By Mark Kreidler , August 2002
Special to ESPN.com
Maybe, for Pete Sampras, this is simply how it has to be. Maybe this is the last best chance of finding the spark -- enduring tournament after tournament of relative underachievement, occasionally being beaten by players who at another moment in his career wouldn't have been fit to fill Sampras's water bottle.
Maybe it takes exactly that much punishment, sometimes even embarrassment, to get Sampras to the boiling point.
Maybe that's the idea.
Sampras said the other day that he'll play through 2003 before deciding whether to retire, and what that suggests is that he remains at least theoretically willing to risk, between now and then, the diminishment of his own legacy for a few more shots at glory. The risk returns this week at the U.S. Open, where Sampras was a finalist as recently as 2001 and now, as a No. 17 seed, would be seen as a fantastic long shot for such a championship run.
The Open was the site of some of Sampras's greatest triumphs; now, you can almost feel people looking away, squinting with one eye to get a sideward glance at the man as he struggles to right himself and again become a going concern on the men's tour. His attempt to warm up for the championship, at the Waterhouse Cup in Commack, N.Y., fizzled in the second round with a defeat by 20-year-old Paul-Henri Mathieu of France. That brings to 33 the number of tournaments Sampras has entered consecutively without winning a title.
He said bluntly this week that "the days of dominating and being No. 1 are over," and as self-evident as that would appear to be, for a whole legion of people who watched tennis during the Sampras years it remains a tough pill to swallow.
Count Sampras among that group. At times people have colored him uninterested -- we said uninterested, not uninteresting, which is another discussion altogether -- but a truly listless Sampras simply would have taken his 13 Grand Slam titles and his millions of dollars and walked away. This Sampras is a more complicated tennis pro. He knows he isn't what he once was but appears to think he can rise up for one final run. What he's searching for is a way to connect points A and B -- a motivation as much as a way through.
"I'm a little discouraged," he said after losing to Mathieu, "but you've got to look at the big picture."
And so he plays on, right through the worst of it. He plays through a first-round loss at the French Open and a second-round dispatch at Wimbledon and the likes of elimination from the Waterhouse Cup on a Tuesday. He plays and he talks, and his words are the words of a man who thinks he can get his game back, even as his play is the play of a man who doesn't appear to know which road leads to it.
And he commands attention, of course, because .. well, because he's Pete Sampras. He is the great Sampras, and when he so much as clears his throat in a news conference people reflexively lean forward, wondering if this is the day he simply decides to pack it in and enjoy the fabulous rest of his life.
Instead, he speaks of amazing things. Unattainable things, maybe.
Championship things.
"My goal is to win another major," Sampras said. It's hard to know how many people believe he can. Harder to know, still, is whether Sampras, a realist at heart, believes it himself.
There exists a school of thought that Sampras' cruise through the 1990s somehow is working against him now -- that, essentially, Sampras had so little ongoing rivalry during his greatest years that he never fully developed the kind of killer competitiveness he might need to summon to get back near the top of his game.
It seems unfathomable, remembering Sampras at his peak. That Sampras was so complete as a player, so utterly focused, that it's difficult to construct a scenario under which a consistently worthy rival could emerge. Opponents were choked out with barely a whimper. What the men's game did, mostly, was wait for Sampras either to lose his edge or lose a step.
Now he appears to have done both, yet that's still Sampras out there, making his appearances on the tour, popping up at the majors and, lately, absorbing his beatings. That is Sampras out there, playing below his legend, taking his medicine, walking the unfamiliar walk of the early-exit loser in Grand Slam events and comparatively obscure tune-ups alike.
It is Sampras, and because it is Sampras it probably won't be over until he says it is. He returns to the U.S. Open not in triumph but in free-fall, and even then he cannot be fully discounted. It is Pete Sampras out there, searching for that boiling point. And here is the sticking point: You can't boil without fire.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com
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Sampras should hang in there
By George Vecsey
From the September 2002 issue of TENNIS Magazine
We all know Pete Sampras hasn't won a major since Wimbledon in 2000. He got bumped in the first round of the French this year and the second round at the All England Club. He's even had to suffer voluntary career guidance from a career quarterfinalist like Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who suggested that Pete contemplate the dreaded R word. But where is the rule that he should jump on a funeral pyre?
Rather crankily, Sampras asserts his intention of playing until he's good and ready to call it quits. I have one word for him: Bravo! Unless there's something wrong with his health, and there isn't, he should keep doing what he does best. I guess this is a selfish reaction because great players are hard to find (don't we all still miss Chris, Martina, Jimbo and Mac?). And the guy is only 31, after all. Why should we be in a rush to feel nostalgic about him?
Retirement is serious. Some regular civilians who pick up their pensions reinvent themselves, but others keel over from sheer boredom. It's even trickier for athletes, who retire at an age when they have half their lives ahead of them. Pete has some general post-tennis plans -- he'll host an instructional show on the soon-to-be-launched Tennis Channel, for example -- but it's not as if he has a place waiting for him in med school. It could be that retiring at this stage would be a way of avoiding a bigger challenge than he has ever faced, namely, reinventing himself as a formidable tennis player in his twilight years.
Many superb athletes experience a trough in their careers. Baseball pitchers who rely on power in their youth often have a losing season before they learn to mix up their pitches and keep batters off balance. Pete hired a new coach, Jose Higueras, and is actually practicing after matches, so maybe he's on to something. Let's give him a chance to find out.
It's true that young sharpshooters come along, looking like Billy the Kid, eager to knock off the old gunslingers. At the U.S. Open last September, Lleyton Hewitt was fresh in every sense of the word when he defeated Pete. But while Sampras still has that serve and springy extension he should push himself to fight these squirts off for as long as he can.
Pete might also want to look at the athletes who missed the buzz and then tried to come back -- Magic Johnson, Guy Lafleur, Michael Jordan. Unless you've been at the top of a sport and experienced the adrenaline rush, it's unreasonable to ask these athletes to walk away from the Big Show. Pete should remember the roar of the crowd when he and Andre Agassi played their wonderful quarterfinal at last year's U.S. Open. The thrill that comes from competing in a match like that can't be duplicated in retirement.
Granted, it's hard to cope with slipping from the top. Chris Evert couldn't stomach the losses, but more important she also wanted to start a family. Pete insists he could be Mr. Mom for his wife, Bridgette Wilson, but I suggest he take a look at Agassi, whose professional attention span seems to have grown now that he's both husband and father.
Before Pete mothballs himself, he may have discovered that grueling practices, fear of losing, challenges from opponents, travel, critical press, and adoring fans have helped make up the best years of his life. As part of his own life experience, he should see what more he can accomplish, not out of desperation but out of joy. One major title in his early 30s, when he's a bit creaky, might just be more fun than any of the 13 Slams he won when he was young and bouncy and didn't know any better.
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Sampras wants to finish on his terms
By Michael Arkush , Tennis Magazine
Excerpted from the July/August 2002 issue of TENNIS Magazine
Last fall, Pete Sampras had quite a few late nights. He'd get into bed with his wife, Bridgette Wilson, at their Beverly Hills, Calif., home, but instead of giving Bridgette a good-night kiss and rolling over to sleep, he'd unburden himself. Sampras was at a crossroads, and he needed direction from the person he trusts most.
"We would get into bed at 11 or 12 and be up talking until three in the morning," Bridgette says. "There were no phone calls or distractions. Just us." The topic of conversation was Pete's career, which had been in a downward spiral. It was a heavy subject, but one Pete felt comfortable discussing with Bridgette. "I internalize a lot, but I don't with my wife," he says. "I let my guard down. I tell her my feelings, where I am with everything. She always looks at the positive things, and I need to hear that and be around that. I'm a little bit of a pessimist. I get that from my dad."
Pete's inner pessimist was frustrated. The optimist lying beside him suggested that he rededicate himself to tennis, work harder than ever and give the game that's made him a legend one more push. Deep down, Pete liked the sound of that.
"I want to end my career on my terms, not on what people think I should do," he says. "I could've stopped and felt good about what I've done in my career, but that wouldn't have sat well with me. I wanted to keep going."
It's not easy being Pete Sampras these days. He hasn't won a tournament since Wimbledon 2000, where he set the men's record for the most Grand Slam singles titles (13). This spring was particularly rough. He got schooled by Wayne Ferreira in Scottsdale and Lleyton Hewitt in Indian Wells. A qualifier, Chile's Fernando Gonzalez, made him look every bit the 30-year-old at the NASDAQ-100. Then, at America's Davis Cup tie in Houston, which was played on grass in part to increase Pete's chances of winning, the seven-time Wimbledon champion lost to Spain's Alex Corretja, whose aversion to turf rivals Pete's disdain for clay.
Now Sampras is hearing it from the peanut gallery: Pete, you're washed up. Pete, you're embarrassing yourself. Pete, retire already. In April, when Yevgeny Kafelnikov said that Pete should hang it up, Sampras replied, "The day I need to respond to him is the day I will retire."
Although Sampras tries not to let it bother him, some things are tough to take. Consider an incident at last year's U.S. Open. After beating Patrick Rafter in the fourth round in 2001, Sampras says, "Mary Carillo looked at me and was shocked. I kind of took offense to that a little bit, like 'What's the big deal?' When moments like that begin to surprise me, I'll be lying on a beach. I'm sure a lot of people have written me off, but even if you've hit 30 or 31, it's a bunch of crap that you're done in tennis. It's a challenge to prove people wrong."