Pete Sampras, The Remains of the Days
July 1, 2002
He hears
the calls for his retirement, but Pete Sampras-the man who has rewritten
so many tennis records-isn't ready to throw in the towel. Not by a long
shot.
Last fall, Pete Sampras had quite a few late nights. He'd get into bed with his wife, Bridgette Wilson, at their Beverly Hills, Calif., home, but instead of giving Bridgette a good-night kiss and rolling over to sleep, he'd unburden himself. Sampras was at a crossroads, and he needed direction from the person he trusts most.
"We would get into bed at 11 or 12 and be up talking until three in the morning," Bridgette says. "There were no phone calls or distractions. Just us." The topic of conversation was Pete's career, which had been in a downward spiral. It was a heavy subject, but one Pete felt comfortable discussing with Bridgette. "I internalize a lot, but I don't with my wife," he says. "I let my guard down. I tell her my feelings, where I am with everything. She always looks at the positive things, and I need to hear that and be around that. I'm a little bit of a pessimist. I get that from my dad."
Pete's inner pessimist was frustrated. The optimist lying beside him suggested that he rededicate himself to tennis, work harder than ever, and give the game that's made him a legend one more push. Deep down, Pete liked the sound of that.
"I want to end my career on my terms, not on what people think I should do," he says. "I could've stopped and felt good about what I've done in my career, but that wouldn't have sat well with me. I wanted to keep going."
It's not easy being Pete Sampras these days. He hasn't won a tournament since Wimbledon 2000, where he set the men's record for the most Grand Slam singles titles (13). This spring was particularly rough. He got schooled by Wayne Ferreira in Scottsdale and Lleyton Hewitt in Indian Wells. A qualifier, Chile's Fernando Gonzalez, made him look every bit the 30-year-old at the NASDAQ-100. Then, at America's Davis Cup tie in Houston, which was played on grass in part to increase Pete's chances of winning, the seven-time Wimbledon champion lost to Spain's Alex Corretja, whose aversion to turf rivals Pete's disdain for clay.
Now Sampras is hearing it from the peanut gallery: Pete, you're washed up. Pete, you're embarrassing yourself. Pete, retire already. In April, when Yevgeny Kafelnikov said that Pete should hang it up, Sampras replied, "The day I need to respond to him is the day I will retire."
Although Sampras tries
not to let it bother him, some things are tough to take. Consider an incident
at last year's U.S. Open. After beating Patrick Rafter in the fourth round
in 2001, Sampras says, "Mary Carillo looked at me and was shocked.
I kind of took offense to that a little bit, like 'What's the big deal?'
When moments like that begin to surprise me, I'll be lying on a beach. I'm
sure a lot of people have written me off, but even if you've hit 30 or 31,
it's a bunch of crap that you're done in tennis. It's a challenge to prove
people wrong."
It's been strange watching Pete Sampras, a creature of habit, make so many changes in recent months. After all, we're talking about a guy who's used the same racquet, the Wilson Pro Staff Original 6.0, since he was a junior. A guy who's worn the same get-up--predominantly white shirt and shorts, with only a splash of color--throughout most of his career. A guy who's stuck with his coaches for years.
"Pete has always been a person to wait for things, as he says, 'to click in,'" TV analyst and Hall-of-Famer Pam Shriver says. "But after one month [without a tournament win] became one year and then 18 months, he had to stop waiting for things to click in. He had to create change."
Switching coaches was the first and, as it turned out, the second thing on his agenda. In December, he ended a six-year relationship with Paul Annacone and teamed up with Tom Gullikson. The two worked together at the Australian Open, where Sampras lost a four-setter in the round of 16 to Safin. Afterward, Sampras decided that Gully, like Annacone, was just too much of a companion to also be a coach.
"They may not be as tough and honest with me because we were close friends," says Sampras, who dumped Gullikson for Jose Higueras in March.
Gullikson says he was shocked that he got the hook. "Pete never gave me any indication he was unhappy with what was being said and done there [in Australia]. He didn't get the result he wanted, but you have to remember he hadn't really played since the U.S. Open."
Gullikson wasn't the only one who failed to make the cut on the new Team
Sampras. Jeff Schwartz, another longtime friend and Pete's agent for seven
years, was given the boot in February and replaced by Schwartz associate
(and former pro) Jill Smoller. Sampras, who can put his guard up as quickly
as he can blast an ace, won't offer any specifics. In any case, the move
showed Sampras'
newfound resolve to change things before it's too late.
Applying a similar sense of urgency to his fitness, Sampras made perhaps the most significant change of all-he decided to get into shape. For years, he'd coasted on his natural athleticism. But the competition has been getting bigger, stronger, and faster, and Pete knows that he isn't the player he was even a couple of years ago.
During the off-season, Sampras kicked it into high gear with his personal trainer, Brett Stephens. "You got to hurt me," he told Stephens, who did just that, putting Sampras through a grueling routine in order to improve his greatest physical shortcoming, his endurance. Pete ran sprints between 100 and 400 meters three mornings a week at UCLA and lifted weights in the afternoon. On other days he did footwork drills and played one-on-one volleyball with Stephens on a beach in Santa Monica.
"I made a big effort at the end of last year that I was just going
to train my ass off-put a lot of time into the gym and practice on the track
and just take it to a new level," Sampras says.
There's
no question that Sampras went to Australia in better shape than he's been
in years. Had he extended the match with Safin to a fifth set, he says,
"I could have gone all night."
Clearly, Sampras is motivated again. Less than an hour after winning his first-round match in Indian Wells, he returned to the court to practice, hitting balls for 30 minutes. Sampras hadn't done that in 10 years.
"Some of the things we're doing are obviously new to him," Higueras says. "But in my eyes he's got a few more years to play, and I don't think there's any time to waste."
"Jose sees things I can improve, that I can play a little smarter," Sampras says. "When I'm playing well, things look easy, but when I'm not, how do I get out of that hole? We've talked about knowing where I am on court and that I can't go for a winner from 10 feet behind the baseline. Jose hates errors. He hates missing, and that's one thing that I tend to do. I'll hit a lot of winners, but I'll throw in a ton of errors."
If you need any additional proof that Sampras is trying to change his ways, look no further than the Davis Cup. Sampras has never hidden the fact that he doesn't care much about the competition, primarily because fans in this country don't either. But last fall he began singing a different tune, saying he wanted to play for his country, at least for ties on home soil. Why the 180? Sampras hopes that representing the U.S. will help lift him out of his funk.
"There were certain times [last year] when I had a hard time finding that enthusiasm week in and week out," he says. "That's why I decided to play Davis Cup. It means something. You're playing for your country and your teammates. You go out there with a certain urgency."
So far, of course, Sampras continues to struggle; he's just 1-1 in Cup
matches this year. But he seems to be enjoying the camaraderie of his teammates.
It's funny, actually, watching Sampras, the elder statesman, interact with
young Turks like Andy Roddick, James Blake, and Mardy Fish. During the tie
against the Slovak Republic in February, for example, Sampras quipped that
while he was trying to get some shut-eye, the whippersnappers were up all
night playing Ping-Pong in their underwear.
Back to Archives - 2002 | News