Sampras finally crosses great divide
July 9, 2000
GREAT. According to the dictionary, it means large in size or number; extreme; important; pre-eminent. Well, that is that argument sorted, then. Pete Sampras is great. He is definitely large, he has more grand-slam titles than anyone else in history, he is extremely good, he is certainly important and, of his generation, he is indeed pre-eminent. And yet, in sport at least, greatness is a title we are loath to bestow on anyone. Good, yes, great, well, can we think about that one?
By beating Pat Rafter as the darkness fell on Sunday, Sampras achieved what no other man has, his thirteenth grand-slam singles title. He also won his seventh Wimbledon singles title, and no one has done that since William Renshaw at the end of the 19th century. Those were the days of the challenge round, when the returning champion turned up with clean togs on finals day and played one match to reclaim the silverware. Sampras has had to do rather more than that for his money in SW19. Still, though, the mantle of greatness does not lie evenly across his shoulders.
The problem lies with
hindsight. Sampras has been at the pinnacle of his profession for the past
decade and he is so good, it is easy to take him for granted. His monotonous
march through the draw at tournaments around the globe has earned him the
reputation for being boring rather than brilliant, and it seems that there
is nothing the poor man can do about it.
Whichever era you choose to pick - McEnroe and Borg, McEnroe and Connors, Becker and Edberg - is always a golden era and Sampras is not a part of it. Yet the rivalries between the greats lasted not more than three years at a spell. There were two great McEnroe-Borg finals, two Borg-Connors finals and three Edberg-Becker finals. Sampras has been beaten once in eight years at the All England Club and still he is not considered the greatest that the game has known.
Unable to crack the conundrum of clay courts, the one gap on Sampras's CV is the French Open and, because of that, so the argument runs, he cannot be considered truly great. Bjorn Borg won six French Open titles and five at Wimbledon, taking the pair back to back on three occasions. He was a great if ever there was one. Except that he never managed to win the US Open and, as for Australia, he only played there once. John McEnroe was, without doubt, one of the most gifted players who picked up a racket, yet his time was limited to six years, after which he could take the pressure no longer.
As for Boris Becker, his achievements were spread around the times when life did not get in the way. His form peaked and dipped depending on whether he was going through his growing-up phase, or his getting-married phase, or his fatherhood phase. A giant among players, we miss him now as one of the great names of the 1980s.
Sampras, on the other hand, has never let anything get in the way of his tennis. His life has been devoted to the winning of titles and the making of history. And that, for some reason, leaves a question mark over his position in the great scheme of things.
His idol, Rod Laver, won the grand slam - and did it twice with a seven-year gap in between. Having won the four major championships in 1962, he turned professional and was prevented from playing at such amateur sanctums as the All England Club. Only when the open era started in 1968 could Laver return, and a year later he won the grand slam again.
What he might have achieved in between is anyone's guess, but even he will admit that, in those days, the tournaments only started to get interesting around the quarter-final stages.
Today, though, is a different story. The strength of the men's game is such that anyone can welt the ball with the best of them and an off-day in the early rounds can mean an early exit from any tournament. However, regardless of the young guns out to claim his scalp, Sampras has repelled allcomers for much of the past decade.
In 1998 he ended the season as the No 1-ranked player for the sixth consecutive year - and the effort nearly killed him. Struggling as the season drew to a close - there were others snapping at his heels, ready to usurp him at the last minute - the pressure he put himself under in pursuit of ranking points was visible. That was when he started to lose his hair and he was, by his own admission, unbearable to be around during that time. Once the record had been broken, he had nothing left as the new year began and he took his first real break in 12 years.
What everyone knows, though, is that Sampras's mental game is the strongest of all. He knows what it takes to be a champion and that is what he does best.Not that he was finished. Coming back to Wimbledon last year, he defeated Andre Agassi with one of the most perfect displays of tennis that the Centre Court is likely to see. It came down to a couple of points in the first set - Sampras took them and Agassi missed them - and from there he took off. He did it again against Rafter on Sunday in the second-set tie-break, and all of this with an injury that made him doubt whether he could compete, much less win.
His game is brilliant but never flashy. Rafter describes his service as "one hell of a serve, awesome, can't read it, can't pick it". Agassi described it last year as "obnoxious", but he was hardly fond of the backhand or the volley, either.
Sampras thinks his movement is one of his greatest weapons, but no one notices that part of his game. What everyone knows, though, is that Sampras's mental game is the strongest of all. He knows what it takes to be a champion and that is what he does best. From eyeing up the opposition in the early stages, he has the facility to raise his game to a different level - and by doing so he crushes the spirit of the man on the other side of the net.
At Wimbledon he did just that to Agassi, the best returner in the game, and twice to Ivanisevic, the man with one of the most deadly services. That is not to mention Becker, Courier, Pioline and now Rafter.
To question the man's achievements seems churlish, to ignore his record merely daft. If numbers count for anything, Sampras is great; if style counts at all, then Sampras is great; and if longevity is a component part, then Sampras is great. It says so in the dictionary.