by Pete Sampras
The spring was unexpectedly rough. I lost in straights to Lleyton Hewitt in Indian Wells, and to Fernando Gonzalez in my second match in Miami, without taking a set off either guy. A week after Miami, I played Davis Cup on an outdoor grass court in Palm Springs and lost a five-setter to clay-court expert Alex Corretja—a guy whose career record at Wimbledon, in the few years he actually bothered to play, is 2–3. The year suddenly began to shape up as a nightmare. I was in trouble. And then something clicked. I played Houston, on clay, and beat Andre Agassi and Todd Martin before losing to Andy Roddick in the final.
My Houston karma didn’t carry over to Europe: I won exactly one match in four events, and I didn’t even enter the French Open. On top of struggling with my form, I had to deal with a changing situation at Nike. Jeff Schwartz, my agent at the time, assumed that Nike would be interested in working out some kind of long-term deal with me. As the all-time Grand Slam singles champion and a guy who represented old-school values and appealed to an older, more conservative crowd, I felt I could have a long shelf life.
But there were other realities at play: tennis (a favorite of Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight) was falling out of favor. I may have been the all-time champ, but it was the top players, and mostly hot young players, who moved product. Over the years, Nike had paid me a lot of money, I had hit my earning peak, and, all-time singles champ or not, if I failed to contend at Grand Slams, my value would plummet. Nike came back to me with an offer that was essentially a hefty pay cut.
I was so angered that I called Phil Knight. I told him that I felt I’d been a model Nike athlete. I had also shown great loyalty; I never fished around for a better deal. I had shown good faith, going all the way back to that first year and the problems we had with the new Nike Air shoe. There were no arrests on my résumé, or any rumors about unseemly behavior, on or off the court, at any point in my career.
When Andre and I were doing our thing, and helping market Nike products in the process, the scuttlebutt was that the tennis division was making something like $500 or $600 million a year. Those numbers, if at all accurate, showed that we’d been a good investment. Most important, I had produced the Grand Slam singles title record for a sponsor that had always emphasized that it was, first and foremost, about performance. If I wasn’t a prized client for a company that professed to be about excellence, who was?
Phil said he understood my disappointment, and promised to work on the situation. But the handwriting was on the wall. It was clear that the tennis division wasn’t doing all that well anymore. I assumed that Phil, despite our good relationship and his genuine love for tennis, was under pressure from the bean counters up on the Nike campus. They had shelled out a lot of money over the years to Andre and me. When it came to budget slashing, I was a prime target. The cruel, underlying reality is that, in the endorsement business as well as the game, you are only as good as your latest results, and people are more interested in what you might do in the future than what you’d done in the past.
My contract was up at the end of 2000, and we still had no deal. I decided that until the issue was resolved, I wouldn’t wear clothes with the trademark Nike “swoosh.” At the 2001 Australian Open, I wore a plain white shirt with an American flag patch on it.
Gradually, though, I realized that my pride was getting the better of me, and I was getting a little too emotional about the issue. There was no denying that the Federers and Safins and Hewitts were coming on, just like I had come on in my early years, and they were the priority for Nike. I had the option of running off to look for a better deal, but at that stage in my career all it would have done is—maybe—bring in more cash, and I didn’t do things just for the money. I had a few more conversations with Phil, and we eventually reached a deal. The experience was a reality check.
I traveled to London in 2002 in a familiar frame of mind, ready to use Wimbledon results to combat any sense of vulnerability or insecurity about my game. But deep down, I wasn’t confident. I felt uneasy. I wasn’t sure where my game was, and fretted that I was becoming the one thing I had taken such great pains to avoid being: unpredictable. You bet on good players; you go to the bank with great ones.
At Wimbledon, my managers got into a conflict with the Borgs over the escalating rental price of their home, so Bridgette and I rented a new house. It was light and airy, but the bed in the master bedroom was only a queen size. Bridgette and I are both pretty tall people (she’s five-nine and I’m six-one), so we tried to get a king-size bed in there. We couldn’t get it in through the hall, though, so I had to make yet another sacrifice for my career—sleeping apart from my wife. I was married to one of the most beautiful women on the face of the earth and every night, after we would watch a movie or linger at the dinner table, talking, I would reluctantly rise and basically say, “Well, I gotta tuck in now. Match tomorrow. See you at breakfast!”
My sleeping habits became something of an issue over the years, for which I blame Sally Jenkins, the author and sportswriter. I always liked Sally but, like some of the best writers, her great imagination can cause trouble. I once told her that I needed to sleep in darkness, in a very cool room, and she took that admission and ran with it. She was very dramatic about the way she wrote it up and made it sound like I needed to sleep in a mausoleum and didn’t want to be touched. When I read her piece, I kind of laughed. You would have thought I was a vampire. Of course I like a cool, dark room—it sure as hell beats a hot, brightly lit one for getting a good night’s rest. As for “touching,” let’s not even go there. But that became something I was known for: I was Pete, the guy who sleeps in the batcave, untouched. . . .
Bridgette was handling this entire frustrating European swing very well, given how much stress I felt and how little fun it must have been for her to be around me most of the time. She was pregnant with our son Christian by then, but we didn’t tell anyone. However, she had morning sickness. In Europe, she couldn’t really leave the hotel room for long periods. It was hard for her and hard for me, because she was sick a lot, and I had to try to juggle my needs as a player with my chores as a dad-in-waiting and dutiful husband. I worried about leaving her when I went to dinner or to the courts. Bridgette isn’t a big shopper, so she wasn’t dying to get into central London all the time. That made things easier. She became friendly with my faithful cook, Kirsten, and they did a few things around town together, but Bridgette largely spent most of her time around the house, or at Wimbledon.
Because play at Wimbledon doesn’t start until after noon (except when the tournament has to make up rain matches), Bridgette and I stayed up until eleven or twelve every night. And on many of those nights in London we spent a lot of our leisure time just talking about what I was going through, because I was playing lousy and was preoccupied with it.
Bridgette knew by then how my mind worked, and she listened closely. She had opinions, but she had no interest in wading in and taking charge of my life or career. She gave me space to work things out in my own mind. So much of what she was doing was pure support for me that I often wondered if she wasn’t also thinking, Whoa, what did I get myself into here?
At Wimbledon, I had a gimme first round against a young British player, Martin Lee. I had good reason to feel confident against my second-round opponent as well, Swiss journeyman George Bastl. I was stunned when the schedule came out on the evening before my match and I saw that I was being relegated to Court 2—Wimbledon’s infamous Graveyard Court. I don’t want to sound like a prima donna or anything, but that was a snub.
The assignment to Court 2 was made by Alan Mills, the legendary (and now retired) Wimbledon referee. He had always done right by me, and we had a friendly acquaintance, so I was shocked and angered when I heard that Alan had put me on Court 2 for the second-rounder against Bastl. From the time I first won Wimbledon, I had, like most multiple Wimbledon winners, played almost exclusively on either of the two main show courts, Centre Court or Court 1. There were solid practical reasons for that, includi
ng security.
Court 2 was unfamiliar territory to me. It was called the Graveyard Court because of the extraordinary number of headline-making upsets that had occurred on it. Those upsets occurred partly because of the atmosphere and conditions. Court 2 has limited seating capacity, but the crowd is very close to the sidelines, so you really end up feeling that you’re in the boiler room. The court itself is usually more chewed up than on the main show courts, and there are numerous distractions, starting with the crowd noise from adjacent Court 3. Also, the terrace of the players’ lounge overlooks Court 2. When there’s an upset in progress, players and camp followers—a who’s who of those present on the grounds—gather to watch from up there, like vultures perching on a cliff.
I felt that as a dominant champion for so many years, I deserved a little better. If I lost there, the headlines the following day would be sensational: GRAVEYARD COURT CLAIMS ANOTHER CHAMP! SAMPRAS BURIED ON GRAVEYARD COURT! Ironically, Tim Gullikson had added substantially to the lore and legend of the Graveyard Court when he upended John McEnroe there one year. Was there some kind of karmic payback afoot here? The answer was probably simpler. Perhaps the Lords of Wimbledon perceived a golden opportunity to add to the legend of the Graveyard Court, and thereby the event in general. I probably knew by then that the All England Club is always going to put its own interests—and glory—first. I just hadn’t ever been on the losing end of that proposition before.
The road was getting awfully bumpy for me, at a time when it ought to have been smoothly paved. But all these struggles and setbacks contained important lessons in life, reinforcing many of the things I had always believed but never really had a chance to put to the test because of my status: People really don’t care about you that much; basically, you’re only as good as your last win; people often love what you do, while you can do it, but there’s nothing really personal about it; many people are interested in you for what you can do for them, not necessarily because of who you are, or even how great you are; you may do special things, but you’re nothing special; nobody in tennis is given a free ride based on past performance. Some of those truisms are fair and all of them are realistic. But tennis players are selfish and disinclined to see things objectively.
There was an outside chance that I could snap out of my funk at Wimbledon, but that prospect vanished when I stepped onto the court. I felt terrible. I had absolutely no confidence, despite my history at Wimbledon. What’s more, I was paired against someone I had never played before. Throughout my career, guys had their best chance to beat me the first time we played. Once I had a good look at their style, and developed a feel for how they hit the ball, I was a lot tougher.
I was in trouble from the start; I lost the first two sets to Bastl 6–3, 6–2. The funny thing is that I was hitting the ball fine; there wasn’t a thing wrong with my strokes or how they were landing. It’s just that in front of a lot of people, I kind of lost my way. My confidence had been slowly eroding for months, and now big chunks of it were crumbling and falling off, almost by the minute.
Bridgette had written me a letter before the match, and tucked it into my racket bag. I read it in the locker room, but I was a little distracted before I went out to play and it didn’t really sink in very well. So at one point in the Bastl match, I had a bizarre urge to reread her letter; clearly, I was groping for something, anything to get me out of the negative space I was in. I pulled the letter out on a changeover and started to read it again. The first line was, To my husband, the seven-time Wimbledon champ . . . It was a letter of support and inspiration, in which Bridgette basically told me to remember who I was, and that this—playing tennis—was what I did best, and the thing I most cared about.
I tried to believe those words, I tried to take heart. I wish I had been able to read them, take a deep breath, and go out there and start serving bombs and drilling passing shots. But I was so mired in misery that I couldn’t do it. Bridgette’s kind, loving words had the opposite effect. When I absorbed the words, the letter kind of freaked me out; I had the sensation that my world was falling apart and thought, How could this be happening to me? I was incapable of mustering my pride or drawing inspiration from that sweet gesture by the woman I loved. That’s how down I was.
But after the contents of the letter sank in, I felt a glimmer of hope. I pulled my game together long enough to win the next two sets. But I was never out from under the cloud. My funk slowly began to get the better of me again. Usually, when a guy blows a two-sets-to-love lead against a top player, he crumbles while the better player really pours it on. Bastl hung in there, though, and I was unable to pour on anything but sweat that could just as well have been blood—that’s how much I was suffering.
In those crunch times, it’s all about your mind and emotions, and my usual self-assurance and predatory gusto just weren’t there. I lost the fifth set 6–4. I walked off Court 2 just another figure in the lore and legend of the Graveyard Court. I could’ve told myself that at least I was in good company, but you can bet that wasn’t what I was muttering.
I didn’t know it at the time, but a photographer for the Times of London had been in the photo pit near my chair on the court, and he took snaps of me reading Bridgette’s letter. He used such a long lens that you could see every line of the letter, starting right at the top. Neil Harman, the tennis writer for the Times, is one of the journalists with whom I always got on well. He told me later that they had the shot, and I asked him not to print it. Neil and his editors had a lengthy, heated discussion about whether they should print the picture of me reading the letter and all the contents. Neil prevailed on them to refrain, out of respect for me and my privacy. So they printed the picture of me reading the letter, but they blurred the contents. It was a gesture I wouldn’t forget.
A very harsh reality was setting in. Wimbledon, my last refuge, had turned into the focal point of my demise. My loss on the Graveyard Court was big news, and to some it confirmed what they down deep probably wanted to believe—that I was through. Given how often I had relied on Wimbledon to get me back on track, this was a novel situation for me. I had this sinking sensation and thought, What the hell am I going to do to get out of this hole now? Coincidentally, Andre lost in the same round, on the same day, to the up-and-coming Thai player Paradorn Srichaphan. But that was cold comfort—make that no comfort at all.
I felt utterly empty, and had no answers to explain it. Marriage may have had something to do with it, especially with Bridgette being pregnant. Maybe all these big life changes were subverting my focus, or putting me at war with myself. But I felt I knew what I wanted: my wife, our child, a good, clean, normal life—and to squeeze every drop of potential out of my career. I had spent more than a decade beating people for a living, putting all of my mental, physical, and emotional energy into the task. I beat people. That was what I did, that was who I was. I had to ask myself, Am I still that person?
When I returned to our house after the Bastl match, I actually felt like crying. That freaked me out, too, because I’d always taken losses in stride. Heaven forbid, it was just a damned tennis match. But still . . . As we returned to Los Angeles, there was no longer any question: the wheels were falling off, and the worse it got, the more I had to think of the “R” word—retirement.
Despite all the problems I experienced in the first half of 2002, I never really thought about hanging it up. But I was coming up against one of the most spirit-killing problems any player has to face: the growing, inescapable chorus of critics who seem obsessed with putting you out to pasture. In politics, there’s this concept called “the Big Lie.” Basically, the idea is that no matter how outrageous, illogical, or untrue something is, if you shout it out long and loud enough, on a large enough platform, people start to believe it.
The retirement discussion is like that. If enough people all around are constantly asking you if you’re going to retire, suggest that you should retire, or speculate about when you’re going to retire, you start thinkin
g maybe you should retire. Unless you are completely oblivious to public opinion, you begin to second-guess yourself. Gee, maybe you are fooling yourself. Maybe you should think about calling it quits. In my case, those voices were growing louder, more insistent, and more impatient. It was harder and harder for me to ignore them, even though I knew they should have nothing to do with my decision-making process.
The Australian Open had been a disappointment, Davis Cup a shock, the French Open a nonstarter, and Wimbledon nothing less than a catastrophe. There was no silver lining anywhere. To top it off, the day we got back to Los Angeles we flicked on the television and there was this talking head from CNN, Jim Huber. They were doing a piece on Wimbledon, and Huber steps out and calls Bridgette “the Yoko Ono of tennis”—a reference to the Japanese artist who married John Lennon and was widely blamed for the breakup of the Beatles and a decline in the quality of Lennon’s work.
I glanced at Bridgette and saw her go pale; she looked shattered. I felt horrible, because something new crossed my mind: maybe she did feel responsible for my troubles, no matter how silly it would have been to do so. The poor girl—all she had done, for months on end, was support me—even as she was going through all these changes, and this is what she got for her trouble. Some a-hole on CNN making a nasty remark that, if you think about it, wasn’t even a valid comparison.