Learning to love the robot
July 9, 2000
He always had their admiration and often their awe but when Pete Sampras wiped away the tears and clambered into the Centre Court gods to embrace his mum and dad the feeling was inescapable; that at last Wimbledon had learned to love its finest champion.
In
the most dramatic and unlikely of settings, with the scoreboard clock ticking
beyond 9pm and hundreds of camera flashlights dazzling amid the darkness
of his "home from home", it took only this heartfelt expedition
to find his shy folks and an equally emotional and dignified courtside interview
for the arena to give its warmest embrace to a man it had for too long perceived
as some cold, colourless assassin.
It was not that he had equalled William Renshaw's 19th century Wimbledon record of seven men's singles titles or that he had surpassed Roy Emerson's Grand Slam landmark with his 13th crown which won them over but the theatre of a marvellous gladiatorial final against Pat Rafter which not only once again revealed the greatness of his game but also the size of his heart and the depth of his passion for this event.
Not long before Sampras had finally served out for a three-hour 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2 triumph in the latest finish to a singles final after three rain delays, one churl shouted out, urging Rafter to beat "the robot".
It was a stupid cry but happily a lone one because, perhaps more than in any of his other finals, everybody could surely see this had been the day - make that the night and day - when Sampras had needed to overcome physical debilitation and mental frailty before closing in on history.
For all his incredible serving, he had never seemed more human nor less robotic out there.
We will never know exactly how much his leg injury was hampering him because, being Sampras, he again refused to make a song and dance of it afterwards. But it was obvious, as he struggled to get down to some volleys he would normally put away in his sleep, that he was not at his incomparable best.
When, despite outplaying Rafter for much of the first two sets only to be met by marvellous Australian defiance and athleticism at the net, Sampras found himself one set down and 4-1 down in the second set tie-breaker, his hangdog air for once was no illusion.
"I really felt it was slipping away," he admitted, just as he had almost convinced himself for the whole fortnight that he was out of sorts and "wasn't going to win this time".
In the first set tie-breaker, he had served two doubles to help gift it to Rafter 2-10. In the second set, he had gained his fifth break point but was yet again repelled.
As he went to the changeover in the second tie-break, about to crumble, he at last remembered why he was a champion. He thought how he had lost the first set to Boris Becker in 1995 and how Goran Ivanisevic had fought back to take him to a fifth set in 1998.
"There's times you reflect on past experiences to be able to get through it," he mused.
Still, he needed a little help. Rafter served a double and then, in his own refreshingly honest manner, admitted to "really screwing up" with an easy missed forehand.
"No matter who you are, we all choke," shrugged Sampras. Yet some choke less than others and, after his let-off, Sampras became the familiar strangler.
He was quite relentless, returning serve with a consistent quality which even Andre Agassi could not manage in his semi-final against Rafter, until eventually, after earning 10 break points, he finally nailed one in the third set after about two and a quarter hours. Rafter's resistance, hitherto sterling, had to crack.
The Australian, who had shown the same nobility in defeat as his conqueror had displayed humility, became the latest to hail Sampras as the greatest of all time.
What qualities made him the best, though? "Mate, it's one hell of a serve," sighed Rafter. "You can't read it, you can't pick it and it takes the pressure off him."
Yes, but the moment when, 3-2 up but break point down in the fourth set, Sampras finally extinguished the last ray of hope for Rafter with a 118mph second serve, was as much about nerve as skill.
Because Sampras's real genius is his ability, as he calls it, to "find any way to win" even when the biggest fight might be against himself. It almost defies credibility, in a tournament where matches can turn, like yesterday's, in a couple of key moments, that he has lost only one in 54 at Wimbledon in the past eight years (to Richard Krajicek in the 1996 quarters).
This time, he even found a way to win about 10 minutes before the light would have been unplayable.
It made for the most wonderful finale when, after his tears subsided, he squinted in the dark to have his parents, Sam and Georgia, pointed out to him. For once, the shy pair, who like to let Sampras have the limelight to himself, had been persuaded after his semi to fly over and share his glory.
They did not want to be in the players' box, though, only to be seated among the ordinary punters.
Suddenly, you could appreciate why Sampras is the way he is. "They've always given me my space when I'm competing because they don't want me to worry about them," he said.
"They aren't the typical tennis parents where they're with me every week. As a kid, they were involved but as I turned pro, I was on my own. They supported and loved me, always said the right things, but they always kept their distance."
So could Sampras ever see his dad standing on the players' box like a certain Mr Williams?
"No, he won't be holding any signs up either," smiled the champ.
As he paid this public tribute to his folks, while noting how he had seen "a lot of cases where parents get too involved", you could not help delighting in an image, at the end of a Wimbledon featuring the usual crop of tennis dads from hell, that genius in this game can also be nurtured amid normality.
For when they hugged their boy, Sam and Georgia could be rightly proud that their perfect Pete remains not only a credit to them but to a modern world of professional sport riddled with more than its fair share of charlatans and noisy hype.
Once again, he had displayed that it is possible to be the best without being loud about it, to be rich in character without having to be a character and to be a great sport while being, perhaps, the greatest sportsman of your generation. Long may the king return to grace his Court.