A Champion’s Mind

by Pete Sampras

  However, one of the good things about all the exposure and attention Andre got was that it took pressure off me. I was content to operate outside the limelight as much as I could. The difference between us that way also helped keep the rivalry from becoming too intense, which was a real danger because, unlike, say, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, we were from the same country. All in all, I think we did a great job over our careers of keeping things under control. We had no public feuds. It was a dignified rivalry, with very little trash talking. The truth is that even though one or the other of us might get in a little snit from time to time, we basically liked each other.

  The best expression of our commonality was in the most successful commercial exploitation of our rivalry—that wildly successful “guerrilla tennis” television ad campaign of 1995. That was a series of commercials in which Andre and I jumped out of vehicles in unlikely urban locations to set up a net and play tennis before astonished passers-by. It was drive-by tennis before “drive-by” was part of our vocabulary.

  The campaign was brilliant, and it was an enormous success. And it worked because, instead of “Pete or Andre?” or “Pete vs. Andre” driving Nike’s promotions, it became Pete and Andre. There was a welcome, counterintuitive feel-good message conveyed in them. The commercials helped further interest in the game and our rivalry. It also caught the true nature of our relationship. We had plenty of differences, but we were friends.

  Much later that year, after the U.S. Open and the Las Vegas Davis Cup tie against Sweden, Andre invited me to fly with him on his private jet on a trip to Los Angeles. Andre was on the cusp of that long slide into the depths of the rankings, brought on by my win over him in the U.S. Open final of ’95. (He bottomed out at number 141 in the fall of 1997, setting the stage for an equally remarkable resurgence.)

  I sensed on that flight that Andre was struggling. He quizzed me very closely on how I lived my life, and seemed dumbfounded to learn that I had moved to Tampa solely for my tennis game. I told him that I missed my family, and Southern California, but considered it a necessary trade-off. He admitted that he wouldn’t give up living in Vegas, or his lifestyle, in order to be the best player in the world. The contrast was clear and striking, although Andre made that point at a time when he was feeling a little disillusioned by the game.

  Through all of that, though, I always believed something that others, particularly people who didn’t know Andre very well, doubted. I always thought that Andre was a sincere guy. When we spent time together out of the limelight, he was always honest and frank—and I respected him for that.

  Davis Cup was always a good time when Andre was around. He was, at times, downright exuberant. He frequently let his guard down in Cup practices, screaming and yelling about any little thing, just for the fun of it. He seemed to get a kick out of stirring things up, creating drama, taking little things and making a big deal out of them. He was emotional, and he liked to whip up others’ emotions.

  At other times, we sat around in the locker room and talked about this or that, mostly about sports, and it was very comfortable. Andre was inquisitive. He liked to compare notes on players and he was eager to see how others perceived the same things he was thinking about. Andre had a great grasp of strategy; it was a great asset, given the type of game he played.

  I respected Andre for another big reason as well: I knew what he was capable of doing on a tennis court.

  Much like at the U.S. Open final of 1995, Andre and I were both on top of our games the night we met in that 2001 U.S. Open quarterfinal. But there were great contrasts in how we approached and played the game.

  Andre had to think a little more about the nuances of the game than I did. Against top guys, he needed to set things up for himself in order to play his most effective game. At his best, Andre was the consummate puppet master, jerking his opponents all over the court. Thankfully for me, he was also a little bit at the mercy of what his opponents could do.

  My game, by contrast, was much more about what I was going to do, and whether or not the other guy could stop it. The big question for me on every surface but clay was, Okay, what do I do to break the guy? That was because I always felt confident that I could hold my serve. Andre didn’t have that luxury—at least not to the same extent that I did.

  Andre pushed me so hard that he forced me to add a few things to my game—things that I rarely needed against most other guys. I had to play a lot more serve-and-volley on my second serve against Andre, and I had to go more often for that risky backhand down the line instead of playing it safe and going crosscourt. Andre also could expose things in my game that other players could not. If I wasn’t playing well against Andre, I would lose—there was no bluffing through.

  The way I saw our matches, he was a great hitter and I was a great pitcher. If I didn’t throw strikes, he would hit the ball out. It was tough to break Andre because, while he didn’t have a huge serve, he served smart and at times very well. He would often hit a second serve instead of a first, kicking the ball wide to my backhand. Surprised, I would chip it back and if it floated he would pounce on it. And that’s what Andre liked to do most of all, set up shop in the middle of the court, where he would not have to do a lot of running, and yank you from corner to corner, dictating—preferably with his forehand.

  Andre always hit a few aces here and there, and he was good at serving to spots where he could get control of the point from his first touch after serve. If I couldn’t get the return to his backhand, he would run around and smack that forehand and that was it—then I would have to lace up the track shoes. But if I could get on the offensive with Andre, things usually worked out better. That was easier said than done, because he played from inside the court and hit a pretty flat ball, so he didn’t give me a lot of time to set up and hit my shots.

  Even when I was playing well, I had to really mix my serves, pick my spots, and—contrary to the conventional wisdom—confront Andre’s terrific forehand. Most guys stayed away from Andre’s best shot, but I wanted to get to it in order to get him moving. If I was able to hit my backhand deep and hard to his forehand, I could start doing damage because the flow of play almost demanded that he go crosscourt—bringing one of my best weapons, the running forehand, into play. That gave Andre something to fret about, because I could make him move with my forehand, and he wasn’t an exceptional mover.

  I also sought to get into forehand rallies with Andre. Those were athletic hitting contests in which I felt I had an edge, however marginal. On my service games, I liked to mix it up, especially on the ad side. I loved going down the middle with the big serve—my strength to his (the forehand). But Andre was such a good returner that I could only pull that off if I established the wide serve early on, just to keep him off balance.

  Andre was such a great hitter that I was constantly forced to mix it up—go for the second serve out wide to his forehand, or just put a little something extra on the ball. Late in our rivalry, I started to serve and volley more often on the second serve. He was a tough guy to chip and charge, but I did a little of that, too. I threw in lots of double faults when I played Andre, because he forced me to try to execute at the very edge of my comfort zone.

  When I volleyed against Andre, I felt that if I could get the racket on the ball, I would be okay. I liked my chances if I could poke the ball deep to a corner, or even hit a drop volley. I never felt Andre’s defense was that great. If I got him running to a corner, or changing directions, I felt I had him. The big danger was hitting a second serve only to see Andre get that return down low, to force a defensive volley. You just didn’t want to mess with Andre’s passing shots.

  The overarching theme, in my eyes, was that if I could make it a test of athleticism and movement, things would break my way. I had the fast-twitch-muscle advantage. By contrast, Andre had amazing eye-hand coordination; he was unrivaled as a ball striker. The idea was always the same: avoid becoming the puppet on the end of Andre’s string. Avoid getting into those ralli
es in which I found myself trying to get the ball to Andre’s backhand, while he’s cracking forehands and jerking me around the court.

  We had a tremendous crowd for our big quarterfinal in Flushing Meadows. Word must have gone out all over Wall Street, the Upper East Side, and Central Park West that this was a potential classic, for all the scenemakers, movers and shakers, and celebrities were out. The best thing was that you could feel this respect and appreciation for tennis in the air. It wasn’t the usual noisy New York crowd, being semiattentive. Everyone seemed riveted and there were moments when you could have heard a pin drop.

  Andre and I gave them their money’s worth—this was a battle pitting the best serve-and-volleyer against the best returner and passer. It was different from our final of 1995, because I attacked more—in fact, I attacked relentlessly. I think I served and volleyed on every single service point I played for more than three straight hours. That takes its toll; that constant stopping and starting, leaping and lunging, sudden directional changes, and bending low can be debilitating.

  That match also represented the longest period of time over which Andre and I both played really well at the same time. We each had our little lulls and hiccups, but nobody lost serve for more than three hours. I had chances to break Andre in the first set, but I blew it. I lost the first tiebreaker, but I came back to win the next three. It was a blunt and sometimes brutal battle that was decided most of all by execution and mental focus, rather than strategy or the way our strokes matched up.

  In a way, that high point of our rivalry was also a microcosm of our decade-long battle. I held a six-win edge in our rivalry (20–14), although if Andre had not taken significant breaks from the game we might have played fifty times. I performed a little better in the majors, holding a 6–3 edge. He won all of our clashes at the Australian and French opens; I won all the ones we played at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. We met in five major finals, and I won on every occasion but one, the Australian Open of 1995. We had a few epics.

  In the long run, I was just a little better at those giant moments, just like I was on that sultry New York night when Andre and I played our masterpiece.

  Unless you’re very young in your first big final (in which case not having time to think can be a good thing), you need time to savor and process a victory and get yourself into a proper competitive frame of mind for your next match. It’s especially true in the late stages of major events, and doubly so in the late stage of your career, when recovery time is longer. In the final of the 2001 Open, I would be playing Lleyton Hewitt, a scrappy, fleet, superbly fit Aussie.

  It had been a draining second week for me. After beating Rafter and winning that epic four-setter over Andre, I handled Marat Safin with relative ease. I think he felt the pressure of the situation. Instead of swinging freely and painting lines, he seemed a little inhibited. I won in straight sets. He was probably going through the same thing I experienced in the year after I won my first major.

  I had to play Hewitt in the final barely twenty-four hours after finishing my semi, and by that point my brain was already slightly fried and my legs were feeling a little heavy. For a veteran, that twenty-four-hour turnaround at the Open is one of the toughest assignments in tennis, mentally as well as physically.

  Hewitt was just twenty, and he still had peach fuzz on his face. With his long blond hair and clear blue eyes, he looked like a teenage surfing or skateboarding champ, and he played with a healthy disdain for etiquette, forever punctuating his better shots—sometimes even errors by opponents—with gut-wrenching screams of “Come awwwwwwn . . .” A year earlier, I had barely managed to contain Hewitt in the U.S. Open semis, winning two of my three sets in tiebreakers. He was now a year older, a year wiser, a year hungrier—and a year stronger.

  Arthur Ashe Stadium was playing fast that year, and pundits didn’t recognize the degree to which the conditions, while good for me, were tailor-made for Lleyton’s game. Although Lleyton was a very consistent baseliner, he was least dangerous on slow surfaces like clay. He was slightly built and not very powerful, so he could be roughed up and beaten down in a simple war of the ground strokes and stamina. Opponents could also attack his serve on slow courts to take control of points. A faster court gave Lleyton more openings to attack from the backcourt, in classic counterpunching style.

  Lleyton returned well enough to be sure of getting a few looks at breaking my serve. At the same time, being able to hold his own serve by popping in a few aces and making it harder for me to hit forcing returns would take a little pressure off of him to hold. And he liked to have a target, forcing him to hit passing shots. My style played right into his strengths.

  Lleyton took full advantage of the conditions and played a good first set, taking the tiebreaker 7–4. I was beat, out of gas, emotionally as well as physically. It quickly turned into a rout in which I won just two more games the rest of the way. It was my worst loss by far in a major final, and it began the debate over the state of my game. Some pundits thought I was slowing down. The Pete Sampras they watched in the U.S. Open final against Hewitt looked like a tired, vulnerable tennis player, at a loss for a strategy to employ against his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, not-yet-twenty-one challenger. It was an accurate assessment, but it was more of a comment on the tournament I’d had than my general physical state.

  I didn’t look tired because I was old, or losing focus, or banged up. I looked tired because it had been an ultrademanding week filled with very tough opponents and a back-to-back semi and final. I didn’t exactly feel slow out there during the Hewitt match, but I felt like I was having to work awfully hard for the points that I won. I struggled and heaved and tried to dig into my reserves, but there was too little left to call upon.

  In Lleyton, I saw a feisty young gun who was zeroed in on the target on my back and determined to take his shot at greatness. I saw a pugnacious and gifted Aussie battler aware that he was facing his window, determined to make the most of it. Hewitt seized the moment; I was the last person who could begrudge him that or rationalize away the fact that he just plain ran me into the ground.

  My days were numbered. On the other hand, there are a lot of numbers.

  The loss to Hewitt in the 2001 Open meant that for the first year since 1992, I would fail to win a major. Guys were closing on me; my appetite for daily combat was diminishing. I didn’t exactly think about retiring—two fourth rounds and a runner-up in the four Grand Slams wasn’t a shameful record. But people talk, and it was difficult to block them out. I felt I still had at least another push left, but I didn’t want to delude myself. After the loss to Hewitt, I decided that a coaching change might give me the inspiration and motivation to have one more good run.

  The problem was that I would have to let go Paul Annacone, the coach who had shepherded me through my greatest years. The one thing that I will always cherish Paul for is his loyalty. I think I earned some of that loyalty with my own behavior; I don’t think I ever treated Paul like the help, or took advantage of him to do things for me that I should have done for myself. I put my money where my mouth is as well; Paul was probably the best-paid coach on the tour, and worth every penny of it. But I’m a tennis player. When it came to my career, I was a selfish, obsessive individual driven by naked self-interest. And in late 2001, after seven years with Paul, I had a gut feeling that I needed a break.

  Paul was in a tough if comfortable position. He would have been crazy to leave on his own, because there was nothing left on our “must do” list. As much as I wanted to win the French Open, we both knew that my window was closing. It would take a miracle. I was destined to call it a career within a year or two anyway. Why would he want to walk away now, when he could just coast to the finish line with me? And where could he go that would be a step up? Beyond that, we had a great relationship.

  But relationships go stale, and deep down you know it when they do. It would have been all right, too, if I had been content to coast to that finish line. But deep inside, I wa
sn’t ready to yield. I knew I had something significant left to give. I began to feel that maybe the coziness of our relationship was holding me back at a time when what I probably most needed was a kick in the ass. And I knew Paul wasn’t going to kick. He probably would have been surprised to know what I was thinking, and that may have been part of the problem.

  I’d always hired and fired my own coaches and agents, and now I was facing the toughest call I’d ever had to make. Paul and I were friends, our families were close. We had accomplished great things together. But I was searching for those last bits of greatness left in me, and ready to make some difficult choices in pursuit of them.

  So, late in 2001, I called Paul up and told him in pretty straightforward fashion what I was thinking; I needed to make a change in my coaching situation. I had thought about it for a long time and it kept coming back to that. It was not that Paul had any shortcomings; I just told him that I needed some fresh blood. My confession blindsided him completely. He was in shock, and I felt horrible.

  Given his reputation, Paul was able to find work right away as a top coach with the USTA. So I felt some relief about that. Meanwhile, I started calling around. I tried Bob Brett, who had coached Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic, but he was busy with his European sports camp operations, and enough of a veteran not to want to go back out on the road, even with me. I tried Tony Roche. Similar story. I finally hired Tom Gullikson, and he traveled to Australia with me in early 2002. I lost a tough match in the round of 16 at the Australian Open to Marat Safin; he won in four sets, the last two of them tiebreakers that he won 7–5 and 10–8.

  I felt after that trip that things weren’t working out with Tom, through no fault of his own. I had just left a coach because he was too much of a friend, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tom fell into that same category. We had been through an awful lot together. I decided to part with him and hook up with Jose Higueras, who was willing to do the job—as long as he didn’t have to travel much. Jose prepared me in the California desert for the big spring U.S. hard-court events and the clay-court season in Europe. He strongly felt I could benefit from going to a racket with a larger head than the 85-square-inch Wilson that I had used all of my pro career. But I didn’t want to complicate things at that late stage in my career, and wasn’t willing to risk the switch.