Samprasfanz

[June 24, 2003 Peter Kerasotis FLORIDA TODAY ] We begin to recognize Pete Sampras’ greatness now as we observe it in the rearview mirror of history.

Eye-rubbing statistics spill forth — a record 14 Grand Slam titles, for instance — and it’s hard to believe Pete Sampras accomplished all that he did and that he’s still only 31.

Even harder to imagine that he is only 31 and walking away from tennis. Perhaps for good.

For the first time in 15 years there is no Pete Sampras at Wimbledon, and the taste it leaves is like bread without butter.

Sometimes, you don’t realize how good something was until you don’t have it anymore.

We weren’t that way with Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, of course. Time stood still when they were on center stage. We savored the moment.

Time passed quickly with Pete Sampras. Now we savor the memory.

Jordan and Gretzky are the perfect analogy because they were not only the greatest of their era, but of all time. The Sampras era ran almost concurrently with Gretzky’s and Jordan’s, and he not only dominated his sport like they did theirs, but also was the greatest of all time.

But we really didn’t notice, did we? Not like we should have.

We perceived Sampras as boring and mechanical, and a little too private for our liking. Once upon a time, Joe DiMaggio was like that, and yet his stardom never suffered from a lack of wattage. But we live in different times now, for sure.

Good guys like Tim Duncan and David Robinson can front the best team in the NBA and produce the lowest live TV ratings in the history of the NBA Finals.

Pete Sampras wasn’t flashy enough in a sport that has been declining in popularity anyway. It hurt his popularity. But so be it. He wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Sampras never wanted to be flashy. Pick out a picture from the Sampras era and you’d be hard-pressed to attach a date to it. Early ’90s or late ’90s? It’ll be that way years from now, too. Why? Because Sampras never wanted his pictures to look dated, swayed by the fads and fashions of the day.

You can form a pop culture timeline by looking at Andre Agassi’s pictures through the years. From big hair to no hair, from beard to goatee, from headband to bandanna, from the day-glo garb of a decade ago to whatever the fashion flavor is today.

That was Agassi.

Sampras basically wore, well, your basic whites. Short-cropped hair. And that was it. Nothing much changed. Nothing to indicate, even, that he played when he played.

The reason behind that is Sampras wanted his look, like his game, to be timeless.

And so it is.

But now his time has come and gone. He didn’t play in the Australian Open, and it was because he was taking a few months off for the birth of his first child. Then he didn’t play in the French Open, and we thought maybe it was an anomaly. After all, he never much cared for the French and its clay surface, reflected in the fact that he never won the tournament.

But Wimbledon was different. It is where he won seven of his 14 Grand Slams, most in the modern era. But the thrill of the grass doesn’t thrill him anymore. His wife recently said the tennis balls that still come in boxes to their home, they give away “to friends who have dogs.”

If Wimbledon, where Sampras once went 54-1 in matches during an eight-year stretch, couldn’t pull him back, then what will?

And so we look at the end of an era as a time to analyze and theorize.

Will anyone win 14 Grand Slam tennis titles again? Hard to imagine. But then again, it was hard to imagine someone approaching Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 majors in golf. Until Tiger Woods came along. Point is, we won’t appreciate how hard it is to win 14 Grand Slams until someone tries to do it again, which then will put Pete Sampras’ name to the fore in a way that it perhaps never was as a player.

Even now, it’s hard to believe that when ESPN gave us its list of the 50 greatest athletes of the 20th century, Pete Sampras barely made the radar screen. He came in at 48th, wedged between Edwin Moses and O.J. Simpson.

The greatest tennis player of all time is only the 48th greatest athlete of his century?

Please.

How embarrassing. Not for Sampras, but for ESPN.

History will be a friend to Pete Sampras, the friend he never had when he was playing. It will grow his stature and put his accomplishments in bold print with exclamation points. It will move him up the list of all-time greatest athletes.

I still think Sampras has what it takes to be the best in the world, like he was late in the summer of 2002, when he summoned all his greatness and won the U.S. Open, and then left the court for the stands, where he hugged his pregnant wife and shed a tear.

It was a scene more symbolic than we realized, for it is his family and his life away from tennis that now captivates his interests.

“I took my bows at the U.S. Open,” Pete Sampras said of that moment. “I just didn’t know it.”

We know it now.

His era came and went.

It wasn’t like we blinked and missed. It was more like we hardly gave it a look.