Sampras desperate to find touch
June 21, 2002
Pete Sampras lost a grass-court match from two sets up against Alex Corretja, of Spain, in April and was still in a state of shock two days later when he flew home to Los Angeles, sat down in a room on his own and asked himself: "What’s going on with me? Normally I’d walk on to grass and it would just click", the seven-times Wimbledon champion said yesterday, "but that was a shocking loss in the Davis Cup. I was so down I didn’t know which way I was going. But you have to get back to work. I was struggling then, I’m still struggling with my game now, but I have tried to be patient with myself and I know it will come right if I do the right things."
Five days from Wimbledon and Sampras was about to walk on to a very different grass court at Stoke Park Club, in the heart of the Buckinghamshire countryside, to play his one competitive match of the week. The setting was the Boodle & Dunthorne Champions’ Challenge, an eight-man exhibition tournament for which the finest grass-court player of any era asked permission for a single outing.
Photo supplied by Jane Nixon, Samprasfanz
It is symptomatic of his concerns that he should forgo his usual preparation in private at Wimbledon’s Aorangi Park and want to play in an atmosphere where you put yourself on the line, rather than simulate match conditions in practice. As it turned out, on a day of sunshine and sweat-soaked tennis gear, Sampras’s 6-7, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Todd Woodbridge, of Australia, was something that he could not have bought with all his millions.
"It was exactly the type of match Pete needed and maybe he could do with a few more," the Australian, lured to Stoke Park to offer Sampras the perfect kind of challenge on grass, said. "There are certain aspects of his game that aren’t as good as they were and he was pushing at some of his shots a little bit.
"I commented to him at the net after the match that he wasn’t jamming me with his serves as much as he used to. I’ve played him three times at Wimbledon and once at Queen’s and the one thing about Pete was that you could never pick his serve. He agreed that he wasn’t hurting me as much as he should be.
"At these events, the guys are just trying to hit the ball in the middle of the racket. It’s good that he had a lot of pressure points, a lot of deuces and break points, a 12-10 tie-break and all of that is perfect when he gets into the championships next week. I just think Pete needs to get the old instinctive feel back."
All of this is surely manna for Martin Lee, the British No 3, who knows that if Sampras is going to be vulnerable at all at Wimbledon, it will be in the first few days as he tries to get into his old groove. Their first-round pairing must, on the evidence of recent results and the sketchy performance yesterday, give the 24-year-old from Maidenhead the opportunity of a lifetime. For Pistol Pete is misfiring as often as the bullets are finding their mark.
Sampras did not hang around to discuss the pros and cons of his appearance. Within ten minutes of the end of the match he climbed aboard a helicopter for the 20-minute flight back to his rented London home a stone’s throw from Centre Court.
"I have high expectations of myself," he said before the match. "I get down on myself maybe more than I should because of that. Sometimes I can be too hard on myself both on and off the court. But I feel I’m getting things aligned."
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