Struggle with history for champion Sampras
July 9, 2000
I SUPPOSE when a man has 12 Grand Slam titles to his name and he has held the world No 1 ranking for six years in succession, it is a bit strong to call him a choker. But to watch the men's single final at Wimbledon on television was to look into the eyes of an almost incomprehensibly successful man - and to read a million doubts.
And yet it is all there to be read from the past, for those who have any notion of tennis history. Pete Sampras won his first grand-slam title, the US Open at the age of 19, stunningly young to win a major in the men's game.
And it came close to destroying him. He went into a deep decline, spoke almost despairingly of the weight of being a champion.
His nature and his temperament were taken scathingly to task by various luminaries of the game. How is it possible for a man to be (a) a champion and (b) a sensitive soul?
A good question. No doubt it makes it far more difficult. And Sampras clearly is a sensitive soul, hard though he has sought to conceal that fact from the world.
And in fact, it was not until Sampras lost that title the next year that he began to regroup. No one then would have predicted that he would become the most implacable champion of the modern age: perhaps of all time.
Time and again we have seen him raise his game to unguessed-at heights at the hardest times. Wimbledon has been his special time and place: he has been winner there six times in seven years.
All the time he has had nothing to declare but his genius: scarcely showing us his emotions. Sampras is about the pursuit of perfection. Many tennis players wear their hearts on their sleeves. Sampras wears his in his chest.
It makes for constantly intriguing television: you see the majestic tennis, and then you look into his eyes and see no triumph. You, rarely, see his opponents temporarily gain the upper hand, and yet Sampras's eyes show neither doubt nor fear.
Until yesterday. Quite unexpectedly, we saw Sampras with self-doubt. Mind you, it was an amazing thing to have a moment of doubt about.
When he was 19 he doubted he had the right to be called a champion. Now, at the age of 28, he had to ask himself if he had the right to be called the greatest champion of all time.
It is the sort of idea that makes a man think, especially if he is a sensitive soul. And Sampras thought. For he had won 12 grand-slam titles going into this match, sharing the all-time record with Roy Emerson. One more and he would be out on is own.
It is a prodigious thing to take on board, and for long periods of this strange rain-interrupted day, Sampras wondered if he was the man to do it. Sampras was fraught. As he had once felt the weight of a championship heavy on his shoulders, now he felt the weight of history.
No wonder he could not convert ten break-points that he had earned for himself. In the first set, he dominated: holding easily and putting his opponent, Pat Rafter, deep into trouble on his serve. And yet he could not make the breakthrough.
And in the tie-break - well I can hardly believe it I am keying the words into here - Sampras lost by serving two successive double faults.
I mean, this is Sampras, this is his serve, this is Wimbledon, this is the final. Sampras does not do that.
But he did yesterday. Pat Rafter, an opponent with a vast all-court range and a deep-seated dislike of losing so much as a point, was going to make Sampras dig deep into himself.
That roar, that air punch: I have never seen Sampras do that, and it was only a winner in the second-set tie-break. Sampras does not celebrate, he gets on with it. It meant so much. He was fighting for history and for once, fighting his own nature.
He had to step beyond his own vision of himself, just as he had to after he had won that first championship. And so he closed out that second-set tie-break to level the match. The tide had turned.
After that, as the two men played into the gloom, it was going to be Sampras's
day. The screen filled with shots of Sampras embracing his parents, and
the day closed in a fog of emotion. A great athlete: to defeat all those
opponents and to win those two decisive battles against himself. We will
not see a better champion in anything, ever.