Posted on: March 28th, 2011
In Retirement, Sampras Looks for Balance
- petepageMarch 28, 2011 - Pete Sampras, winner of 14 Grand Slam singles titles, retired officially in 2003 but has been showing plenty of interest in playing the game of late. He has taken part in exhibitions in the United States, including a match in Madison Square Garden in New York last month against Andre Agassi; played in a senior tournament in Zurich; and signed on to take part in a 12-city tour of the United States in September and October with Agassi, Jim Courier, John McEnroe and others.
Sampras, who will turn 40 in August, spoke in an interview last week. Here is a transcript from some of the interview.
Q. Seems like you’ve been playing, or at least practicing, fairly intensely. I know you trained with Roger Federer before the Indian Wells tournament.
A. We’re pretty good friends, so we hit a few balls for a couple of hours, and it’s fun every now and again to go out and push it hard. I don’t like doing it a lot, but when he was in town, him being who he is, I wanted to not embarrass myself and be somewhat competitive, and I think I did that.
It’s fun. It gets tougher as you get older. I don’t move as well. I’m not quite as durable, but standing and hitting, I still do it pretty well.
What’s the level of pleasure playing the game gives you at this stage of your life?
A. You know what it does for me is, at home, it gives me a balance. I love playing golf. I love spending time with my kids and my wife, but at the same time I do need to work. I do need to feel like at the end of the day I did something for myself. So hitting a few balls is good for me. It keeps me in shape. It keeps me a bit focused. It’s not something I need to do every day. But every now and again, if I have a match coming up, I’ll hit every other day for an hour or an hour and a half and get out of there, and I get into the gym.
I think when I stopped playing, when I retired, I took two years of not doing anything, and I felt I was getting a little bit restless, maybe a touch bored, and I felt I needed something to kind of get me going, and hitting a few balls is something I tried and really, it’s given me a good balance over the last number of years. Listen, I’m not going to play a ton, but if I play a dozen matches a year, I’m happy. Every few months, if I have to go overseas, I don’t mind that. It’s always nice to make a few bucks here and there as well.
Q. I remember talking about this with you when you were still on tour: that you were well aware that when you retired you would basically never need to work again, that by age 30 you had taken care of your needs and your family’s needs. Do you feel thankful for that now on a regular basis?
A. I’m in complete control of what I want to do in my life and that’s a great place to be at 39 years old. At the same time, my childhood and all my years of playing, I definitely sacrificed a lot, and that’s why I was willing to sacrifice because I knew when I was retired I could pick and choose what I wanted to do, so it really is a nice place to be in life. I can spend a ton of time with my kids, take them out to the park during the week, and most guys are working eight to six.
Q. When you play matches like the one in New York last month or the upcoming tour in the fall, who do you reach? Who do you see in the stands when you look around the Garden?
A. I’m speaking to the older generation, to be honest with you. It’s funny. I was hitting with this one kid who goes to U.C.L.A., and he never saw me play, and I was like, “Wow, you never saw me play.” And it was weird to hear him say that. He said, “I’ve only seen you on YouTube.”
Q. What’s your take on the state of the men’s game at the moment? Novak Djokovic is off to an undefeated start to the year. Seems like the days of Nadal and Federer sharing all the spoils are over. Do you see it that way?
A. I don’t think it’s over. It might be a little less frequent. I still think there’s four guys, now five guys in Juan Martín del Potro, that are really the dominant players, and I think it really depends. But I do think that Djokovic is clearly up there now obviously with those guys, but I still look at Roger and Rafa and think they could very well play in the final of some more majors. It depends on who’s playing well. There’s only a handful of really great players in the sport.
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