Just a Normal American Guy
September 10, 1990
It's not difficult to believe that Andre Agassi lost the final of a Grand Slam tennis tournament. Not difficult at all.
And it's not inconceivable that an American won America's tennis tournament for the first time since 1984, when John McEnroe did the trick. Sooner or later, it had to happen.
What's hard to get the brain to absorb is that the American who won the 1990 U.S. Open is... well, he's just, you know, normal.
Yeah, that's it. Normal. Pete Sampras is normal.
I don't mean tennis normal. Tennis normal for American male champions is goofy, bratty, crude, lewd, foul-mouthed, abusive, demonstrative, ostentatious, and/or anti-social. It's Jimmy Connors spewing naughty words at linesmen and John McEnroe declaring genteel old Wimbledon to be the pits of the world. It's Agassi dressing like a rock star, or a professional wrestling antagonist. That's tennis normal.
Sampras isn't that kind of normal. Not at all. He dresses primarily in white and has a regular haircut. He has a sense of humor. He's polite. He hasn't thrown a racket since he was 14 or 15. He doesn't curse at or argue with umpires. He doesn't react to every winning shot like Mark Gastineau used to react to a sack.
He doesn't have a tennis mother or father who sticks to him like a remora and directs his every move. His parents, in fact, get too nervous watching him play to even watch his matches on television. They tape them back home and watch them after they know who won.
He doesn't have an entourage. Instead of traveling like a sensible tennis pro, with trainers, masseurs, parents, friends, nutritionists, and significant others, he manages to get from city to city accompanied only by his coach, Joe Brandi.
To relax, he doesn't play in a rock band, hang around in nightclubs, or smack autograph seekers upside the head with his racket.
He plays golf.
He doesn't even have a one-name name. That's very important in tennis, a single name or nickname that takes the place of a regular first name and surname. All the great ones have one. In tennis, there's Jimbo, Mac, Ivan, Bjorn, Andre, Chrissie, Martina, Steffi, Gabby.
But Pete? No way. You can't live on Pete alone, not in tennis. But Pete is what he is. Just plain Pete, as regular as unleaded gasoline.
We're talking terminally, perhaps incurably , normal. And at the tender age of 19, when most people are anything but normal.
And he's so cool and composed on the court you'd think he was Swedish. You'd think he was anything, in fact, but an American tennis player.
It's too early to tell whether his utter normality will hurt his commercial value. I mean, he's not the kind of guy who's going to say "radical" or "awesome" or even "Pete knows tennis" just to sell sneakers.
His idea of a shoe commercial is probably to say something like: "I'm Pete Sampras and this is a good shoe. Would you please consider buying one, or even a pair, if you feel like it?" He grew up on stories of Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, great Australian tennis players and perfect gentlemen of another age. "All the Australians were classy individuals," he said. "I would like to be in that category."
He'd like to be an American champion and normal, too. Pete Sampras, tennis pro.
It's enough to give tennis a good name.