July 12, 1993 - With his
booming serve, Pete Sampras launched 22 aces
to beat Jim Courier in an all-American
Wimbledon final on Independence Day
There was perfection and
order at Wimbledon this year. For the first
time since 1977 not a drop of rain fell
during the fortnight, and the crowds enjoyed
a seemingly endless reverie of sunbathing and
stargazing. A numerical symmetry began to
take shape when the top four men's seeds --
Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg, Jim Courier and
Boris Becker -- reached the semifinals,
something that hadn't happened since 1927. On
the Fourth of July, in the first all-American
men's final since 1984, the No. 1 player in
the world, Sampras, defeated the No. 2
player, Courier.
.........
Sampras has only one
Wimbledon title, and it is a significant step
forward for him. It proved to him and the
world that he deserves the No. 1 ranking he
took from Courier in April. In fact, Sampras
may be the most complete player in the game,
though an emotionally fragile one.
He quietly cut through the
tournament like scissors through silk, moving
so softly that he was labeled uninteresting
by the British tabloids. PETE'S A BORE read
one headline. In a whimsical radio survey in
which 1,000 Brits responded to the question:
Whom would you most like to share
strawberries and cream with at Wimbledon?
Sampras received only one vote. (Chris Bailey
won, followed by Agassi, Henri Leconte and
Fred Perry.) Told of the outcome of the poll,
he shrugged and said, "I let my racket
do the talking. That's what I'm all about,
really. I just go out and win tennis
matches."
Sampras was also called a
hypochondriac. He moped and winced through
several matches, moaning over the tendinitis
in his right shoulder that, he said, was so
painful he nearly withdrew from the
tournament. He said that on the Wednesday
before Wimbledon began, "the pain was so
bad I couldn't brush my teeth." When he
got a nosebleed during his third-round match
against Byron Black of Zimbabwe, the gimpy
label stuck.
Whether Sampras really
suffers from constant ailments, or whether
most of his aches are in his mind, no one
knows for sure, not even Sampras. He admitted
that his aching shoulder was "50 percent
mental and 50 percent physical." At last
year's U.S. Open, in which he lost in the
final to Edberg, he complained of shin
splints, cramps and the aftereffects of a
stomach virus. This much was sure: If Sampras
wanted to win Wimbledon, and thus fulfill the
potential he displayed in winning the 1990
U.S. Open and the destiny predicted for him
by no less than Perry, he was going to have
to suck it up.
For all of the pained
expressions he made, Sampras did just that.
In the fourth round he dispatched Britain's
last hope, Andrew Foster, and gave the
hostile crowd a clenched fist and a snarled
epithet as he left the court. When asked
later what he had mouthed to the British
fans, Sampras facetiously replied, "I
said, 'Have a nice day. God bless you.'
"
Next he defeated the most
popular man in town, Agassi. For 10 days
Agassi had captivated the public with his
showboating, his relationship with Streisand
and his valiant efforts to repeat as
champion. Streisand has been an admirer of
Agassi's ever since he called to tell her how
much he admired The Prince of Tides.
Streisand had promised to come to Wimbledon
if Agassi reached the quarterfinals. When he
did, she flew to London from Greece, where
she had been vacationing. Her arrival
electrified Fleet Street. She appeared for
his quarterfinal in a sailor suit and
nautical cap. She bobbed and cheered for
Agassi and annoyed Sampras's supporters in
the friends' box by clapping whenever Sampras
made errors.
Agassi appeared to be on the
verge of victory when Sampras called for a
trainer midway through the fifth set to
massage his aching shoulder. But it was
Agassi whose serving arm had flagged. He
dropped his serve twice in a row and fell
behind 4-2. Sampras then easily held serve
twice to close out a 6-2, 6-2, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4
win that would turn out to be his most
difficult test of the tournament. He also had
the private satisfaction of knowing that he,
too, had a celebrity friend. Sampras had
played tennis with Elton John at John's
palatial Windsor home the week before the
tournament began. So there, Andre.
Sampras never lost his serve
in his 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 defeat of Becker in
their semifinal. Said Becker, "Sometimes
I think he forgot the difference between his
first serve and his second serve."
Becker himself had won all 27 of his service
games in a five-set quarterfinal victory over
fellow German and 1991 Wimbledon winner
Michael Stich, but he couldn't maintain that
constancy against Sampras, who hit his best
shot of the tournament to create match point.
Becker unfurled a down-the-line backhand that
seemed bound to be a winner. Sampras,
however, twisted and caught the ball with a
diving forehand volley that curled across the
net so sharply that Becker couldn't reach it.
Sampras yanked his fists toward his body in
triumph and yelled to his coach, Tim
Gullikson. It was perhaps the most emotion
Sampras had ever displayed on a tennis court.
As for Courier, his
performance was a total surprise, especially
to him. "I thought I'd be playing golf
tomorrow," he said last Friday, after
defeating Edberg in the other semi.
Courier's strength is his
thorough preparation. As a result, he has
reached the final of all four Grand Slam
tournaments and has won both the French and
Australian Opens twice. Once Courier gained
the measure of the greensward, he became a
pulverizing force from the baseline. Witness
his 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 triumph over Edberg, a
two-time Wimbledon champion who supposedly
possessed a far superior grass-court game.
After a tight first set, Courier commanded
all the authority in the match. "I had
it, then I lost it and never got it
back," Edberg said.
Courier was an ugly American
during the fortnight, grim and quarrelsome,
but that attitude served him well. He was
nearly defaulted for allegedly swearing at
the umpire during his third-round victory
over Australia's Jason Stoltenberg. He
appeared to swear again during his semifinal
with the gentlemanly Edberg. Although that
epithet went unpenalized, the British press
jumped on him for it. "Nobody's perfect
in this world," said Courier at a press
conference after the match. "If we were,
it'd be pretty boring." He then invited
writer David Miller of The Times of London to
step outside.
No amount of feistiness,
however, could overcome Sampras's howitzer
serve in the final. En route to his 7-6, 7-6,
3-6, 6-3 victory, Sampras delivered 22 aces,
many with his second serve, which averaged 97
mph and burned the lines. Sampras lost only
eight points on his serve in the first set
and four in the second.
Thus, even though he had not
lost his own serve, Courier found himself
trailing by two sets. His fate was decided
when he could not convert a set point in the
second-set tiebreaker. Sampras hit a forehand
volley that barely caught the baseline.
In the third set Sampras
suffered an adrenaline lag. His shoulders
drooped, and so did his game. He became
careless, and Courier won the set with
something approaching ease. In the fourth,
though, Sampras came back with a vengeance.
He broke Courier for a 4-2 lead by winning a
lengthy baseline rally. When Sampras held for
5-2, the match was all but over.
Sampras knew it when he took
his chair for the changeover. He put his head
in his hands and placed some ice on his neck,
and he breathed slowly and deeply. For a
moment, nearly everyone at Centre Court had
the impression that Sampras was sick or
injured -- and that he might not make it
through a fifth set should Courier force one.
Sampras returned to the court looking pale.
"I told myself to stay calm," he
said later.
Courier easily held serve,
and suddenly Sampras was serving for the
title. "I knew he was tired,"
Courier said, "but when you serve at 125
miles per hour, you don't have to move much.
I still had to break serve."
Courier won a spectacular
first point, and Sampras sagged. But three
huge serves later, he held double match
point. "The biggest point in the world
for me," he would say.
Courier saved one with a
searing forehand return that Sampras half-
volleyed into the net. Sampras crouched at
the baseline for a moment and then rose to
his feet. He drilled one more serve. Courier
popped it up, and Sampras knocked off an easy
backhand volley. Then he raised his arms in
exultation.
It was the second time within
a month that Courier had lost in a Grand Slam
final: Sergi Bruguera of Spain had upset him
at the French Open. "It stinks,"
said Courier. "It stinks twice."
Afterward, Sampras was so
relaxed that he fed a line to the tabloids.
When asked if he had noticed that the
princess of Wales was rooting for him from
the royal box, Sampras smiled and said,
"Maybe she has a crush on me."
Courier, too, couldn't help
mocking the tabs' preoccupation with the
players' love lives. When he was asked about
his relationship with Sampras, he smiled
coyly and murmured Agassi's standard reply to
the Streisand question: "We're friends,
just friends."
Sampras has often remarked
that his U.S. Open victory had an element of
luck to it, and that back then he was just an
unconscious 19-year-old kid riding a hot
streak. This time he was so conscious of the
occasion that he almost fainted on court.
"You can't take this title away from
me," he said. "I don't think there
will be any more controversy [about my No. 1
ranking]."
As Sampras raised the
championship chalice above his head on Centre
Court, he heard a new, rewarding sound. The
British were applauding him. "I think
they've grown to like me," he said later
and smiled.
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