A week of upsets
by Nirmal Shekar, The Sportstar
July 13, 2002
Day Three: Wednesday, June 26: My good friend Steve Flink, one of the most experienced and widely travelled tennis writers from the United States, greets me on the walkway leading up to the media centre this morning.
Steve is a great admirer of Pete Sampras and has always believed that the great champion has not been given his due by the Americna sports media. And when we meet, the conversation almost always veers towards Sampras.
"This is ridiculous. How can they have him play on the No.2 court," fumes Steve this morning, looking at the schedule for the day and finding out that Sampras would play a Swiss player called George Bastl on the infamous Graveyard of the Seeds, the No.2 court.
"I mean, the man has won this seven times. You don't do that to a great champion. The scheduling is ludicrous," he says.
I agree with him. But, then, the gray suited men in the club have a mind of their own. And this not the first time that they have shown this sort of disrespect to a great champion. In their view, even a mediocre Brit or the so-called glamorous stars such as Agassi and Kournikova are better value for money on the centre and No.1 courts.
So, Agassi, who has won the championship just once, gets to play a second straight match on the centre court today while Sampras, the greatest champion of all times, had to make the trek through the milling crowds to the No.2 court.
Several hours later, watching Sampras stare into the turf in disbelief, perhaps hoping that the earth would cave in and he would disappear from our sights, following his five-set loss to a player who has made the main draw as a lucky loser and is ranked 145, my mind goes back to that conversation with Steve.
Would Sampras have lost to this journeyman on a show court? Certainly not. Only people closely associated with the game, and the players themselves, know what a big difference the surroundings can make. For men such as Sampras, so used to always playing on the centre stage, to suddenly ply his trade in an ambience like an outside court at Wimbledon can be a harrowing experience.
The crowds are so close to the sidelines, the effects of the suna and the wind are so different and it is an entirely new ball game.
"I was not happy about it. Having won this a few times, I figured they'd put me out there (on the show courts). But that's scheduling. You have to play on any court," says Sampras, his face a dark mask.
Perhaps no other loss in his career in the last dozen years might have been quite as hard to take. You look at the great man and you know that it has not gone down well with him. It is going to take a long, long time for him to get over this one.
"There is no question in my mind. I am going to be back. This is not the way I want to go out," he says. And talking about retirement, he says, "I going to stop on my own terms, not when someone else thinks I should stop. What I have done here and what I have done in the game is always going to stick, no matter what."
Of course, it will stick. Who can take the seven Wimbledon titles - something no other man will win in the foreseeable future - and the record 13 Grand Slams away from Sampras?
Yet, at the end of the day, after witnessing yet another ageing champion, Andre Agassi, 32, go down in straight sets to Paradorn Srichaphan of Thailand on the centre court, the point that I have often pondered over three decades once again agitates my mind.
From my early days in this business, I have seen it happen to the best of them. From Ilie Nastase down to John McEnroe and now Agassi and Sampras.
The point is not about whether we - the critics, the fans - have the right to tell Sampras when to quit. It is more about the legends getting their timing right.
"A loss like this happens once every ten years," says Sampras after going down to Bastl, a player who has won two Wimbledon matches all his life!
Yet, it's been happening far too often. The man has not won a title since July 2000 and this has been a particularly bad year.
The pattern is the same. You've seen it happen to Nastase. You have seen it happen to McEnroe and even Jimmy Connors too.
The cruel part is, the champions are the last to know, the last to know when their time is up. They tend to fool themselves into believing that they can still recreate the magic of old. The legs go, the reflexes go, the younger once pounce on them, the confidence goes but the desire and hope cling to them like moles on flaking skin.
Then again, the flip side is this: Just because we find it difficult to watch them - the Samprases and the Agassis - go through such agony in painful defeats in the big tournaments, do we have a right to question their own right to keep playing on?
Life after tennis, or any sport for that matter, is not an easy business. There are so many things to consider, so much to debate. Champions who quit in a hurry can often fall into a vacuum. Nothing can replace the thrills of being out there on the centre stage, experiencing that great adrenalin rush and finally savouring the applause.
An ageing actor can switch to character roles, an ageing financial analyst can switch to a less frenetic routine and become a consultant. What does an ageing athlete do? There are only so many seats in a commentary box. And someone like Sampras would hardly want to travel the circuit coaching.
Take Agassi, for instance. He has a lovely wife, a kid, millions in the bank, and like Sampras, he too is unwilling to accept the inevitable.
"I don't look at it as a reflection of where my game is," he says after losing to a player ranked 67, one who was making a Grand Slam third round for the first time.
"I mean, today I wasn't as good as the guy I played. But I still feel like I should be out there and doing better."
Having watched them play some of the best tennis that any man could have played - and having done that over long years - your diarist can only hope that Sampras and Agassi are right, that they have a lot left in them. But, realistically, the chances are, they are fooling themselves. And never in my career have I wished more fervently to be proved wrong!
Ah, what a day this has been. The little Belgian Olivier Rochus giving the second seeded Marat Safin a good 11 inches and 32 kg as well as a four set thrashing and then the heroics of Bastl and Srichaphan. Wimbledon has not seen quite such a day in the opening week in a long, long time.
Match of the day: George Bastl beat Pete Sampras 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4.
Quote of the day: "I just hope I can find it pretty soon."
- Sampras's last words at Wimbledon 2002. For "it" read, "my game".
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Posted on Sat, Jun. 21, 2003
Referee Mills feels he may have mistreated champ Sampras
BY CHARLES BRICKER
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
WIMBLEDON, England - (KRT) - As tournament referee Alan Mills contemplated the first Wimbledon in 15 years without Pete Sampras, there was a sadness in his voice, as well as a lingering fear that he might have had something to do with Sampras' absence here.
"I think putting two and two together, he thought he was badly treated last year and maybe he's a little bit annoyed," said Mills, who had scheduled Sampras' second-round match against George Bastl on an outside court.
"He played his match on Court No. 2 and lost to a lucky loser, which obviously devastated him. You could tell that by the way he was at the end of the match. I hope it's not because of that that he's basically retired," said Mills, who also is the long-time referee at the Nasdaq-100 on Key Biscayne.
It was not unusual for Mills to schedule former champions for a match away from Centre Court or Court No. 1.
"We always try to put top players out there. We had McEnroe, Connors, Henman, Rusedski. ... I think it's a little bit unfair if you keep the same player inside the big courts all the time," he said.
"Pete called to find out where he was playing and I told him. There was no argument. Fifteen minutes later he called back, asking if there was any chance of going indoors, as he called the big courts. I said, `Well, no, the order has been published.' Then his coach (Jose Higueras) came in, which is fair enough. He looked at the four men's matches on the big courts and said he could understand. Pete's match didn't have the attractiveness of the others.
"The way he handled it told me he takes the rough with the smooth, that he's a great sportsman. I will miss him in a personal way."
Listening to Mills, there was a sense that the episode on Court No. 2 last year still weighs heavily on him.
"I hope Pete will come back, because he will be invited back," Mills said.