The Magic (and Talent) of Pete Sampras
September 9, 2002
FROM THE U.S. OPEN – When you talk to Pete Sampras, you sometimes think he has turned on on a switch in his head and he becomes a sports cliché automaton, ready to tell you for the zillionth time that the U.S. Open is "our Super Bowl" and that Andre Agassi always "brings out the best in me."
But he really does see and feel life that way and as his coach, Paul Annacone said on Sunday night after Sampras stopped his greatest rival Agassi, 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to win his fifth U.S. Open title, the magic and artistry of the insular 31-year-old is best discovered when you watch him caress a backhand drop volley from the service line that trickles over the net.
"The bottom lime is every time he plays a match like this is going to be fun," Annacone said. "He really loves the occasion. As introverted as he is, this is how he shines. He just plays. That's his emotion."
In a nearly three-hour contest that featured all the ebbs and flows of the Hudson River, 14-time Grand Slam champ Sampras overcame a monumental effort by Agassi in the last two sets, cracking his returns when it counted most and volleying with the utmost confidence under pressure.
FROM RUIN TO RESURRECTION
It was a phenomenal title run for Sampras, who hadn't won a title in more
than two years entering the Open and had had a poor summer: pummeled in
Paris, crash and burning at Wimbledon and sputtering in hard court warm-up
tournaments. He had parted ways with coach Jose Higueras after Wimbledon
and then asked Annacone to throw him a lifeline.
"He was down in the dumps," Annacone said. "You get tired, doing it for long time, not winning a lot of matches. You're traveling all the time, lose some tiebreakers. There are a million things that happen when you do it all year for 15 years. It's tiring. Everywhere he goes, it's news. It sounds like this is a life of glory and glamor but it can be exhausting. If you do that and your not winning, it's can all lead to a downward spiral and that leads to not being happy on court. But he was ready to turn it around. ... We communicate well together. I seem to say right things and he believed in that. It was either get back to work and push forward and keep trying to get better, or wallow in mediocrity of fade. Luckily, he chose the first."
Sampras said that although he was as depressed as he ever was at any time in his career after he was shocked at Wimbledon, he never lost the faith.
"Struggling and hearing I should stop, the negative tone of the commentary, to get through that and believe in myself at a very tough time means a lot," Sampras said. "It means more than anything because I had to go through the adversity."
Annacone said that Sampras needed to be convinced that he could still impose his will on a large group of players who were thumping him and still had the ability to turn up the heat so high that all comers would be seared by his shot making.
"It's about his approach and trying to play a certain way," Annacone said. "He needed to put being the competition is at the forefront. Nothing else matters but the desire to compete. If you combine that with his talent, that's a lot. He was changing his practice habits. He had been working hard all year, but his practices were negatively connoted where you are so pissed off that you are going to work harder. When you are driven by that stuff, it's hard to radiate a positive feelings when you play the matches."
BACK TO BASICS: SERVE AND VOLLEY
So Annacone and Sampras sat down and figured out why he won 13 Slams and
dominated his sport for six years. He needed to get back to his basics,
which was to set the tone with the most fearsome, well struck, high variety
of serves ever seen of the planet, close at the net as quickly as possible
and play threatening, high risk tennis with his returns and groundstrokes.
"All the negative stuff that was written about him was short sighted because when you are that talented you just don't wake up and can't play," Annacone said. "He got to the final of the U.S. Open last year and he got to the final of three other tournaments. The problem with these guys is the bar is so high they only make news when they lose."
Once he arrived in New York, Sampras got a taste of that U.S Open magic again and served and volleyed as well as he has. He played nearly perfectly in the first two sets, taking Agassi completely out of his return games with wicked slice serves to the deuce court, huge flat serves down the middle and big kickers out wide to the ad court. Sampras was crisp on his hard volleys and showed delicate touch with his drop volleys. Moreover, he was aggressive in his return games, rarely allowing Agassi to exhaust him in long back court rallies.
"I was having a hard time getting on his serve, getting off the mark and making any impact at all," Agassi said. "He sensed that and that allowed him to play loose on his return games."
Agassi fought hard to get himself into the third set and began to get a better read on Sampras' serves.
THE FOURTH SET
He had his chances to snare the fourth set, but couldn't break down Sampras
and blew two realistic break opportunities. Then Sampras began to crank
it up on his return games and Andre was dust once again.
"Everything clicked today," said Sampras, who nailed 84 winners to only 27 from Agassi. "I played as well as I could. I knew he was going to start playing better in the third. I was in the zone for a while. It was hard to keep up that pace against him. He's great. But you have to match his game and I did."
Andre noted that anyone who believed that Pete would never rise from the ashes has no clue as to how to the stuff that legends are made of.
"His game is to be able to raise himself at the right time," Agassi said. "It's gotten tougher for him, but there's a danger in the way he plays and how good he is. Anybody that says different is really ignorant. They don't understand the game because Pete has a lot of weapons."