Parents' evening produces rare emotional break point
July 9, 2000
WHEN the moment came it was not in the brilliance of the afternoon sun, as Pete Sampras must have imagined it would be in his dreams.
After rain delays and the feisty resistance of Pat Rafter, it even seemed at one stage as though the conclusion of the men's singles final, that could confirm Sampras as officially as possible as the best tennis player the world has seen, would have to wait for another grey day.
In the end, though, there was something eerily, romantically fitting about the twilight that bathed the instant when Sampras passed into history on the Centre Court at Wimbledon, something that evoked all the ghosts of great players past, that emphasised the brilliance of the man who was playing out there by instinct, because by then, a few minutes before 9pm, it was so dark that he could barely see.
It felt, too, like a microcosm of the war against time that Sampras has been waging in the past 12 months. His age is catching up with him, manifest in a growing number of injuries. As the gloom deepened, as the ballboys and ballgirls donned sweaters to protect them from the evening chill, it felt as though the night was closing in on his attempt to sweep all the records of tennis before him and surpass Roy Emerson's tally of 12 grand-slam wins.
Still Sampras could not be stopped. Still no one could stand in his way. Even a man who was raised as one of nine children, as Rafter was, and who knows, instinctively, never to give up, was finally powerless as Sampras gathered pace. Life taught Rafter his most important lessons before he stepped on to a court and he, too, played some brilliant tennis, but still he was no match for his opponent.
That is the thing about Sampras at Wimbledon, where he has now lost only one match in the past 54 and has matched the record of seven men's singles titles. Everything everyone else does, he can do better. Rafter hung in there manfully but Sampras, injured shin and all, hung in there better. Rafter kept fighting, but Sampras shrugged off a host of missed opportunities in the first set and bounced back like a rubber ball. "When I was 4-1 down in the second set tie-breaker," he said, "I thought it was slipping away." Sampras, though, does not let anything slip away at Wimbledon.
For the first and perhaps the last time in his career, he even won the plaudits of the romantics and the sentimentalists who adore these Championships. The only time he had broken down in public before was after the death of Tim Gullikson, his coach, several years ago. This time, he shed tears of happiness as he bowed his head between his knees at that moment of victory.
More startling still, he emulated Venus Williams and Pat Cash by striding into the crowd to greet his loved ones. This was different than the forerunners, though. His parents had not seen him win any of his previous grand-slam victories and are so publicity shy that they had chosen to sit, not in the players' box with their son's fiancée, Bridget, but among the ordinary supporters in the stands.
"They were right up in the rafters," Sampras said, "so it took a while to find them."
His victory, his record, was dignified by the fact that Rafter gave it everything in his first final. One of the defining qualities of Sampras, however, is the relentlessness of his brilliance. For his opponent, there is no relief, no respite. Facing him is the tennis equivalent of the time when batsmen used to face Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel Garner one after the other.
Sampras is a one-man tennis terminator. He does not need the help of others. So he kept going and kept going, too, thundering down his services, punching his volleys, flashing his cross-court backhand passing shots until, in the third and fourth sets, Rafter started to make mistakes and misjudgments. "Sampras has got one hell of a serve," Rafter said. "Can't read it, can't pick it. He has to come up with the returns and he does have a complete game, but that awesome serve takes the pressure off the rest of his game."
Moments after his victory, Sampras spoke about the emotion attached to his achievement. "This is a great moment in my life," he said. "It means so much to me that my parents were here. I would not be here if my parents had not given me the chance to play this great game. I love them and I love my fiancée, Bridget, and everyone who put me together for this occasion. I had my parents on my side and I had God on my side. I am not religious but I needed a little help from upstairs today."
It shone through the evening gloom that yesterday was a day when, even
for Sampras, the tennis court did not seem like an office.