September 24, 1990 -- In a
small, one-bedroom condo on Amelia Island, a
posh resort off the northeastern coast of
Florida, Pete Sampras grabs a golf club and
takes some practice swings. The olive-skinned
19-year-old appears skinnier and gawkier than
he did two days before, when he demolished
Andre Agassi in the men's final of the U.S.
Open at Flushing Meadow, N.Y. Sampras is
describing the phone call he made to his
parents in exclusive Rancho Palos Verdes,
Calif., after walking off the stadium court.
This was before they got around to changing
their phone number, before their answering
machine broke. ''They were more stunned than
anything,'' says Sampras. ''They said,
'Congratulations, you worked hard and you
deserve it. Now enjoy the next couple of
weeks and then get back to work.' ''
That sense of dedication
instilled by his parents quietly created
tennis's newest star. With a seismic-quality
serve clocked at 120 mph and an unflinching
calm at the net, Sampras dispatched Ivan
Lendl in the quarters, John McEnroe in the
semis and took the Day-Glo out of Agassi,
winning 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 to become the youngest
men's champion in the Open's 110-year
history.
While Agassi represents the
brash, cocksure new breed of young players,
Sampras is a throwback to the 1960s, when
elegant serve-and-volleyers like Australia's
Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall dominated the
game. ''I've always looked up to people like
Laver, and I changed my game to play like
those guys,'' says Sampras, whose ranking has
gone from 81st to sixth in less than a year.
Sampras also absorbed some of
the personal reserve of the earlier era's
players. ''He looks like he grew up playing
with a wooden racket,'' says Mary Carillo, a
CBS tennis analyst. ''You can tell his values
are steeped in the past. He's anti-entourage;
he wears whites on the court. People say,
'Where did this guy come from?' He came from
the '60s, that's where.'' Even Sampras' taste
in music is anachronistic: He prefers the
mellower tones of Cat Stevens and the Eagles
to the hipper trends of rap or heavy metal.
But Pete's greatest source of
inspiration comes from his Greek-American
family. His brother, Gus, 22, is often the
only person who travels with him and, as his
financial adviser, must now think about
prudently investing Sampras' $1 million
earnings and any subsequent endorsement
money. His parents, Soterios, 53, an engineer
for the Defense Department, and Georgia, a
housewife, encouraged Pete through the long
years of junior tennis in California but now
find it too nerve-racking to watch him play.
(They went to Presumed Innocent during Pete's
semifinal win over John McEnroe and cruised a
Long Beach shopping mall during the finals.)
Sampras' older sister, Stella, 21, plays for
the UCLA varsity tennis team and plans to
turn pro, and his younger sister, Marion, 16,
swings a racket for Palos Verdes High.
Sampras is a self-conscious
young man with a quick, booming laugh. A high
school dropout -- he turned pro after his
junior year -- Pete has no girlfriend and is
shy to a fault, maybe even a double fault.
''He's quiet almost to the point of dull,''
says ex-coach Dr. Peter Fischer. But all that
may change now that Sampras has been thrust
into the limelight.
It didn't take long for the
Open triumph to transform other aspects of
Sampras' life. On Sunday night, according to
agent Ivan Blumberg, Pete was so excited he
''didn't sleep a minute, not a minute.''
Perhaps it's just as well, considering how
early he would have had to get up to do all
three network morning news shows. By noon he
was on a plane for Florida, where he was due
to play an exhibition.
Two days after his victory,
the new champion is planning to relax and
work on his golf game. (He is a
16-handicapper.) He knows his win at the Open
makes him the man to beat now. ''It's a lot
of pressure, but I think I'm mature enough
and capable of living up to that
responsibility,'' Pete says with aplomb.
Meanwhile, he's going to indulge in a little
old-fashioned glory- basking. ''I'm just
going to try to let this sink in,'' says
Sampras, taking a smooth swing with his sand
wedge. ''I'm on a high right now.''
Article supplied by
Amanda Lonnick
