Sampras rounding into form at the perfect time
CNNSI
Thursday September 05, 2002
by Steve Wilstein, The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- Pete Sampras is a washed-up, step-and-a-half-too-slow, one-foot-in-the-grave old codger who just might win the U.S. Open again.
For all the loose locker room talk from losers who never had half his talent, for all the dimwitted suggestions that he should have retired by now, Sampras showed Thursday night that he's not ready to roll over.
If anyone was too slow on this balmy, breezy night it was 20-year-old Andy Roddick, the overhyped, underwhelming "future of American men's tennis."
At 31, Sampras was quicker to the net, steadier on his serves, crisper in his volleys, and deeper with his groundstrokes. He moved with a sense of ease and purpose while Roddick looked harried and lost and oddly enervated.
Sampras carved out a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory in a neat 1 hour, 30 minutes, playing Roddick like a puppet all the way.
He delivered a message with his first serve -- 131 mph down the middle -- and though it barely missed, Roddick realized right away just how serious Sampras was about dispelling all that over-the-hill nonsense. Sampras won the first seven points of the match, broke Roddick's serve and held for a 3-0 lead. The rout was on.
Roddick's bruised left foot had been bothering him since Monday, but that's not why Sampras bullied him around the court. To Roddick's credit, he didn't even offer the slightest excuse.
Roddick simply didn't have the game or the strategy to win. He made the mistake of staking out his territory five yards behind the baseline, yielding the net to Sampras and delivering few passing shots or lobs that could thwart him.
Sampras, whose record 13 Grand Slam titles include four at the U.S. Open from the first in 1990 to the last in 1996, should have been saying "thank you" after every game that Roddick stayed back. Sampras makes his living at the net, and Roddick let him live large. If Sampras wasn't drilling volleys and overheads, he was dropping them softly, far out of Roddick's reach.
Roddick, who grew up idolizing Sampras, looked too respectful, too cautious, too stiff. He cracked serves at up to 133 mph, but he never strung a bunch of big serves together. Sampras bunted them back, chipped and charged and sliced his way through Roddick's power, confusing and frustrating the younger player.
Roddick looked mesmerized.
"He is very graceful and fluid when he plays," Roddick said. "That makes it easy on the eyes to watch."
Sampras, 20-0 in night matches over the years at the Open, served as hard as ever, hitting one at 132 mph, many others in the high 120s, and some, just for variety, slower but with beguiling angles and spins.
"This is what I play for," said Sampras, who will meet Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands in the semifinals on Saturday. "These are the big moments. He's the young up-and-comer that has a great future. I'm pumped up. I kind of feed off the energy of playing at night here."
There were a few older champions watching -- Boris Becker, Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe, Jim Courier -- and the sight of Sampras toying with Roddick and sometimes outslugging him had to warm them. It was an exhibition of power and finesse, experience triumphing over youth.
Any chance Roddick might have had evaporated when he double-faulted twice in a row to drop his serve early in the second set. Sampras took the gift and served for a 3-1 lead, delivering the eighth of his 13 aces and a 132-mph service winner before Roddick sailed a lob long.
Never broken, Sampras faced only one break point, and quickly erased that.
Fittingly, Sampras closed out the match with a drop volley that caught Roddick stranded out of position at the baseline. Roddick sprinted in but never had a chance.
It was vintage Sampras, the same style that allowed him to rule these courts for so many years and reach the last two finals. He has been struggling through the worst slump of his career, losing to nobodies in the early rounds, failing to win a title since Wimbledon two years ago, but on this night he was Pistol Pete once more.
Greg Rusedski should have been there, bowing to him. So, too, Yevgeny Kafelnikov.
Rusedski, who is 13 majors behind Sampras, lost to him in the third round and observed, inaccurately and with little grace, that Sampras was a step and a half slower.
Quipped Sampras: "Against him, I don't really need to be a step and a half quicker."
Kafelnikov had suggested on a couple of occasions that Sampras ought to retire. Not that Sampras sought or needed Kafelnikov's advice. Sampras' reply was that he would retire when he's good and ready.
"I feel like I can still do it," Sampras said. "If I didn't, I wouldn't be here."
He's one old geezer no one should doubt.
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Straight to the semis
Veteran Sampras eliminates younger Roddick 6-3, 6-2, 6-4
By Steve Wilstein / The Associated Press
Friday, September 6, 2002
New York - As Pete Sampras pumped his fist to celebrate a volley winner that closed the second set, Andy Roddick flashed an admiring thumbs up and then bowed, acknowledging that his idol still has what it takes.
This cross-generational matchup was no match at all.
Smacking aces at more than 130 miles an hour, covering every inch of the net, Sampras looked like the younger man Thursday night and dominated an apparently awe-struck Roddick 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 to reach the U.S. Open tennis semifinals. It took all of 90 minutes.
"This is what I play for," said Sampras. "I was ready to go from the first point on."
Sampras hasn't won a tournament at any level in two years. But this one gives him a big boost.
"I'm just confident in the big moment that I'm going to come through," he said. "I spent moments of struggling with the confidence this year, but I can get it back pretty quickly."
Sampras has played his best tennis of the last 24 months in the U.S. Open, reaching the finals in 2000 and 2001. Now he's doing it again.
"You guys say Pete is washed up. I never said it," Roddick said. "I don't think anybody doubts the fact that he's capable of great tennis still."
The difference in the players' ages was obvious when they walked out on a windy night: the 20-year-old Roddick in his shiny blue T-shirt, his spiky hair peering out from above a visor, and the 31-year-old Sampras in his proper tennis whites, nothing covering his receding hairline.
Sampras, seeking his fifth U.S. Open championship, will be a big favourite Saturday against No. 24 Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands, who outlasted No. 28 Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (2) Thursday to get to his first major semifinal.
The other semifinal Saturday has Andre Agassi versus defending champion Lleyton Hewitt, yet another duel between a 30-something and a 20-something.
The women play their semifinals today, with Venus and Serena Williams bidding to set up a third straight all-sister Grand Slam final. Venus, the two-time defending champion, faces Amelie Mauresmo, followed by Serena against Lindsay Davenport.
Arthur Ashe Stadium was a sea of empty blue seats Thursday afternoon for Schalken-Gonzalez. It was packed at night for Sampras-Roddick, which didn't live up to the billing.
To put it simply, youth was outserved, and outvolleyed, outhit and out-just-about-everything-elsed.
Asked by USA Network announcers what advice he'd give Roddick, Boris Becker said, "Get out of the stadium."
Sampras had 13 aces and a total of 43 winners to 18 for Roddick, who might have been a step slow, having bruised his left foot during an earlier match.
Still, he never came close to solving Sampras' serve, managing only one break point. It came early in the second set and was erased, appropriately, when Sampras struck a good serve and followed it up with a crisp volley to the corner.
"You can't be upset at not breaking Pete Sampras,"' said Roddick, seeded 11th to Sampras' 17th.
This was Sampras' 29th Grand Slam quarter-final, and Roddick's second. Sampras came in with 200 match victories in majors, Roddick with 15.
Roddick looked tight right from the start. He lost the first seven points of the match en route to getting broken immediately and falling behind 3-0.
"I wanted to set the tone early," Sampras said.
He was popping serves by Roddick, and not just with pure power. Sampras closed the first set with a spinning offering at 101 mph that Roddick barely got to, his forehand return bouncing before it reached the net.
Roddick handed Sampras a 2-1 second-set edge by double faulting twice in a row to get broken at love. At the changeover, Roddick chewed on a towel, then tried to rip it.
Sampras broke again to get to 5-2, helped by Roddick's backhand into the net. Roddick - as emotive on the court as Sampras is stoic - dropped his racket, twisted at the hips, and yelled, "Awww, come on!"
Sampras wasn't shaken at all by the setting, of course. He's now 20-0 in night matches at the Open and insists he has one more major title in him.
He entered this tournament with a 20-17 match record in 2002, including a stunning second-round exit at Wimbledon.
"I don't have that week-in, week-out passion like I had once before," Sampras said.
Searching for answers, he has switched coaches the way some players change rackets during a match. Since December, he's gone from Paul Annacone to Tom Gullikson to Jose Higueras and back to Annacone.
"There's more adversity this year. It's looking at it as an opportunity and challenge," Annacone said Thursday. "He's accepted that in the last month or so and turned things around. His approach is where he wants it to be."
How bad have things been for Sampras? When he went to a tuneup event the week before the U.S. Open, he lost his first match to 77th-ranked Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu.