Sampras Validates Greatness with Another Slam
September 9, 2002
NEW YORK — Andre Agassi was beaten and bare-chested as he stuffed his rackets and shirts inside his bag, hanging his head low as Pete Sampras passed him by, looking at Agassi but not speaking to him, moving toward his stall and a place in history his vanquished rival will not touch in this lifetime or next.
Agassi was at locker No. 238, Sampras at locker No. 163, the loser and winner separated by 20 feet and a million miles of achievement. Sampras had his bag slumped over his shoulder, appearing 15 years older than he had four hours back. His thinning hair was frazzled, his hobble was lame, his cold sore was growing from his lip to his nose, but still he was nodding toward a reporter who'd made him swear after his very first match.
Sampras briefly turned profane when told his mentor and former coach, Pete Fischer, had called portions of his straight-sets victory over Albert Portas "sloppy" and "atrocious." As it turned out, Fischer's comments would prove mild when measured against those delivered by Greg Rusedski, a boob who tried to wish away Sampras but unshackled his inner beast instead.
This whole tournament was a referendum on who Sampras is and what he has been. When voices from the present and past called for his retirement, Sampras insisted on a my-way-only goodbye. When Andy Roddick tried to roll into his first Grand Slam semi with a Jimmy Connors style and no Jimmy Connors substance, Sampras made their generational gap tighter than Roddick's throat. When Tommy Haas busied himself making a muscle-head fashion statement, Sampras said, "You know, it is about the tennis," before sending the perspective-challenged Haas into the night.
It is about the tennis, after all, and hallelujah to that. After going winless for 26 months and 33 tournaments, the sport's greatest champion needed four sets to win his 14th major, double Agassi's total, beating his antagonist for the third time in three Open finals and beating him like Serena Williams beat her big sister Saturday night.
Sampras had 84 winners to Agassi's 27, 33 aces to Agassi's 7. This Open was closed the second Rod Laver made the coin toss, right after Laver was introduced to the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd as "arguably the greatest men's player of all time."
That argument was less convincing at 7:40 p.m., when Sampras finally struck his Louis Armstrong pose on the Ashe court. He had won his fifth Open six years after his fourth. At 31, he had become the oldest Open champ in 32 years, the oldest Grand Slam champ in 27.
The flashbulbs exploded around Sampras as he hugged Agassi at the net and ran up to his private box, climbing his stairway to heaven and high-fiving fans like Hale Irwin did at Medinah in 1990, the year a teenage Sampras seized his first Open. Sampras would hug his pregnant wife, Bridgette Wilson, a first-time winner in the Sampras camp. He would hug his sister, Stella, the UCLA coach, and point to his friend, Rick Fox, who knows where to hitch his wagon in two different sports.
"This one might take the cake," Sampras would say.
He didn't destroy Agassi like he had at Wimbledon in '99, and didn't beat Agassi at his best like he had in their forever quarterfinal here last September. But for most of this match, Sampras was packing Bob Gibson heat and Agassi was flailing away with a broomstick.
The greatest returner couldn't deal with the greatest server. Yes, Sampras looked nearly as washed up as Rusedski claimed he was after taking the first two sets, breathing life into Agassi's legs. But his was a temporary state of distress. In the fourth set, Sampras desperately clung to the seven-deuce fourth game, during which he stared down a lines judge, leaned his exhausted body on the net and, ultimately, stared into the night as the crowd cheered his survival.
Sampras endured a break point in the eighth game, broke Agassi in the ninth, then put him away in the 10th.
"Like Borg and McEnroe," Sampras said. "Those guys needed each other and I needed Andre....He brings out the best in me."
It hasn't always been a two-way street. In the end, the best of Sampras was far better than the best of Agassi. They first played as juniors in Northridge, Calif., the eight-year-old Sampras beating the nine-year-old Agassi. Andre was the giant back then, taller than Pete if not quite as skilled. Nothing changed besides their metabolism.
No matter how often Agassi reinvented himself -- from Barbra Streisand to Brooke Shields to Steffi Graf, from rock star to Zen master to family man, from No. 1 in the world to No. 141 in the world to back on top -- Sampras was always there to hammer him back to Earth.
Image is hardly everything. Inside the locker room last year, before he played Agassi in the quarters, Sampras recalled their classic first-set point in the '95 final - he won it -- and their pivotal four-set result -- he won that, too -- as the moment "the air went out of Andre a bit. That popped his balloon for quite a while."
This result likely popped his balloon for good.
"There's still a danger in the way (Sampras) plays and how good he is," Agassi said. "Anybody that says something different is really ignorant, because Pete has a lot of weapons out there. I'm well aware of that."
Too aware. Agassi had forecast this showdown as a "nice toast to the past....Inside my own mind, I have been pulling for him."
Moral of the day: be careful what you wish for. If Agassi and Sampras wore Nike swooshes and could've been labeled bald and balding, the comparisons died right there.
"A story-book ending," Sampras said. "It might be nice to stop, but...."
He still loves to play, still lives for the moment. Sampras left open the possibility he might retire in the coming weeks, might ride off into the sunset like John Wayne and John Elway. But he wants his last Wimbledon match to be played on the right patch of grass, he said, "not Court 13 or 2."
Either way Sampras will keep a promise to himself and listen to his own heart. The game will be played on his terms, precisely why Sampras refuses to credit Rusedski as his inspiration the way Jack Nicklaus credited a Jack's-washed-up article in Atlanta as his inspiration at the '86 Masters.
It is about the tennis, after all. Sunday night, Pete Sampras earned the
right to say hallelujah to that.