Time Stands Still for Sampras as a Star is Reborn
September 9, 2002
THE forecast called for crystal clear skies across Manhattan on Sunday evening, a perfect opportunity to look up and pray for a small favour from the sporting gods. They had bestowed plenty upon Pete Sampras down the years but he wanted one more. In the circumstances, on this night, it was not too much to ask.
Sampras had insisted that he had one more grand-slam title in him but many of those who wanted to believe closed their ears to him. Surely the glory days had passed by, his hair was coming out in clumps, he was a dinosaur, the roost was ruled by kids with back-to-front hats and a serious attitude. For a couple of years, his own bosses at the ATP had been promoting their “New Balls Please” campaign, relentlessly plugging the virtues of being young, restless and brooding.
Not so fast, not so fast. When New Yorkers rose yesterday to start a week that will rip at their emotions, they can draw small consolation in the story of a superstar reborn. The 31-year-old Sampras won the US Open, his fourteenth grand-slam title — breaking his own record — with a flourish of a backhand volleys played from beneath the top of the net. It is not a shot that many players perform with any degree of ease. It is one of the strokes that sets Sampras apart, which flies in the face of the modern belief that only from the back of the court will you prosper.
This was one for the old styles in the grand manner. John McEnroe, loving every minute, said that Sampras’s triumph suspended belief. It certainly suspended time.
When the nights begin to draw in on your career, it is alarming. Sampras has had his dose of the chills. He had reached the past two finals here only to be blown away and the schedule makes demands on every last iota of your courage and patience. Sampras came to this fulcrum of teeming intensity, played two matches in the first week, the weather closed in and he became aware that, to win the title, he would need to play five matches in seven days against what appeared insurmountable odds.
But he did it. He fought through, he can hold his head high. The doubters are fleeing to the hills, or in the case of Greg Rusedski, his third-round victim, are wishing that they had kept their thoughts to themselves. Incredible to think that, before he met Andre Agassi on Sunday, the only player to whom Sampras had lost his service was the British No 2. Rusedski will have that thought to sustain him through the next few weeks when he will be seeing Sampras’s laughing face around every corner.
“This one might take the cake,” Sampras said after his 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 victory in the final. “Just after the thirteenth slam at Wimbledon in 2000, I was trying to figure out my goals. This year I was struggling and hearing I should stop, negative tones from the press. To have believed in myself through those tough times means an awful lot. It was a good effort, one of my better ones.” One of his better understatements.
New York’s billboards have been adorned these past two weeks with the images of the sport’s superstars in commercials for American Express. The one for Sampras has two faces of him bearing precisely the same expression under the slogan “The official card of agony and ecstasy”. It has long been Sampras’s lot to have had to deal with glory and ambivalence in symmetrical measure.
It is not misleading to report that the huge majority of the New Yorkers packed into the Arthur Ashe Stadium would have preferred it if Agassi had walked away as the champion. He is one of them even if, in reality, he is nothing like them in the slightest. But they warm to where he comes from, Las Vegas, the fact he had long streaky hair once, that he played in denim jeans as a kid, that he was a non-conformist.
Sampras was the opposite, a quiet, reserved lad from California who could throw up on court and still come back to win in a way that set him apart. That he played in a certain way, walked in a certain way and did not open up in the manner the people expected meant that he accumulated wealth and titles but could not count on deep-rooted affection.
He merits a tickertape parade as soon as the first anniversary of September 11 has gone and this city can paint its face once more with smiles. Think of it, 14 grand-slam titles, two more now than Roy Emerson, whose record they said could never be beaten. Given that the sport has become so athletic, so demanding on the body, to see two men with a combined age of 63 making good on their expertise did the heart good.
“No disrespect to anyone else I’ve played over the years, but he’s the best I’ve ever played,” Sampras, who, with the victory, extended his winning record over Agassi to 20-14, said. “He brings out the best in me, I’ve said that over the years. These moments are great moments, win or lose, competing against the best.”
As he kissed the trophy, it was interesting to note that Sampras had become the oldest grand-slam champion since Arthur Ashe won Wimbledon in 1975 at 31 years and 11 months. And he had achieved it in the stadium named for the great man. It would be a fitting way in which to say goodbye.