With No. 13, Sampras Is Matchless
Tennis Record total for Grand Slam wins comes with a seventh Wimbledon crown.
July 9, 2000
Just minutes before 9 p.m. London time Sunday, with darkness and rain clouds closing in, John McEnroe leaned toward his courtside microphone at Wimbledon and told his audience of millions, in classic understatement, the obvious.
"History, folks," McEnroe said.
Seconds later, and only a couple dozen feet away from McEnroe, the man who had first toed the tennis service line as a 7-year-old on the hard courts of Palos Verdes, did it one more time.
This time, it was for the ages.
Pete Sampras' left foot rocked backward and up, then his body and right arm swung forward and he hit a serve that would bring him, at the tender age of 28, into the category of sports legend. When Australian Patrick Rafter returned wide on Sampras' first match point of this rain-delayed Wimbledon final, Sampras had gone where no other male tennis player had gone before, to a 13th title in a Grand Slam event.
Sampras' seventh Wimbledon title, to go with his four U.S. Open and two Australian titles, gives him a record that is of Joe DiMaggio/Secretariat/John Wooden proportions. It is in the same stratosphere as 56 consecutive major league baseball games with at least one hit, a 31-length victory in the Triple Crown clinching Belmont Stakes, 10 NCAA basketball titles.
Sampras reached it with lots of time to make the record even more unreachable.
"I think he'll win lots more," said the fabled Jack Kramer of Los Angeles, the 1947 Wimbledon champion. "In 50 years, nobody will remember Don Budge and Pancho Gonzales and Ellsworth Vines and some of the others like them, but they'll remember Pete Sampras.
"I'm glad he comes out of Southern California. We all ought to be proud of him."
Mastery Over His Injuries
While Sampras has suffered more and more injuries in recent years, causing
him to sit out events and curtail his playing schedule, he remains at or
near his prime. This year's U.S. Open is another chance to lengthen his
list of Grand Slam event achievements, as is January's Australian and, certainly,
next year's Wimbledon, where his mastery has become, well, unreachable.
His four-set victory over Rafter, with scores of 6-7 (10), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2, topped the record of 12 Grand Slam titles--the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon--that he had shared since last year's Wimbledon with Roy Emerson, the Australian who now lives in Newport Beach. Only one other man, William Renshaw, had won seven Wimbledon titles. And for perspective, Renshaw's last Wimbledon title was 1889, when the draw was considerably smaller and the competition considerably weaker.
The only active player with Grand Slam title results even remotely mentionable in the same breath as Sampras' is Andre Agassi, who has won six. Among the all-time greats of tennis, after Emerson's 12 (from 1961-67), Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver each won 11, Bill Tilden won 10, Fred Perry, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl and Ken Rosewall each won eight. Even McEnroe, one of the biggest names in the history of the game, managed only seven.
"Time will tell if it will be broken," Sampras said Sunday. "I think in the modern game, it could be difficult. It's a lot of commitment, a lot of good playing at big times. It's possible. I mean, the next person might be 8 years old, hitting at a park somewhere around the world."
Sampras' dominance at Wimbledon has been so complete that, since his first title in the run began with a victory over Jim Courier in 1993, he has lost only one of 54 matches. He has won in '93, '94, '95, '97, '98, '99 and now 2000. In those seven final matches, he has had his serve broken only four times, twice by Courier in '93 and twice by Goran Ivanisevic in '98.
But it is a measure of the Sampras drive and fire, something that does not come across in his on-court body language or even post-match news conferences, that he can sit and talk painstakingly, and in vivid detail, about every moment of the game in 1996 in which Richard Krajicek broke his serve to take control of their quarterfinal match and deprive him of winning eight consecutive titles.
"I was right there, just a shot or two away," Sampras says, eyes fiery. "A break here or there in that one and I would have gone all the way there too."
Sampras' drooped shoulders and downcast look are frequently taken as the mark of a beaten man, or a player on the ropes. That is usually misleading. He shows much more vulnerability than he feels, although Sunday's pressure had to be as tough as anything he has ever faced. As he was Sunday, while trailing Rafter by one set and down, 4-1, in the second set tiebreaker, he has been counted out by more broadcasters and writers than a punch-drunk, out-of-shape prize fighter. But his amazing rises from the canvas are amazing only to others.
"I think I have one of the best serves in tennis, and I never think I'm beaten until I am," he confides in some of his more unguarded moments.
His early years as a junior player in Palos Verdes were directed by Dr. Peter Fischer, and he grew up in an area that was to produce, among others, women's stars Tracy Austin and Lindsay Davenport, last year's Wimbledon champ, who moved from Palos Verdes to the Murietta area for her high school years.
Sampras came up through the junior ranks with Agassi, Courier and Michael Chang. Once he changed from a two-handed backhand to a one-hander and developed the serve that is not only effective, but a virtual poetry in motion, he began to emerge as the best of that hugely talented group of U.S. youngsters who have, to date, won 24 Grand Slam titles among them. Agassi has his two U.S. and Australian Opens, and one French and Wimbledon; Courier has two Australians and two French Opens, and Chang has one French.
Sampras spent the late '80s and most of the '90s living in Florida, and eventually being coached by Tim Gullikson, a veteran tour player who brought stability and maturity to Sampras' game and life. When Gullikson died of brain cancer in May 1996, Sampras was well on his way to a career of record setting, but the death of his coach seemed to bring him to a new level of maturity.
Two years ago, he moved back to Los Angeles; he now lives in Beverly Hills. For years, especially when he lived in Florida, he seemed to operate independently, with mentions of his family only incidental. But when he returned, he said he did so to be closer to his parents, Sam and Georgia. He talked about having access to the courts at UCLA, where his sister, Stella, is the women's coach. He has another sister, Marion, who is a teacher in Los Angeles, and an older brother, Gus, who is director of one of the events on the Assn. of Tennis Professionals tour.
Nervous Parents Win a Hug
Sunday, when Sampras set the record, parents Sam and Georgia were in the
stands. They are so nervous about watching him play that this marked only
the second Grand Slam final they had ever attended. The first was Sampras'
1992 loss in the U.S. Open final to Stefan Edberg, one of only two Grand
Slam finals Sampras has lost. Part of Sampras' post-match celebration Sunday
was climbing high into the Wimbledon stands to hug his parents.
"I wanted them
to be a part of it," he said. "As much as I like to say I'm going
to be back here every year, there's no guarantees."
Since he has returned to Los Angeles, Sampras has continued to mature and give back to the community.
In March, he hosted the first Pete Sampras Golf Classic at North Ranch Country Club to raise funds for the Tim and Tom Gullikson Foundation for cancer research. At the evening dinner, the once-shy Sampras took the microphone and conducted the program like somebody who had been doing it all his life. That night, he introduced actress Bridgette Wilson, now his fiance, as the "love of my life."
A month later, he came back from an embarrassing opening-match defeat in the Davis Cup second round against the Czech Republic, played before family and friends at the hometown Great Western Forum, to win the fifth and deciding match. He ran around the floor with the American flag, and was thrilled when a picture of that scene got him on the front page of The Times.
"The front page," he said. "Not sports, but the front page. That was cool."
Two weeks later, he had committed to play in another fund-raising golf event, the Padua Village Classic at Red Hill Country Club in Rancho Cucamonga.
He had injured his leg in that final Davis Cup match, and doctors told him he couldn't play golf while it healed. Nevertheless, Sampras had committed, and so he said he would show up for the evening dinner. That day turned out to be one of the rainiest of the spring. Sampras was offered use of a limo, or somebody to drive and get him, but he said he'd make it on his own. It took him four hours in traffic, from Beverly Hills to Rancho Cucamonga, to get there. When he arrived and entered the dining room, he got an ovation from a room full of golfers who had expected, as they would of many celebrities in a similar situation, that he wouldn't show.
At the event, Sampras met a former area tennis star named Stan Clark, who once played in some of the same tournaments as Gonzales and Kramer. Clark, owner of the Claremont Tennis Club, is seriously ill and had left his home, in the chill and rain, to get a chance to hear Sampras speak.
When they were introduced, Clark told Sampras he thought he should serve and volley on the slow clay at the French just as he would in any other tournament. Sampras smiled and said he might try that. Clark said he would watch the French and Sampras told him to make sure to watch Wimbledon, too. Clark said he hoped he would be able to.Sunday, Clark watched much of the event on TV and said he wished he had been able to watch it all.
"I was so happy when I heard he won," Clark said.