Sampras-Agassi Open Final — A Bookend for a Generation
September 9, 2002
Every once in a great while, sport rises above itself. Something happens that is so sweet, so heartwarming, so RIGHT, that we are reminded why we care about these games in the first place.
Men's tennis has been bashed and beaten on -- deservedly so -- for a while now. Nothing that happened during the just-ended U.S. Open would indicate that Lleyton Hewitt, even on his best behavior, is likely to be an appealing champion anytime soon or that Andy Roddick is a lock to become the champion people fervently wish him to be.
But this past weekend, none of that mattered. Not since 1991, when Jimmy Connors made his miraculous run to the semifinals at the age of 39, has there been a more appealing or dramatic tennis storyline than the one written by Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi on a gorgeous late summer weekend in New York.
Let's be clear on this: both men are part of this story because they are now linked in tennis history much as Borg and McEnroe, Evert and Navratilova and Laver and Rosewall are. Someday the Williams sisters will be in that equation too but that is another story for another day.
Certainly Sunday belonged first and foremost to Sampras, in part for his play; in part for his grit at the finish; in part for the look on his face after he had put away the final backhand volley which gave him his 14th major championship.
But Agassi was a part of it too. His victory over Hewitt on Saturday not only ensured that the Open would have a feel-good winner but it created an aura around the final that can only occur when two men who respect one another and understand one another the way these two do find themselves on the court together.
They have been sharing courts with one another since they were juniors -- Agassi, 20 months older, always ahead of Sampras, who didn't really bloom as a teenage player until he gave up his two-handed backhand.
This was the 34th time they had met as professionals, the third time in an Open final. That first meeting in New York, 12 years ago, was Sampras' coming out party as a great player.
He had started that year ranked 61st in the world, forced to play in qualifying just to get into the tournament in Sydney which served as the warmup for the Australian Open.
Agassi was already a multimillionaire at that point, ranked third in the world, with an entourage that would fill a city block. Sampras had no entourage. When he went out on his first date that year, his pal Jim Courier had to show him how to tie a tie.
But they ended up in the Open final that September, each seeking his first major title. The difference was Agassi's experience. He had played the French Open final earlier that year and had been in the semis of five majors by then.
Sampras had never been past the fourth round in a major when he arrived in New York, a few weeks after his 19th birthday. But he beat Ivan Lendl in five sets in the quarterfinals, ending Lendl's amazing string of eight straight Open finals. Then he beat John McEnroe in the semis with the crowd screaming for McEnroe to make one last stand as an Open champion.
And then, on a Sunday evening not unlike this past one, he dismantled a stunned Agassi in straight sets, losing a total of nine games.
That afternoon, too nervous to watch the match on television, Sampras' parents went out for a drive to kill time, then wandered through a shopping mall in suburban Los Angeles. They happened to walk past an electronics store and, out of the corner of their eyes, they could see an awards ceremony taking place on a bank of TVs in the store window.
Sam Sampras looked a his watch and his heart sank. The match had started barely more than 90 minutes earlier and already his son had lost. The Sampras' stopped, forcing themselves to look in the window and saw their son kissing the U.S. Open trophy.
Agassi, too young at the time to understand grace in defeat, had trouble admitting he had been whipped by an ascendant star. He wondered if perhaps Sampras had been lucky: "I'd like to take him back to Vegas with me right now and turn him loose with the kind of luck he's been having lately," was one comment. And then this: "Let's not get carried away here. He did it once. Let's see where he goes from here."
We know now where Sampras went from there: 14 majors -- including seven Wimbledons; five U.S. Opens and two Australians -- two more than any man in history.
Agassi, after his lurching beginnings under the white heat of major finals -- he lost his first three -- became a great champion himself: seven majors in all, including at least one win in all four of them, the one hole (French Open) on Sampras' extraordinary resume.
They never became close friends, because great rivals rarely do that. Plus, they were so different in so many ways: Agassi seemingly born to the spotlight; Sampras cringing under it.
Agassi always wearing his emotions where everyone could see them; Sampras fighting to hide them, even when his coach Tim Gullikson was dying and he lost it completely during an Australian Open quarterfinal against Courier.
Sampras was embarrassed by his tears; Agassi would have talked into the night in a similar situation knowing there was no shame in loving someone the way Sampras loved Gullikson.
Now, both have reached the twilight, albeit in very different ways. Agassi has turned the latter part of his career into something of a victory tour, getting himself into the best shape of his life, using the tranquility he has found in his marriage to Steffi Graf and the arrival of his infant son, as a springboard to late success.
Sampras has faded far more quietly, breaking the all-time record for major titles two years ago at Wimbledon, then fighting his game and his confidence and himself during a two-year drought without any tournament victory, much less one that really mattered.
When he lost at Wimbledon this summer, on an outside court to a qualifier; lost at the place where he was virtually unbeatable for eight years: seven titles, 53-1 match record; it did seem as if the end was near. His ranking was dropping like a stone. The aura was clearly gone. And then, for one of the few times in his life, Sampras got genuinely angry.
He got angry with those in the media who said he was done, that he should just walk away before he became Willie Mays on a tennis court. He got angry with himself for not working harder, for not accepting the fact that what worked at 21 didn't work at 31.
And finally, last week, he got really angry when Greg Rusedski, a player who has been in exactly ZERO Grand Slam finals, wrote him off as washed up after Sampras had survived a five-set match with him in the third round.
"I lost more than Pete won," Rusedski said, almost conjuring memories of the 20-year-old Agassi. "I don't really see him going very much farther here."
That comment may have given Sampras just enough impetus to get past third-seeded Tommy Haas 24 hours later when he should have been too sore and too weary to come back against a top player and win again. It may have helped carry him past Roddick, in a one-sided quarterfinal that looked like a remedial session between a teacher and a pupil with lots to learn.
It was not though, going to get him past Agassi, who understands just as clearly as Sampras that the window on his days as a major champion is rapidly closing. What got him by Agassi was that remarkable serve and a craving to win one more time on one of tennis' grand stages. Once, Agassi would have tanked after going down two sets. But not anymore. He was a threat to win the match until the final point.
When they came to net after the final point, the difference in the two men 12 years after their first Open final was never more apparent. Agassi's shoulder-length, multihued hair is long gone, replaced by a clean-shaven head. Sampras' curly black hair is patchy now and his youthful face is rounder, the face of a man about to become a father, not the face of a teenage boy.
But it went farther than that. The hug was genuine, the respect quite real. Agassi could not have been more gracious in defeat. The awkward boys who were just saying hello to the tennis world in 1990 had clearly become men 12 years later.
If this was, in fact, their farewell, there's a sadness in that. But there is also great joy. Because on Sunday, both men got it right.
Exactly right.