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News on Sampras

Posted on: May 22nd, 2003

For Pete's sake, let's give Sampras his due

- petepage

By GARY SHELTON, Times Sports Columnist
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 22, 2003

If he had been the life of the party, perhaps we would do a better job of noticing Pete Sampras' departure from it.

If he had been prone to charming moments, or glib ones, or revealing ones, perhaps he would not be leaving so quietly.

If he had been of a different time, or a different sport, perhaps this would be the day we added up the moments and the memories.

Alas, all Pete Sampras ever brought us was greatness.

Just that.

Sampras is all but gone from tennis. He announced that last week when he said he was withdrawing from the French Open, which he never has won, and from Wimbledon, which he always seemed to win. Sampras said he was 95 percent sure he would not return to the game.

And the silence was deafening.

How can this be? How can so much greatness walk away with so little fanfare? How can we resist debating his place in history? How can we not measure whether it was the athlete or the sport that made the other richer?

True, it would have helped if Sampras had been more definitive, if he had said he was leaving and not coming back. Had he said this would be his last Wimbledon, perhaps we would have time for a proper sendoff. Had he done it 20 months ago, in the echoes of somehow winning the U.S. Open, it would have been perfect.

Instead what we get is a career that is, as the wizard in The Princess Bride suggested, mostly dead. Logic tells us that Sampras is done. He was such a finely tuned athlete, mentally and physically, that it's hard to picture him putting the two together. Still, the end seems vague, lacking flair.

And when you get down to it, isn't that the way you would think Sampras' career would conc
lude?

As a tennis player, as an athlete scaling a particular mountain, he is Jordan, he is Gretzky, he is Ali. If Sampras was not the greatest tennis player of all-time, he at least gets into the discussion, which isn't bad in itself.

Fourteen major titles. Seven Wimbledon championships. Six consecutive years as the top player on the planet. At a time when equipment has done much to make very good players look like great ones, Sampras still managed to stand taller than everyone else.

Yet for most of his career, there was a distance to Sampras, as if he were keeping the very best part of himself inside. As a competitor, he could tear an opponent's throat out. As a showman, well, he could have used a new coach.

For most of tennis history, that would have been fine. Ivan Lendl had no personality at all, and those in charge wouldn't even rent one to him. If Bjorn Borg were in the car with Sampras, you'd refer to Pete as "the fun one."

Sampras, however, happened to come along when there was no opposite side of the coin. He would have done the part of "ice" just fine, but Andre Agassi went for a walkabout with his "fire," and fans missed the contrast.

Accordingly, fans seemed to blame Sampras for any blandness they saw in the men's game. "Sourpras" the British tabloids labeled him.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't even the point.

The point should be that, on the court, Sampras was as fierce, as furious, as focused a player as the game has seen. In the discussion of best ever, there always will be those who hold his failure to win a French Open against him, and they'll write in Laver's name, maybe Borg's, before his. But they won't write many before his.

The career of Sampras was odd in that he had to show a little weakness before fans acknowledged his strength.

That final major, when Sampras somehow gathered himself to win the U.S. Open, was a thing of beauty. That was his crowning glory. His serve had lost some heat, and his ground strokes were shakier than they had been, and his opponents no longer fear
ed him. But Sampras always had that knack for rising for the big point, and he did it, one more time.

To some, that is where you will begin to tell the legacy of Sampras the Great, when like an aging gunfighter, he found a way to win one more time.

My favorite Sampras moment was July 4, 1999, the day that Nostradamus predicted the world to end. Others were predicting it was the day Agassi finally would get the better of Sampras in a Wimbledon final. Some days, it seems, you just can't predict anything.

That was the best of Sampras. He blew away Agassi, who played pretty darn well, in three straight sets. "He walked on water," Agassi summed up.

Sampras had been shaky the entire tournament, and the Wimbledon fans sensed it. They never had been kind to Sampras, the bully, but now they seemed to reach out for him. Finally they seemed to realize not what Sampras lacked, but what he possessed.

Now that he is departing, perhaps it's time for the rest of us to realize it, too.

As much as any athlete of our time, Sampras shows how often we look for the wrong things in the athletes we observe.

If Sampras had been a brat, someone who threw rackets and balls and umpires around, there would be more attention placed on his farewell.

If he had loved the nightlife, if he had loved to boogie, he would have been all over the tabloids, and as such there would be more sadness evident over his fading away.

Even if he had been a thug, if he had bitten an opponent's ear off, if he had left a few rules tied into a pretzel, we would pay more attention.

Instead, all Sampras had was greatness.

At the conclusion of a career, it looks like plenty.


Source: St. Petersburg Times

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