Pete Sampras: Resurrexit
September 11, 2002
A couple of months ago, we were on the verge of writing a black-border column "Requiescat in Pace" sealing the tennis career of Pete Sampras. We couldn't stand the sight of the erstwhile great and unbeatable Sampras losing to unknowns in preliminary rounds. He was a champion turned Bowery bum. It was agony. It was like seeing Michael Jordan stumped on a basketball court by a sandlot simp. It was like watching Muhammad Ali lace on the gloves only to be bowled over by a six-rounder cadging money for a bottle of booze.
Pete had to be told. He no longer had his pistol. He was washed out. It was a great shame for this tennis immortal with 13 grandslams to venture into a tournament court only to be bushwhacked by journeymen who couldn't even carry his tennis shoes in the old glory days.
But Pete Sampras was not listening at all. The only one who listened was his beautiful actress wife Bridgette Wilson. Now pregnant and occupying the upper boxes, she looked on with unabated confidence her man would come through. Bridgette stood by him, this blonde who rarely smiled. She believed, like Pete, that someday he would pick up all the shattered pieces of so many late defeats. He would piece them together again, and bring out the golden burnish of old. I didn't believe anything like that. I figured that just like any other athlete who had reached his peak, Pete Sampras was now tooling around like an old wasted T-Ford and picking up the crumbs. They never learn, do they?
Then after his 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 victory over Andre Agassi in the US Tennis Open, Sampras supplied the answer.
In a post-game interview, he said: "So much of what I was going through this year was mental. It wasn't forehands and backhands and serves. It was kind of my head space. I wasn't real positive, kind of got down on myself extremely quick out there." Mental. So that was what it was. Mind over matter, the old saw goes. The body was there. The arms, the legs, the whippet-niched muscles. Sampras still had the body that the best training and physical conditioning in the world could shape. After all, even Michael Jordan was able to prove that at age 39, he could still fix his mind. And from there, motivate the lowly Washington Wizards to soar and settle once, twice on the eagle's mountain perch.
Mental, that's up there. What we didn't believe in, Sampras believed in. He just couldn't believe the fluids had completely gone out of his body. He just couldn't believe the mind had deserted the body, and couldn't control it anymore, make it do its bidding. Along the route, along the way, he was fashioning the lock that could bring both together again. Not for a comeback that would last long, but a comeback that would stitch a cynical world together in one last great superhuman effort. This would give tennis its old magic, its old mystique, a dazzle not seen before Sampras and not to be seen again except for this one last time. At Flushing Meadows.
And it had to be with Andre Agassi.
Here was another tennis great who Pete had played 34 times. The marvel was that Agassi brought out the best in Sampras. Each time they met in the finals, whether Wimbledon or the US Open, Agassi's was the sculptor's hand working on rare marble. He constantly chipped at this marble with such a plodding fury that it brought out a Sampras rarely seen and rarely beheld - a champion who brought tennis to perfection. It's the same with some actors and actresses on screen and on stage. They are at their best when another prodigy is around, challenging, motivating, igniting, spurring. It is the same too with writers. The best is the best because he or she wrestles the others to the ground.
So when Pete Sampras finally nudged his mind to center stage during the US Open, he could stroll into and out of the court like the Pistol Pete of old. In white T-shirt and white shorts with a white band on his left forearm, he walked the center court of Flushing Meadows with a brisk professional stride. This absolutely left no doubt the greatest of the great was back to his old stomping grounds. Pete had no swagger or swashbuckle at all. But you knew as he walked he owned Flushing Meadows more than anybody else, five US Opens now tucked under his belt.
The game? The least one can say is that it left everybody breathless.
Now as I look back, I can see Sampras' mental game. He had geared his mind to sweep like so many cameras into the playing styles of his major opponents in the Open. He had them all pat, Greg Rusedski of Britain, Tommy Haas of Germany, Andy Roddick of the US. He looked for weaknesses and found them. He knew where cross-court placements could be most effective, volleys and half-volleys could catch the foe wrong-footed. And what was more, his 130 MPH serve had lost none of its speed and sting. They were knives thrown by a Mohawk straight to the heart.
Sampras' mind told him he had to rush the net more often than before. This would cut playing time. He could commit errors particularly in half-volley's which he netted quite often. But he could also force his adversary into errors. Something happens when Sampras surges to the net. Its like Joe Louis leading with a left, his right cocked for a crushing blow. Sampras at the net forewarns his opponent a knockout stroke could be forthcoming and this unsettles the latter, breaks his rhythm. The apprehension is psychological. Nobody is more fearsome and deadly than Pete at the net. A wobbly or errant return often gets into Sampras' volley. This is a conductor's baton that controls every musical instrument.
Now, nothing matters any more.
Little tufts of curly hair have evacuated the back of Sampras' pate. But otherwise, the thick shock of hair remains. The old boyish grin now seldom shows. He doesn't pump his right fist anymore after a fierce exchange, though at times he talks to himself, reminders perhaps as to how he can improve his game. Mental. Everything mental. After Rusedski, I didn't think Sampras could get past Andy Roddick, the so-called "future" of American male tennis. Roddick, who had twice beaten Sampras, could only look in awe as Sampras got out of a magic box and beat him in straight sets.
As has been my wont, I normally go into a brief description of a championship game. I have said everything I want to say. And it is well that I spotted Pete Sampras early on in the US Tennis Open. And yes, started writing about him in this space. I can't say or write anything more. It was Andre Agassi who described him best a year or so ago after one of their classic encounters. He said it was hard to beat a man "who walks in the air." He does walk on air and makes it look easy..[NB: "..walks on water", Wimbledon, 99]
And we are all the richer for still being around.