was deeply shaken by it, and understood better why it took her such a long time to return to the game.

  After that shared plane ride, Monica and I shared a bond of sympathy. She was a very supportive, encouraging friend, even though we never really spent much time together.

  It was fitting that I would bag a record that was based to some degree on longevity against a player who wasn’t on the pro radar when I won my first Grand Slam. The first requisite for achieving greatness is talent, but then it’s about consistency. I faced a slew of gifted if not always complete players in my era, and I’ve included them all, with commentary, in the appendix at the end of this book.

  In 2000, I had a chance to celebrate the tenth anniversary of my first major at the place where I won it, the U.S. Open. But Marat Safin, one of my new emerging rivals, ruined my moment. I felt good about my chances going into the match, even though I’d lost to the Russian upstart earlier that summer.

  I didn’t think I played badly in that U.S. Open final at all—Marat was just returning my second serves like they were nothing, he was popping his own first serve, and anything I got back, well, he would just hit the crap out of it. All I could do was mutter, “Too good,” shrug, and hope he wouldn’t be able to play that well throughout the match. But he did—just like that Sampras kid had in 1990. It was a great example of the adage, “What goes around comes around . . .”

  I like to say that everyone has his window, and it all comes down to how willing you are to take advantage of the opening, and how long you can keep it open for yourself. Safin’s window opened at Flushing Meadows in 2000 and he took full advantage, much like I had a decade earlier. He beat me with a demonstration that simply shocked and awed anyone who witnessed it.

  At the time I lost to Safin, though, I had other things on my mind. Bridgette and I were to be married shortly after the tournament, and she’d agreed to put her career as an actress on hold and travel with me as I played out my string. I wasn’t sure when I would quit, but I knew I wouldn’t do it while I still believed I could contend at majors.

  I started pretty slowly in 2001, losing to Todd Martin in the round of 16 at the Australian Open. I didn’t reach a final until Indian Wells, where A
ndre rolled through me in straight sets. Andy Roddick beat me in Miami less than two weeks later. I made a note: another new face to remember.

  The clay-court season was a write-off, and at Queen’s I lost to Lleyton Hewitt in the semifinals. I got a great draw at Wimbledon. I had, in successive matches, Francisco Clavet, a clay-courter, Barry Cowan, a British long shot in through a wild card, and Sargis Sargsian. Beating those guys brought me up against a young Swiss guy I’d already heard good things about, Roger Federer. From what I’d been told, he was very talented, but he ran a little hot and cold. I expected to win, but very early in the match I realized that I was up against a kid with a complete game and talent to burn.

  Early in the match, Federer was serving big and hitting the ball hard. He was also attacking—rushing the net in a way he would not do at Wimbledon in later years. It was a good, tough match. I had one sniff at a break point in the fifth set, but I let that slip way, and he played a great game to break me and ultimately win 7–5 in the fifth. Federer had halted my bid to equal Björn Borg’s record of five consecutive Wimbledons, but that record didn’t mean much to me. I saw every Grand Slam event as an entity unto itself; five Wimbledons was certainly better than four, but whether or not they were in a row simply didn’t matter much to me.

  The loss hurt, but I had to admit I liked this kid’s style. He was poised and dignified, yet he played with great flair. I was very impressed. The win was an important step in Roger’s path to greatness, and looking back on it, this was the moment when the Wimbledon baton was passed from me to him. Roger also needed to know what he was really made of, sort of like I did after the Edberg fiasco of 1992. He had an inkling of it when he beat me.

  I’ve gotten to know Roger pretty well in the last few years. He’s a pretty modest, unassuming guy—nothing about him, other than his talent, suggests entitlement. I won a major on my eighth try, in just my second full year on the tour. Roger didn’t win a major until his seventeenth try, midway through 2003, his fifth year as a tour regular. Since then, though, he’s been more prolific than I was at my peak. He really took a quantum leap sometime shortly after our only career meeting. As I write this, Roger is poised to shatter my Grand Slam singles title record.

  So a pattern was emerging. I was losing some matches to an emerging new guard, but they were the kids who would win majors and dominate the game over the years to come: Roddick, Safin, Hewitt, Federer. . . . And while I struggled week in, week out, I felt I showed up and gave a good accounting of myself at the majors.

  When I was knocked out of Wimbledon by Roger Federer, it opened the door for Goran Ivanisevic, who beat Pat Rafter to finally get his long-coveted title. I was happy for Goran, because I liked him. He was a real grass-court warrior and a charismatic guy who was fun to be around. We got along fine, like opposites often do. I knew he could—should—have beaten me in that 1998 final, and he’d had a good chance to beat Andre in the 1995 final, too. It had to have been killing him to have blown those chances, but he put all the demons to rest in 2001.

  Goran was a loose cannon. In the locker room, the players all dropped whatever they were doing and gathered around the television sets and turned up the volume when Goran was giving a press conference. He handled those sessions like a guy on a psychiatrist’s couch, but always with great wit and charm. You just never knew what was going to come out of his mouth next—just like you never really knew what was going to melt off his racket in a blur, except for those aces you knew he was always going to hit.

  A few weeks after Wimbledon, I sought Goran out in the locker room at Cincinnati and told him how happy I was that he finally got it—the big one, the one he’d dreamed about all his life. I think he was shocked to hear that, coming from me—we were rivals, we had never given each other much quarter, nor asked for any. But I just wanted him to know that I was genuinely glad for him; we had been through a lot together at that tournament.

  Also, Goran’s father, Srdjan, was an incredibly nice guy. He sat through all those tense, seesaw, nail-biter matches—most of which ended badly for his boy—without ever losing it, or showing the disappointment he must have felt. I never heard the guy utter a word of complaint, or make a harsh or bitter comment. He was a class act.

  The situation I was in, careerwise, was perfectly expressed at the U.S. Open of 2001. It was one of the most interesting and challenging tournaments of my career, because in order to win I would have to beat three former U.S. Open champions—two dangerous guys who had shown themselves to be more or less oblivious to whatever edge my reputation theoretically gave me (Pat Rafter and Marat Safin), and one deadly rival who just would not go away—Andre.

  It was fitting that Andre was the last man standing when it came to my rivalries. Andre was toughest during that great summer of 1995, and then again near the very end of our careers, culminating with the night-session quarterfinal at the 2001 Open—a match that was the crowning moment of our rivalry and, to me, our toughest and greatest battle.

  Volumes have been written about my rivalry with Andre, and from every perspective. In my heart of hearts, I know he was the guy who brought out the best in me. He had ups and downs, which accounts for why we didn’t have more confrontations, especially in big finals. But Andre was still the gold standard among my rivals. Nobody else popped up as frequently, over as long a period of time, to test and push me to the max.

  For most of our careers, we really couldn’t have been more different—in personality, game, even the clothing we wore. Our lifestyles were radically different. Andre always seemed bent on asserting his individuality and independence, while I tried to submerge my individuality and accepted the loss of some personal freedoms. Andre was Joe Frazier to my Muhammad Ali, although the personalities were kind of flipped around because Andre was the showman and I was the craftsman. Wherever you lived, we were your neighbors: I was the nice, quiet kid next door on one side, and Andre was the rebellious teenager on the other.

  Yet as Jekyll and Hyde as we were, and as much as people liked to emphasize the very real differences between us, there were powerful, deep similarities between us, too. The Gift we both had shaped our actions and lives, posing challenges as well as offering opportunities. First-generation Americans (Andre’s father, Mike, was from Iran), we were both champions but outsiders who crashed a sport dominated for most of its history by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. That never bothered me, because the American Dream fulfilled its promise to my family, a few times over.

  Because we had both been prodigies, we grew up in the public eye, under scrutiny. It was easy to stereotype us—Andre was the brash, flamboyant showman, I was the reticent, old-school, boring guy. Who was hurt more by the stereotyping? Who knows? What I am sure about, though, is that we were tough, albeit in different ways and with different goals. When we reached the top, we cast frequent, nervous glances across the divide between us. Andre and I always made it our business as individuals to know what the other guy was doing.

  In late career transformations, I became more inclined to show my emotions and let fly the occasional attention-grabbing quote, while Andre shaved his head, which was not just a dramatic response to male-pattern baldness (another thing we shared) but something seemingly meant to send a message, calculated or subconscious. Andre had become a bit of an ascetic, embracing a monkish look to go along with a late-life, monkish discipline.

  One thing was certain: Andre brought a lot of flair to a sport that needed it. And while it made him a huge star, it also brought him a lot of grief. It may sound crass to tennis purists, but it should be clear already that Nike played a significant role in both of our lives. We lived in a commercial era, and for most of our careers, we were both Nike guys. The company recognized that between us, we covered both ends of the tennis spectrum—the traditional values and aesthetics, and the envelope-pushing features of the Open era. If I was the heir to Rosewall and Laver, Andre was the offspring of Connors and McEnroe.

  I had signed with Nike and first wore the
firm’s clothing at Wimbledon in 1994. In fact, I claim to be the guy who launched the long, baggy shorts craze, because that’s what I liked and Nike thought it suited me. It didn’t hurt that the shorts were a striking contrast to the gear Nike created for Andre. Who can forget those black shorts with the fluorescent pink compression shorts underneath?

  Over the years, I hit rough patches with Nike and often felt that the company didn’t do very much to market me, especially in contrast to Andre. But Nike did its best to capitalize on our rivalry. One of my few off-court run-ins with Andre was engineered by Nike. In 1993, Nike had this exhibition before the French Open, and Phil Knight (the founder and then CEO of Nike) got together with a few clients, including Jim Courier, John McEnroe, and Andre. Phil told them that he wanted to stir up a little controversy. Andre, who was in that period when he frequently said provocative things, obliged Phil. He said of my rise to number one, “Nobody should be ranked number one who looks like he just swung from a tree.”

  The comment became public overnight, and when it was brought to me I refused to rise to the bait. I shrugged. Andre could say what he wanted, it made no difference to me. So the ploy kind of backfired, and it left Andre feeling uneasy. He wrote me a nice fax a few days later, apologizing for the remark and telling me how much he respected my game.

  Because Andre was so flamboyant, he seemed to get an inordinate amount of Nike’s attention. Once, in a fit of pique, I told one of Nike’s top executives, “Listen, I’m not one to cry much, or complain. I’m a quiet guy. But I’ve had my moments—in Australia with Jim Courier, in Flushing Meadows with Alex Corretja, getting sick and all that . . . those weren’t moments I created or set up to make myself look a certain way. I’m not doing any of this on purpose, or to project an image other than what I am. So what more do you want from me, as an athlete? You tell me Nike is all about performance, so what more can I do?”