Grand
Slam No. 13: Wimbledon, 2000
Headlines and
Post Match Interviews:
Learning to
love the robot
by Ian Chadband, Chief Sport Correspondent (This
is London)
 He always had their
admiration and often their awe but when Pete
Sampras wiped away the tears and clambered
into the Centre Court gods to embrace his mum
and dad the feeling was inescapable; that at
last Wimbledon had learned to love its finest
champion.
In the most dramatic and unlikely of
settings, with the scoreboard clock ticking
beyond 9pm and hundreds of camera flashlights
dazzling amid the darkness of his "home
from home", it took only this heartfelt
expedition to find his shy folks and an
equally emotional and dignified courtside
interview for the arena to give its warmest
embrace to a man it had for too long
perceived as some cold, colourless
assassin.
It was not that he had equalled William
Renshaw's 19th century Wimbledon record of
seven men's singles titles or that he had
surpassed Roy Emerson's Grand Slam landmark
with his 13th crown which won them over but
the theatre of a marvellous gladiatorial
final against Pat Rafter which not only once
again revealed the greatness of his game but
also the size of his heart and the depth of
his passion for this event.
Not long before Sampras had finally served
out for a three-hour 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2
triumph in the latest finish to a singles
final after three rain delays, one churl
shouted out, urging Rafter to beat "the
robot".
It was a stupid cry but happily a lone one
because, perhaps more than in any of his
other finals, everybody could surely see this
had been the day - make that the night and
day - when Sampras had needed to overcome
physical debilitation and mental frailty
before closing in on history.
For all his incredible serving, he had
never seemed more human nor less robotic out
there.
We will never know exactly how much his
leg injury was hampering him because, being
Sampras, he again refused to make a song and
dance of it afterwards. But it was obvious,
as he struggled to get down to some volleys
he would normally put away in his sleep, that
he was not at his incomparable best.
When, despite outplaying Rafter for much
of the first two sets only to be met by
marvellous Australian defiance and
athleticism at the net, Sampras found himself
one set down and 4-1 down in the second set
tie-breaker, his hangdog air for once was no
illusion.
"I really felt it was slipping
away," he admitted, just as he had
almost convinced himself for the whole
fortnight that he was out of sorts and
"wasn't going to win this
time".
In the first set tie-breaker, he had
served two doubles to help gift it to Rafter
2-10. In the second set, he had gained his
fifth break point but was yet again
repelled.
As he went to the changeover in the second
tie-break, about to crumble, he at last
remembered why he was a champion. He thought
how he had lost the first set to Boris Becker
in 1995 and how Goran Ivanisevic had fought
back to take him to a fifth set in
1998.
"There's times you reflect on past
experiences to be able to get through
it," he mused.
Still, he needed a little help. Rafter
served a double and then, in his own
refreshingly honest manner, admitted to
"really screwing up" with an easy
missed forehand.
"No matter who you are, we all
choke," shrugged Sampras. Yet some choke
less than others and, after his let-off,
Sampras became the familiar strangler.
He was quite relentless, returning serve
with a consistent quality which even Andre
Agassi could not manage in his semi-final
against Rafter, until eventually, after
earning 10 break points, he finally nailed
one in the third set after about two and a
quarter hours. Rafter's resistance, hitherto
sterling, had to crack.
The Australian, who had shown the same
nobility in defeat as his conqueror had
displayed humility, became the latest to hail
Sampras as the greatest of all time.
What qualities made him the best, though?
"Mate, it's one hell of a serve,"
sighed Rafter. "You can't read it, you
can't pick it and it takes the pressure off
him."
Yes, but the moment when, 3-2 up but break
point down in the fourth set, Sampras finally
extinguished the last ray of hope for Rafter
with a 118mph second serve, was as much about
nerve as skill.
Because Sampras's real genius is his
ability, as he calls it, to "find any
way to win" even when the biggest fight
might be against himself. It almost defies
credibility, in a tournament where matches
can turn, like yesterday's, in a couple of
key moments, that he has lost only one in 54
at Wimbledon in the past eight years (to
Richard Krajicek in the 1996 quarters).
This time, he even found a way to win
about 10 minutes before the light would have
been unplayable.
It made for the most wonderful finale
when, after his tears subsided, he squinted
in the dark to have his parents, Sam and
Georgia, pointed out to him. For once, the
shy pair, who like to let Sampras have the
limelight to himself, had been persuaded
after his semi to fly over and share his
glory.
They did not want to be in the players'
box, though, only to be seated among the
ordinary punters.
Suddenly, you could appreciate why Sampras
is the way he is. "They've always given
me my space when I'm competing because they
don't want me to worry about them," he
said.
"They aren't the typical tennis
parents where they're with me every week. As
a kid, they were involved but as I turned
pro, I was on my own. They supported and
loved me, always said the right things, but
they always kept their distance."
So could Sampras ever see his dad standing
on the players' box like a certain Mr
Williams?
"No, he won't be holding any signs up
either," smiled the champ.
As he paid this public tribute to his
folks, while noting how he had seen "a
lot of cases where parents get too
involved", you could not help delighting
in an image, at the end of a Wimbledon
featuring the usual crop of tennis dads from
hell, that genius in this game can also be
nurtured amid normality.
For when they hugged their boy, Sam and
Georgia could be rightly proud that their
perfect Pete remains not only a credit to
them but to a modern world of professional
sport riddled with more than its fair share
of charlatans and noisy hype.
Once again, he had displayed that it is
possible to be the best without being loud
about it, to be rich in character without
having to be a character and to be a great
sport while being, perhaps, the greatest
sportsman of your generation. Long may the
king return to grace his Court.
BACK TO TOP
With No. 13,
Sampras Is Matchless
Tennis: Record total for Grand Slam wins comes
with a seventh Wimbledon crown.
By Bill Dwyre (LA Times)
Just minutes before 9 p.m. London time
Sunday, with darkness and rain clouds closing
in, John McEnroe leaned toward his courtside
microphone at Wimbledon and told his audience
of millions, in classic understatement, the
obvious.
"History, folks," McEnroe said.
Seconds later, and only a couple dozen
feet away from McEnroe, the man who had first
toed the tennis service line as a 7-year-old
on the hard courts of Palos Verdes, did it
one more time.
This time, it was for the ages.
Pete Sampras' left foot rocked backward
and up, then his body and right arm swung
forward and he hit a serve that would bring
him, at the tender age of 28, into the
category of sports legend. When Australian
Patrick Rafter returned wide on Sampras'
first match point of this rain-delayed
Wimbledon final, Sampras had gone where no
other male tennis player had gone before, to
a 13th title in a Grand Slam event.
Sampras' seventh Wimbledon title, to go
with his four U.S. Open and two Australian
titles, gives him a record that is of Joe
DiMaggio/Secretariat/John Wooden proportions.
It is in the same stratosphere as 56
consecutive major league baseball games with
at least one hit, a 31-length victory in the
Triple Crown clinching Belmont Stakes, 10
NCAA basketball titles.
Sampras reached it with lots of time to
make the record even more unreachable.
"I think he'll win lots more,"
said the fabled Jack Kramer of Los Angeles,
the 1947 Wimbledon champion. "In 50
years, nobody will remember Don Budge and
Pancho Gonzales and Ellsworth Vines and some
of the others like them, but they'll remember
Pete Sampras.
"I'm glad he comes out of Southern
California. We all ought to be proud of
him."
Mastery Over His Injuries
While Sampras has suffered more and more
injuries in recent years, causing him to sit
out events and curtail his playing schedule,
he remains at or near his prime. This year's
U.S. Open is another chance to lengthen his
list of Grand Slam event achievements, as is
January's Australian and, certainly, next
year's Wimbledon, where his mastery has
become, well, unreachable.
His four-set victory over Rafter, with
scores of 6-7 (10), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2, topped
the record of 12 Grand Slam titles--the
Australian, French and U.S. Opens and
Wimbledon--that he had shared since last
year's Wimbledon with Roy Emerson, the
Australian who now lives in Newport Beach.
Only one other man, William Renshaw, had won
seven Wimbledon titles. And for perspective,
Renshaw's last Wimbledon title was 1889, when
the draw was considerably smaller and the
competition considerably weaker.
The only active player with Grand Slam
title results even remotely mentionable in
the same breath as Sampras' is Andre Agassi,
who has won six. Among the all-time greats of
tennis, after Emerson's 12 (from 1961-67),
Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver each won 11, Bill
Tilden won 10, Fred Perry, Jimmy Connors,
Ivan Lendl and Ken Rosewall each won eight.
Even McEnroe, one of the biggest names in the
history of the game, managed only seven.
"Time will tell if it will be
broken," Sampras said Sunday. "I
think in the modern game, it could be
difficult. It's a lot of commitment, a lot of
good playing at big times. It's possible. I
mean, the next person might be 8 years old,
hitting at a park somewhere around the
world."
Sampras' dominance at Wimbledon has been
so complete that, since his first title in
the run began with a victory over Jim Courier
in 1993, he has lost only one of 54 matches.
He has won in '93, '94, '95, '97, '98, '99
and now 2000. In those seven final matches,
he has had his serve broken only four times,
twice by Courier in '93 and twice by Goran
Ivanisevic in '98.
But it is a measure of the Sampras drive
and fire, something that does not come across
in his on-court body language or even
post-match news conferences, that he can sit
and talk painstakingly, and in vivid detail,
about every moment of the game in 1996 in
which Richard Krajicek broke his serve to
take control of their quarterfinal match and
deprive him of winning eight consecutive
titles.
"I was right there, just a shot or
two away," Sampras says, eyes fiery.
"A break here or there in that one and I
would have gone all the way there too."
Sampras' drooped shoulders and downcast
look are frequently taken as the mark of a
beaten man, or a player on the ropes. That is
usually misleading. He shows much more
vulnerability than he feels, although
Sunday's pressure had to be as tough as
anything he has ever faced. As he was Sunday,
while trailing Rafter by one set and down,
4-1, in the second set tiebreaker, he has
been counted out by more broadcasters and
writers than a punch-drunk, out-of-shape
prize fighter. But his amazing rises from the
canvas are amazing only to others.
"I think I have one of the best
serves in tennis, and I never think I'm
beaten until I am," he confides in some
of his more unguarded moments.
His early years as a junior player in
Palos Verdes were directed by Dr. Peter
Fischer, and he grew up in an area that was
to produce, among others, women's stars Tracy
Austin and Lindsay Davenport, last year's
Wimbledon champ, who moved from Palos Verdes
to the Murietta area for her high school
years.
Sampras came up through the junior ranks
with Agassi, Courier and Michael Chang. Once
he changed from a two-handed backhand to a
one-hander and developed the serve that is
not only effective, but a virtual poetry in
motion, he began to emerge as the best of
that hugely talented group of U.S. youngsters
who have, to date, won 24 Grand Slam titles
among them. Agassi has his two U.S. and
Australian Opens, and one French and
Wimbledon; Courier has two Australians and
two French Opens, and Chang has one French.
Sampras spent the late '80s and most of
the '90s living in Florida, and eventually
being coached by Tim Gullikson, a veteran
tour player who brought stability and
maturity to Sampras' game and life. When
Gullikson died of brain cancer in May 1996,
Sampras was well on his way to a career of
record setting, but the death of his coach
seemed to bring him to a new level of
maturity.
Two years ago, he moved back to Los
Angeles; he now lives in Beverly Hills. For
years, especially when he lived in Florida,
he seemed to operate independently, with
mentions of his family only incidental. But
when he returned, he said he did so to be
closer to his parents, Sam and Georgia. He
talked about having access to the courts at
UCLA, where his sister, Stella, is the
women's coach. He has another sister, Marion,
who is a teacher in Los Angeles, and an older
brother, Gus, who is director of one of the
events on the Assn. of Tennis Professionals
tour.
Nervous Parents Win a Hug
Sunday, when Sampras set the record, parents
Sam and Georgia were in the stands. They are
so nervous about watching him play that this
marked only the second Grand Slam final they
had ever attended. The first was Sampras'
1992 loss in the U.S. Open final to Stefan
Edberg, one of only two Grand Slam finals
Sampras has lost. Part of Sampras' post-match
celebration Sunday was climbing high into the
Wimbledon stands to hug his parents.
 "I wanted them to be a part
of it," he said. "As much as I like
to say I'm going to be back here every year,
there's no guarantees."
Since he has returned to Los Angeles,
Sampras has continued to mature and give back
to the community.
In March, he hosted the first Pete Sampras
Golf Classic at North Ranch Country Club to
raise funds for the Tim and Tom Gullikson
Foundation for cancer research. At the
evening dinner, the once-shy Sampras took the
microphone and conducted the program like
somebody who had been doing it all his life.
That night, he introduced actress Bridgette
Wilson, now his fiance, as the "love of
my life."
A month later, he came back from an
embarrassing opening-match defeat in the
Davis Cup second round against the Czech
Republic, played before family and friends at
the hometown Great Western Forum, to win the
fifth and deciding match. He ran around the
floor with the American flag, and was
thrilled when a picture of that scene got him
on the front page of The Times.
"The front page," he said.
"Not sports, but the front page. That
was cool."
Two weeks later, he had committed to play
in another fund-raising golf event, the Padua
Village Classic at Red Hill Country Club in
Rancho Cucamonga.
He had injured his leg in that final Davis
Cup match, and doctors told him he couldn't
play golf while it healed. Nevertheless,
Sampras had committed, and so he said he
would show up for the evening dinner. That
day turned out to be one of the rainiest of
the spring. Sampras was offered use of a
limo, or somebody to drive and get him, but
he said he'd make it on his own. It took him
four hours in traffic, from Beverly Hills to
Rancho Cucamonga, to get there. When he
arrived and entered the dining room, he got
an ovation from a room full of golfers who
had expected, as they would of many
celebrities in a similar situation, that he
wouldn't show.
At the event, Sampras met a former area
tennis star named Stan Clark, who once played
in some of the same tournaments as Gonzales
and Kramer. Clark, owner of the Claremont
Tennis Club, is seriously ill and had left
his home, in the chill and rain, to get a
chance to hear Sampras speak.
When they were introduced, Clark told
Sampras he thought he should serve and volley
on the slow clay at the French just as he
would in any other tournament. Sampras smiled
and said he might try that. Clark said he
would watch the French and Sampras told him
to make sure to watch Wimbledon, too. Clark
said he hoped he would be able to.Sunday,
Clark watched much of the event on TV and
said he wished he had been able to watch it
all.
"I was so happy when I heard he
won," Clark said.
BACK TO TOP
Old
adage brought artistically to life
Sampras offers a reminder of the value of bending
the knees
by: Richard Williams (The Guardian)
As anyone will tell you, the secret is in
the knees. It doesn't matter whether the task
at hand is a slalom turn or a strike in a
10-pin bowling alley, a cover drive or a pass
from the base of the scrum. Keep the knees
bent. A simple but painful process of flexion
and extension. Or, as generations of Alpine
ski instructors have scolded generations of
reluctant British novices, "Bend zee
knees." And nobody, no one in any sport
anywhere in the world, understands the
importance of that message better than Pete
Sampras.
Bending the knees is not a glamorous
business. This is not what people take up
sport to do. It carries no satisfaction in
itself, like the feeling that might be had
from angling the racket into a beautifully
feathered drop volley. It is the cause,
rather than the effect. No one applauds it.
But without it there is nothing.
All champions know this. On the eve of the
women's singles final, the two-time champion
Althea Gibson sent a message from her home in
East Orange, New Jersey to Venus Williams,
via Zina Garrison.
It wasn't passed on, in the event, because
Garrison thought it best not to add
distractions to Venus's preparation routine.
But what it said was that she should be sure
to keep her knees bent. Despite the advent of
hi-tech rackets, energy drinks and bleep
tests, some things never change.
Sampras's form was in and out in the first
couple of sets of his rain-interrupted
singles final against Patrick Rafter last
night. It took him nine break points before
he managed to convert one, an extraordinarily
high number and, of course, that represented
a compliment to his opponent's resolve. On
the way Sampras missed a lot of relatively
simple stuff that he had worked hard to set
up.
Rafter's second serve, with its big kick,
was a particularly vital test, and the
defending champion set himself to solve its
puzzle, particularly when it came to his
backhand side in the advantage court.
He would stretch himself high to get on
top of it before chopping across it at a
sharp angle, making it dip to meet the
incoming server at ankle height, forcing him
to stretch and turn and bend and then hit a
shot while moving at top speed. It was an
absorbing and impressive sight, the product
of a first-class tennis mind working
overtime.
But it was nothing compared to the sight
of what happened on the first point of the
fourth game of the second set, with Rafter
serving at 7-6, 1-2, when Sampras returned
the Australian's second serve and found the
ball coming back from a brisk half- volley,
deep into his backhand corner.
He moved across to his left, getting lower
as he ran, and when he pulled his racket back
across his body and then let fly with the
shot, his knees were almost scraping the
dusty earth on the baseline.
The ball flashed across the net on the
lowest possible trajectory and past Rafter at
something that must have been close to the
speed of electricity, a pale green flash in
the dusk, seeming to leave the streak of an
after-image in the air.
When Sampras does that kind of thing, it
makes you forget about his strange shambling
gait and supposed lack of personality. What
he is doing is creating the kind of sporting
perfection that forces us to think in terms
of beauty.
Such a moment exists outside of its
competitive context, and has a value of its
own, an aesthetic value which is eventually
converted into pure memory, divorced from the
moment of its creation and tied simply to the
remembrance of its maker.
The crowd sighed in wonder and something
close to ecstasy as Sampras hit that shot.
They had come for a contest between two
terrific players, but they had been given a
piece of sublime artistry.
One day the details of last night's match
will fade into a simple scoreline, a thing of
names and numbers engraved on a silver
dish.
But those who were there last night will
remember the moment when Pete Sampras gave
himself a reminder of what he can do when he
bends his knees.
BACK TO TOP
Parents'
evening produces rare emotional break point
by: Oliver Holt (The Sunday Times, UK)
WHEN the moment came it was not in the
brilliance of the afternoon sun, as Pete
Sampras must have imagined it would be in his
dreams.
After rain delays and the feisty
resistance of Pat Rafter, it even seemed at
one stage as though the conclusion of the
men's singles final, that could confirm
Sampras as officially as possible as the best
tennis player the world has seen, would have
to wait for another grey day.
In the end, though, there was something
eerily, romantically fitting about the
twilight that bathed the instant when Sampras
passed into history on the Centre Court at
Wimbledon, something that evoked all the
ghosts of great players past, that emphasised
the brilliance of the man who was playing out
there by instinct, because by then, a few
minutes before 9pm, it was so dark that he
could barely see.
It felt, too, like a microcosm of the war
against time that Sampras has been waging in
the past 12 months. His age is catching up
with him, manifest in a growing number of
injuries. As the gloom deepened, as the
ballboys and ballgirls donned sweaters to
protect them from the evening chill, it felt
as though the night was closing in on his
attempt to sweep all the records of tennis
before him and surpass Roy Emerson's tally of
12 grand-slam wins.
Still Sampras could not be stopped. Still
no one could stand in his way. Even a man who
was raised as one of nine children, as Rafter
was, and who knows, instinctively, never to
give up, was finally powerless as Sampras
gathered pace. Life taught Rafter his most
important lessons before he stepped on to a
court and he, too, played some brilliant
tennis, but still he was no match for his
opponent.
That is the thing about Sampras at
Wimbledon, where he has now lost only one
match in the past 54 and has matched the
record of seven men's singles titles.
Everything everyone else does, he can do
better. Rafter hung in there manfully but
Sampras, injured shin and all, hung in there
better. Rafter kept fighting, but Sampras
shrugged off a host of missed opportunities
in the first set and bounced back like a
rubber ball. "When I was 4-1 down in the
second set tie-breaker," he said,
"I thought it was slipping away."
Sampras, though, does not let anything slip
away at Wimbledon.
For the first and perhaps the last time in
his career, he even won the plaudits of the
romantics and the sentimentalists who adore
these Championships. The only time he had
broken down in public before was after the
death of Tim Gullikson, his coach, several
years ago. This time, he shed tears of
happiness as he bowed his head between his
knees at that moment of victory.
More startling still, he emulated Venus
Williams and Pat Cash by striding into the
crowd to greet his loved ones. This was
different than the forerunners, though. His
parents had not seen him win any of his
previous grand-slam victories and are so
publicity shy that they had chosen to sit,
not in the players' box with their son's
fiancée, Bridget, but among the ordinary
supporters in the stands.
"They were right up in the
rafters," Sampras said, "so it took
a while to find them."
His victory, his record, was dignified by
the fact that Rafter gave it everything in
his first final. One of the defining
qualities of Sampras, however, is the
relentlessness of his brilliance. For his
opponent, there is no relief, no respite.
Facing him is the tennis equivalent of the
time when batsmen used to face Andy Roberts,
Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel
Garner one after the other.
Sampras is a one-man tennis terminator. He
does not need the help of others. So he kept
going and kept going, too, thundering down
his services, punching his volleys, flashing
his cross-court backhand passing shots until,
in the third and fourth sets, Rafter started
to make mistakes and misjudgments.
"Sampras has got one hell of a
serve," Rafter said. "Can't read
it, can't pick it. He has to come up with the
returns and he does have a complete game, but
that awesome serve takes the pressure off the
rest of his game."
Moments after his victory, Sampras spoke
about the emotion attached to his
achievement. "This is a great moment in
my life," he said. "It means so
much to me that my parents were here. I would
not be here if my parents had not given me
the chance to play this great game. I love
them and I love my fiancée, Bridget, and
everyone who put me together for this
occasion. I had my parents on my side and I
had God on my side. I am not religious but I
needed a little help from upstairs
today."
It shone through the evening gloom that
yesterday was a day when, even for Sampras,
the tennis court did not seem like an office.
BACK TO TOP
Emotional
Sampras shares Grand Slam record with parents
By Stephen Wilson (AP)
 WIMBLEDON, England
(AP) -- His lips quivering and eyes blinking
back tears, Pete Sampras scanned the Centre
Court stadium searching for the two people
with whom he wanted to share the greatest
moment in his tennis career. There, high in
the stands, he spotted his father, Sam,
waving his arms desperately to get his son's
attention, and his mother, Georgia.
Sampras climbed into the bleachers and
shared a long embrace with his parents, who
had just watched their son make history by
winning his seventh Wimbledon title and
record 13th Grand Slam championship.
``It was nice to share it with my
parents,'' he said. ``I've wanted them to be
a part of it. It took me a while to find them
(in the stands). Once I did, it was a great
moment.''
It was a rare display of emotion by
Sampras, whose parents had never been to
Wimbledon or seen him win any Grand Slam.
They flew in from Southern California only
the day before.
Sampras rewarded them by overcoming
Patrick Rafter 6-7 (10), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2
Sunday to pass Roy Emerson for the most Slam
titles and tie Willie Renshaw, a player in
the 1880s, for the most Wimbledon victories.
``Win or lose today, I was going to invite
them here,'' he said. ``I'm glad they hopped
on the plane and made the trip.''
The only other time Sampras' parents saw
him play in a Grand Slam tournament was at
the 1992 U.S. Open, where he lost in the
semifinals to Goran Ivanisevic. <NB: Pete
actually lost in the finals to Stefan
Edberg>
``My parents are not tennis parents,'' he
said. ``You see a lot of cases where parents
get too involved. I'm my own man. They always
give me my ndependence.''
Sampras' victory capped the most
challenging of his seven title runs at
Wimbledon. Coping with acute tendinitis above
his left ankle from the second round on, he
couldn't practice between matches.
``It really is amazing how this tournament
just panned out for me,'' he said. ``I didn't
really feel like I was going to win here. I
felt I was struggling.''
The final had four hours of rain delays
and ended in fading light at 8:57 p.m., after
3 hours, 2 minutes of actual play. If Rafter,
the two-time U.S. Open champion, had won the
fourth set, they would have had to return
Monday. Sampras said before the match that as
long as his right arm held up, he would be a
threat. It held up fine.
Sampras served 27 aces at up to 133 mph,
and had 46 more unreturned serves as he
averaged an incredible 123 mph on first
serves. Sampras faced only two break points
and won once more without yielding a single
game on his serve. Rafter couldn't break him
in 21 service games. In his seven title
matches, Sampras has dropped serve only four
times in 131 games. The only time Sampras
buckled was in the first-set tiebreaker when
he double-faulted to lose the set.
``We all choke,'' said Sampras, who wound
up with 12 double-faults. ``No matter who you
are, you just get in the heat of the
moment.''
The match turned in the second set
tiebreaker, when Rafter wilted after taking a
4-1 lead. He double-faulted, then netted a
forehand to let Sampras tie it. Sampras then
smacked a service winner and won his fifth
straight point with a stunning inside-out
forehand crosscourt that zipped past Rafter.
Two points later he put the set away with a
solid volley.
``I felt it slipping away,'' Sampras said.
``He lost his nerve at 4-1 in the second
breaker. From a matter of feeling like I was
going to lose the match, I felt like I was
going to win the match within two minutes.''
Rafter admitted the tension got to him.
``I did get a little bit tight,'' he said.
``It was an opportunity for me to go up two
sets to love.
From there it's a very tough position, as
Pete knows, to come back from that. But
that's what happens when you get tight.''
Sampras has won 28 straight matches at
Wimbledon, extending his mark there to 53-1
over the past eight years.
He is only the sixth male player in
history to win Wimbledon four straight years.
The last to do it was Bjorn Borg, who won
five straight from 1976-80.
``This is the greatest player ever at
Wimbledon,'' former three-time champion John
McEnroe said. ``This guy's not someone you
can put anyone up against, nobody. No one has
ever come close to Pete.''
The debate over whether Sampras is the
greatest overall player of all time will
continue, however. He's clearly the best of
his generation. Andre Agassi, 30, ranks a
distant second among active players with six
major championships. But detractors point to
the one glaring gap in his accomplishments:
Sampras has never won the French Open, the
only Grand Slam played on clay. He's never
even reached the final, and this year he lost
in the first round. Sampras has been unable
to complete a so-called career Grand Slam --
winning all four majors. Rod Laver twice
achieved the Grand Slam in a single year.
"For Pete to be the greatest of all
time -- he probably is, but to seal it, he'd
have to win the French, I think. I think he
knows that, as well,'' Rafter said.
"Obviously the French is the one
that's missing,'' Sampras admitted.
BACK TO TOP
Sampras
lords it over Centre Court domain
by Paul Hayward (The Telegraph)
THERE is a line in Patrick Rafter's
favourite film, Jerry Maguire, where a highly
marketable American football star says to a
beleaguered sports agent played by Tom
Cruise: "You are hanging by a very thin
thread."
 Rafter might have recalled that
passage last night when the unthinkable
happened on Centre Court and Pete Sampras
looked vulnerable in a Wimbledon men's final.
Rafter, the "typical Aussie bloke",
as his coach, Tony Roche, once described him,
was 4-1 up in the second-set tie-break after
taking the first 7-6. But then a double fault
and a poor stroke let the six-times Wimbledon
champion back into a rain-interrupted match.
Tension was mounting.
The only word which adequately describes
Pete Sampras's hold on Centre Court over the
last eight years is tyrannical. All of us
sports addicts make mental lists of athletes
we will still be droning on about when our
teeth need soaking in Steradent. Sampras
ought to be on everybody's list. He is now
officially the greatest player to have
grabbed hold of a racket. "This is the
best court in the world," Sampras said
through tears that fell in place of the
spiteful rain, "and I'd like to come
back next year."
However boldly the invader marches on to
his lawn on Wimbledon's final Sunday, Sampras
is able to send out whichever version of
himself is needed to quell the hostile
incursion. Against Vladimir Voltchkov on
Friday, he dispatched the low-wattage
semi-final cruiser, conserving energy for his
first match at the 2000 Championships against
a fellow seed.
It was a strangely fragile and hesitant
Sampras who re-emerged after the longest
dreary downpour. The game itself was a mess
of percussive spasms: serve-volley-serve.
Neither player struck the ball with
sufficient authority to suggest that the dry
spells would yield a speedy winner. It was a
sore shin against a dodgy shoulder. Yet this
potentially ground-breaking encounter was
kept on the emotional high-wire by the sense
that Sampras was a faltering hampion being
held exasperatingly on history's cusp.
Proprietorial, vigilant, spikily defiant.
Sampras is all these things when his dominion
over the most sacred patch of turf in tennis
is challenged. Even performing moderately, as
he did for long phases through the fading
evening light, he conveys the impression that
he can shift into a higher dimension at any
moment. His adversaries have to get past the
aura before they start chipping away at the
man.
Last year Andre Agassi burst out of the
players' tunnel bug-eyed and intent on
causing havoc with the champion's attempt to
clinch a record-equalling 12th Grand Slam
title. Sampras looked coldly across the net
and unleashed a reign of terror. He was
physically and psychologically dominant,
punishing Agassi for his impertinence.
Only Rafter can know whether the brutal
subjugation of Agassi 12 months ago swirled
in his thoughts as Sampras set off after a
place in legend. Every last swinger and
swiper on the men's tour knows that to defeat
Sampras on grass you have to destroy the
certain knowledge he carries that when he is
on song he is invincible. Sampras's passivity
on court, his preference for not making eye
contact with his opponent, accentuates his
almost callous power.
Seldom has so much history overlain a
men's final here at the peak of the English
anti-summer, which has forced the crowd back
for a 14th session for the first time since
1988. The first Open-era final was won by an
Aussie, Rod Laver, who beat Roche in 1968.
Sampras had been chasing a 13th Grand Slam
crown for a full year after joining Roy
Emerson with 12 by crushing Agassi last year.
Only injury could have stopped Sampras
stepping into that exalted realm.
There would have been romance either way.
The elimination of Agassi on Friday deprived
this final of the most potent match-up in
men's tennis: the fizzing baseline power of
Agassi against the all-round might and
athleticism of Sampras. But Rafter's story
was a worthy addition to the book of
Wimbledon epics. A lover of surf and ski, a
rock-climber and skydiver, he worked his way
into the elite by camping with his mother at
junior tournaments and later sleeping on
wooden floors.
One of nine children, Rafter once kipped
in one of those entrance halls where banks
have started putting cash machines. Whether
he was merely 'tired and emotional' is not
recorded. "He plays hard and parties
hard," Roche once said Like Sampras, he
has impressed with the quiet dignity he has
brought to a sport where inflated incomes and
the insular nature of the tour can distort
perspective. On court, though, Sampras is no
respecter of humility. The vocabulary he uses
is one of ruthlessness and power.
It was the second-set tie-break before
Sampras allowed signs of anguish to escape. A
brief yelp was proof that for all his
unwavering strength of concentration he
needed Rafter's errors to help him back into
the match. "I thought I was on my way to
losing," he admitted. But Sampras is a
towering champion, who has never been known
to hand out second chances. Rafter, pottering
nicely along, was still in a promising
position with his one-set lead but was about
to disappear in history's march. Sampras
seized the next three sets in near-darkness
and was then consumed by the magnitude of
what he had achieved.
A short while back, he was asked why he
shows so little of himself on court. He
denied that he feels nothing, either in
victory or defeat: "If you just look at
what I have to give up and sacrifice in my
daily life to compete at this level, it would
be very weird if, in my own way, I wasn't
ecstatic about winning." Last night, at
8.57pm, he was euphoric and overcome, hugging
his parents and mopping away tears.
Hanging by a thin thread? For a while,
yes, but it was only the golden twine of
history.
BACK TO TOP
Sampras
truly sensational on his favorite court
Trying to rank one image from Pete
Sampras' celebration over another is
impossible. Each stood on its own. If
anyone witnessing Sampras' men's singles
title at Wimbledon was annoyed by the rain
delays Sunday, they at least had a rare
setting to take in the best part.
 Around 9 p.m. local
time, with only the last hints of summer
daylight available, Sampras hoisted his
Wimbledon trophy in a scene that had to seem
surreal. Had this happened in broad daylight,
the effect of cameras' flashing bulbs would
not have been so dramatic.
Instead, eyewitnesses recorded history in
the most magical environment possible. Two of
those were among the most important people in
tennis on this particular evening, Sampras'
parents, Sam and Gloria.
At last, Sampras has his 13th Grand Slam
singles championship after a 6-7 (12-10),
7-6 (7-5), 6-4, 6-2 defeat of
Australia's Patrick Rafter. He shakes off the
tennis legend whose record he had shared, Roy
Emerson, since Sampras won No. 12 last year
at Wimbledon.
We don't know how long the new and
well-done Nike commercial had been in the
vault, but its airing minutes after Sampras
won was a small stroke of brilliance all its
own.
There was Emerson, congratulating Sampras
on breaking his record, then threatening to
whip Sampras (28) whenever Sampras joins the
seniors tour. It was a light-hearted touch to
a majestic moment.
Bothered by a sore left shin that made the
final 10 days of the tournament painful,
Sampras probably had to overcome more
obstacles for this Wimbledon title than any
other.
Incidentally, his run stands at seven
Wimbledon singles championships in the past
eight years, a 53-1 match record there during
that time. "The way the past
week-and-a-half has gone, it's been the most
difficult," Sampras told NBC immediately
after the match. "Up-and-down. Didn't
feel I played my best. But today I played
very well."
Especially after he regrouped from his
most vulnerable moment: down by a set,
trailing 1-4 in the second-set tiebreak while
Rafter was to serve the next two points.
Sampras' rally from that moment on is the
stuff of a champion. "I felt that was
it," Sampras said, indicating he could
sense he was in grave danger. "The
closer he got, I got a little tight.
"As the match went on, I started to
get a little rhythm in my return. This game
is a matter of nerves. He felt it in the
first tiebreaker. I felt it in the
second."
Said Rafter: "When you play a great
champion like Pete, you've got to take him
when you can. But I got a little nervous.
That's the way it goes."
Rafter knew he was charmed to progress
this far. Only 10 months removed from
major surgery to repair an injured right
shoulder, the 27-year-old had offered hints
it would be some time before he could return
to anywhere near the top of tennis. Instead,
he went one match better than his semifinal
appearance last year to reach his first
Wimbledon final. He simply ran into an
all-time player, one determined to stake his
claim to history.
"I wasn't expecting anything this
year. Anything that came around this year
would be a bonus," Rafter said.
"This is a very big bonus... Second
place isn't too bad."
Sampras has had to accept second place on
occasion -- or worse, like Rafter's victory
over him in the 1998 U.S. Open semifinal. On
this occasion, Sampras could not accept
second place. Rarely have his parents watched
him compete. They haven't been able to handle
the stress of it.
This time, both Sampras men cried.
"It's so important to me they can
share this with me," Sampras said.
"This is the best court in the world.
They saw me lose in '92 in the U.S. Open, to
(Stefan) Edberg. This is a great moment in my
life."
It was a great moment not only in tennis,
but in all of sports. A moment worthy of the
unique setting -- 9 p.m. local time, darkness
descending on stadium court at Wimbledon, the
place Sampras loves more than any in his
profession.
"This is the biggest event we have in
the game," Sampras said. "You have
to do whatever you can to play."
BACK TO TOP
Graduation
in history brings tears to the eyes of Sampras
By Alix Ramsay (Sunday Times, UK)
 IT WAS 8.57pm when
history was made yesterday, and Pete Sampras
burst into tears. Until that point he
wascertainly the greatest grass-court player
of his generation, but the graduation to true
greatness, historic greatness, took a little
longer. In fact, it took just under three
hours and in that time, by beating Pat Rafter
6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2, he won his thirteenth
grand-slam title and his seventh at the All
England Club. No man has done more and no man
is likely to do it again. It was enough to
make a grown man cry.
Sensing history in the air, Sampras had
brought his parents over from the United
States for the final. That was possibly not
the wisest of moves as the last time they had
watched him play was in the Davis Cup, and he
lost. When Rafter took the first set, the
omens were not looking too clever. But that
is not accounting for what has made Sampras
supreme on these courts - even if he did
admit to needing a little divine intervention
to help him through.
"It means so much to me that my
parents were here, they have never seen me
win a grand slam," he said. "I love
Wimbledon, I love playing here, it is the
best court in the world. The match could have
gone either way and I needed a little help
from upstairs."
The match itself was a tale of tie-breaks,
rain delays and heavy clouds - not exactly
the best way to break a record. With two of
the best serve-and- volley players in the
world at each other's throats, one of them
chasing history and the other desperate to be
a part of it, the men's singles final
appeared to have everything going for it.
Then the weather moved in, and what should
have been a feast turned into a few light
snacks split over a dark and damp day.
It was a contest between perfection and
attraction - Sampras has never quite worked
out what the paying public wants from him,
while Rafter merely has to smile for the
crowd to melt before him. Finally appearing
on court more than an hour late because of
the constant drizzle, Rafter sat down and
took off his tracksuit bottoms to a chorus of
wolf whistles and cheers. For all his 12
grand-slam titles, six of them on the Centre
Court, Sampras had never had a reception like
that.
Perfection, though, has been struggling
this year. Normally when he first walks
through the gates of the All England Club,
his eyes light up. For all the problems and
the injuries that have gone before, Sampras
is a new man. This time it has been
different. For all that he has tried to brush
off the injury to his shin, he knew full well
that he has not really been tested in the six
rounds that took him to the final - and that
Rafter would provide that test. Desperate to
break Roy Emerson's record of grand-slam
titles - the two were level at 12 - Sampras
knew that Wimbledon provided the best
opportunity to do it and that, at the age of
28 and with a chronically bad back, time was
running out.
Given that both Rafter and Sampras needed
to stamp their authority on the match from
the very start, the conditions did little to
help their cause. Sampras knew that if he
made a slow start, as he has done since his
shin started to hurt last week and he gave up
practising in between rounds, Rafter would be
all over him like a rash. Equally, Rafter
knew that if Sampras started serving at full
pelt, he would be playing catch-up for the
rest of the match - and that is not the best
way to try to win a grand-slam final.
With two committed serve- and-volley
players, the tennis was always going to
happen in short bursts. From time to time a
rally would break out, but it was only for
three or four shots at a time. And, just as
Rafter had feared, Sampras was thumping his
service. In the first eight games, the
champion dropped a mere three points on his
service and two of them were double faults.
His second service was cracking in at more
than 120mph, and that was faster than some of
Rafter's aces.
What was becoming apparent was that Rafter
was having to work a great deal harder to
hold his service than Sampras. After a few
games to size each other up, Sampras started
to get a clear view of all that Rafter could
throw at him. The backhand return was sent
scurrying to Rafter's feet, leaving the
Australian to try to dig out a volley from
his ankles. After six deuces, although no
break points, he held on for a 4-3 lead, but
as soon as he raised his arms in mock
triumph, the rain started again.
They were back on court in 26 minutes, but
only for eight more. By that stage a
tie-break was on the cards, but once involved
in it more than 2½ hours later owing to
another rain delay, Sampras began to look
vulnerable. Superman had obviously been
sitting next to the kryptonite in the
locker-room and, with two consecutive double
faults, the tie-break was donated to Rafter.
It was the last real moment of weakness
from Sampras. While he took his time to work
out what to do with Rafter's service and it
took him more than two hours to put that
knowledge into practice, he was never really
playing from a position of anything but
strength. The look of delight on his face
when he took the second-set tie-break was a
turning point and 20 minutes later when he
secured the break, watching Rafter plant a
simple volley into the net, he knew that he
was on his way to true greatness.
From there, Rafter was not the same
player. Sampras was too strong in every
department - especially between the ears.
However much his leg may have hurt during
these championships he has been a man on a
mission, and even if he had to win on his
knees, he would have done it. The fact that
Rafter, who had given his all, began to fold
just made it all the more possible.
Serving for his place in the record books,
Sampras planted his shot to Rafter's forehand
and as the return sailed wide, he cracked at
last. For 13 years he has been the calm and
controlled winner, but this time he put his
hands on his knees and started to sob. The
rest, as they say, is history.
BACK TO TOP
Struggle
with history for champion Sampras
by: Simon Barnes (Sunday Times, UK)
I SUPPOSE when a man has 12
Grand Slam titles to his name and he has held
the world No 1 ranking for six years in
succession, it is a bit strong to call him a
choker. But to watch the men's single final
at Wimbledon on television was to look into
the eyes of an almost incomprehensibly
successful man - and to read a million
doubts.
And yet it is all there to be
read from the past, for those who have any
notion of tennis history. Pete Sampras won
his first grand-slam title, the US Open at
the age of 19, stunningly young to win a
major in the men's game.
And it came close to
destroying him. He went into a deep decline,
spoke almost despairingly of the weight of
being a champion.
His nature and his
temperament were taken scathingly to task by
various luminaries of the game. How is it
possible for a man to be (a) a champion and
(b) a sensitive soul?
A good question. No doubt it
makes it far more difficult. And Sampras
clearly is a sensitive soul, hard though he
has sought to conceal that fact from the
world.
And in fact, it was not until
Sampras lost that title the next year that he
began to regroup. No one then would have
predicted that he would become the most
implacable champion of the modern age:
perhaps of all time.
Time and again we have seen
him raise his game to unguessed-at heights at
the hardest times. Wimbledon has been his
special time and place: he has been winner
there six times in seven years.
All the time he has had
nothing to declare but his genius: scarcely
showing us his emotions. Sampras is about the
pursuit of perfection. Many tennis players
wear their hearts on their sleeves. Sampras
wears his in his chest.
It makes for constantly
intriguing television: you see the majestic
tennis, and then you look into his eyes and
see no triumph. You, rarely, see his
opponents temporarily gain the upper hand,
and yet Sampras's eyes show neither doubt nor
fear.
Until yesterday. Quite
unexpectedly, we saw Sampras with self-doubt.
Mind you, it was an amazing thing to have a
moment of doubt about.
When he was 19 he doubted he
had the right to be called a champion. Now,
at the age of 28, he had to ask himself if he
had the right to be called the greatest
champion of all time.
It is the sort of idea that
makes a man think, especially if he is a
sensitive soul. And Sampras thought. For he
had won 12 grand-slam titles going into this
match, sharing the all-time record with Roy
Emerson. One more and he would be out on is
own.
It is a prodigious thing to
take on board, and for long periods of this
strange rain-interrupted day, Sampras
wondered if he was the man to do it. Sampras
was fraught. As he had once felt the weight
of a championship heavy on his shoulders, now
he felt the weight of history.
No wonder he could not
convert ten break-points that he had earned
for himself. In the first set, he dominated:
holding easily and putting his opponent, Pat
Rafter, deep into trouble on his serve. And
yet he could not make the breakthrough.
And in the tie-break - well I
can hardly believe it I am keying the words
into here - Sampras lost by serving two
successive double faults.
I mean, this is Sampras, this
is his serve, this is Wimbledon, this is the
final. Sampras does not do that.
But he did yesterday. Pat
Rafter, an opponent with a vast all-court
range and a deep-seated dislike of losing so
much as a point, was going to make Sampras
dig deep into himself.
That roar, that air punch: I
have never seen Sampras do that, and it was
only a winner in the second-set tie-break.
Sampras does not celebrate, he gets on with
it. It meant so much. He was fighting for
history and for once, fighting his own
nature.
He had to step beyond his own
vision of himself, just as he had to after he
had won that first championship. And so he
closed out that second-set tie-break to level
the match. The tide had turned.
After that, as the two men
played into the gloom, it was going to be
Sampras's day. The screen filled with shots
of Sampras embracing his parents, and the day
closed in a fog of emotion. A great athlete:
to defeat all those opponents and to win
those two decisive battles against himself.
We will not see a better champion in
anything, ever.
BACK TO TOP
Pinnacle
Pete : Only three points from trailing 0-2 in
sets, American slams door on Rafter to eclipse
benchmark he shared with Emerson.
By Lisa Dillman (LA Times)
WIMBLEDON, England--He was
serving quickly and powerfully as it got
darker and darker, trying to finish his match
before some adults stepped in and told him to
come back tomorrow. It was just like kids on
any court, any night--playing even after they
can hardly see the ball, praying that mom and
dad stay inside a few more minutes.
And so, the serve of Pete
Sampras was dancing in the dark that final
game Sunday. He won the game, the match and a
place in history just before
nightfall--defeating Patrick Rafter of
Australia, 6-7 (10), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2, in
the Wimbledon final--and, well, then went
home to his mom and dad.
Where else would you go when
you are hurting and happy, all at the same
time?
The elation and relief
Sampras felt at winning his seventh Wimbledon
crown and record 13th Grand Slam singles
title, surpassing Australian Roy Emerson, was
mixed with physical pain and discomfort, an
inflamed left shin that had nearly caused him
to withdraw before the third round.
When Rafter hit a forehand
wide on Sampras' first match point, just
before 9 p.m., the rapidly darkening Centre
Court brightened one final time, hundreds of
flashbulbs illuminating and saluting Sampras.
He raised his arms and then bent over with
emotion and wiped the tears away.
His supporters in the
friends' box, which included coach Paul
Annacone and fiancee Bridgette Wilson,
started pointing at two people sitting high
in the stands on the other side, his parents,
Sam and Georgia.
"It was the moment I've
dreamt about, breaking this record, my
parents being there," Sampras said.
"It's a script that I've always wanted
to write. And it's happened. It's the most
difficult slam I've won."
He made the long climb up the
stairs and found his parents and hugged them
and they told him they loved him. This was
the first time they had seen him win a Grand
Slam title. The only other time they traveled
to a major tournament was when he lost in the
1992 U.S. Open final. His parents are
well-known for their fragile nerves: Sam
Sampras even told a reporter he was too
nervous to talk when his 13-year-old, Pete,
was playing a junior event in Orange County.
Sam and Georgia could not
even handle watching him play on television
when he won his first Grand Slam title, the
1990 U.S. Open, instead strolling through a
shopping mall in Long Beach.
They traveled from Los
Angeles, arriving Saturday, answering the
request of their son. Sitting down and
actually watching was a different matter. Sam
started to go to his seat and bailed out. He
walked the grounds and found, much to his
chagrin, that there were speakers everywhere
at the All England Club, telling him the
score. He eventually relented and watched
from his Centre Court seat.
"My parents are not
tennis parents," Sampras said. "You
see a lot of cases where parents get too
involved. They've always kept their distance.
When I go home, I'm the same Pete that they
have always treated me as a kid. They've
given me the strength and heart to be here. .
. .
"Talking to my dad, I
think he needs a little break."
This was not the easiest Slam
to break in for Sam Sampras, who declined
interview requests. On Sunday, because of the
weather, Lunch at Wimbledon had given way to
Dinner at Wimbledon and was fast-approaching
Bedtime at Wimbledon.
 Rain delays, one lasting more
than 2½ hours, led to more uncertainty for
the nervous family. And the start was delayed
by an hour. Sampras, who converted only three
of 14 break-point opportunities in the match,
seemed in control the first set but lost the
tiebreaker, 10-8, when he double-faulted on
Rafter's fourth set point, hitting his second
serve long by about two feet.
The match turned in the
second set when Rafter blew a 4-1 lead in the
tiebreaker with two of his serves to come. He
missed a relatively simple forehand passing
shot, and Sampras pulled to 4-4.
"After I missed that, I
knew I was screwed, 'Gee 4-4,' " Rafter
said. "Then I just thought, 'Oh God,
this is really going downhill.' I was really
going to have to find it hard to deal with
the nerves. That was sort of a mental blow
more than anything."
Said Sampras: "At 4-1, I
really felt like it was slipping away. [I]
somehow got through the tiebreaker. From a
matter of feeling like I was going to lose
the match, I felt like I was going to win the
match within two minutes. That's grass-court
tennis."
Sampras established control,
but it was never going to be routine, not
with his injury. At times, he would pull up
and looked hampered, then he would hit a
brilliant running forehand. He faced only one
break point in the final two sets (and only
two break points in the match), and Rafter
was realistic enough not to blame his
problems on the fading light.
"Well, no, I wasn't
getting his serve back anyway," said No.
12 Rafter, the only seeded player that No.
1-seeded Sampras faced in this fortnight.
"I didn't really care if it was
midnight, really. Not when you're down 5-2 in
the third, double break, mate. It's sort of
hard work being out there."
Rafter, a two-time U.S. Open
champion, was gracious in defeat. Rejuvenated
by a long, difficult road back from shoulder
surgery, he thought the flashbulbs flashing
in the darkness at the end were dramatic,
saying: "That was pretty cool
actually."
He was the final obstacle to
Sampras getting past Emerson, an Australian
star of old.
"It's a great effort, no
doubt about it," Rafter said after the
nearly three-hour match that took almost six
hours to complete. "For Pete to be the
greatest of all time--which he probably
is--but to seal it, he'd have to win the
French. I think he knows that as well."
Whether he is the greatest of
all, or close to it, Sampras, 28, is very
aware of his vulnerability, on and off the
court. Accordingly, his family has become
more important.
"It was nice to share it
with my parents who have never been to
Wimbledon," he said. "I wanted them
to be a part of it. Win or lose today, I was
going to invite them here. I'm glad they
hopped on the plane and made the trip."
Copyright
2000 Los Angeles Times
BACK TO TOP
Tears
that testify to the true Sampras
by James Lawton, The Independent (UK)
It's a fairly boring thing to
do, falling on your knees on Centre court and
leaking a tear or two. But that's Pete
Sampras for you. He's an open book.
You read it according to your
nature and, perhaps, your feeling about what
exactly separates the great from the the
merely talented.
If you have any sense of this
at all, the odds are you turn the pages of
the Sampras book as you might those of 'Mody
Dick'. You're not reading about tennis, or
deep sea fishing. The subject is fortitude,
and how certain men get an idea in their
heads and refuse to have it shaken loose.
Sampras knew, you could see
it in every nuance of his face and his body,
that this was the time to take his place in
history, to win his 13th GS, and 7th
Wimbledon, and set a mark that is unlikely
ever to be surpassed. And becasue Sampras is
who he is and what he is, there is no mystery
about his reactions to any given situation.
When his beloved coach Tim
gullikson was gying, Sampras wept on court in
Melbourne. WHen he beat Pat Rafter last night
, he wept again. Different tears, different
situation, but the same source of emotion,
the same level of regard and passion that
sometimes just has to burst from the tight
coiling of a man who simply plays tennis with
every fibre of his being. Some of the fibre
had been a little frayed these last two
weeks, but not at his competitive core.
When Rafter, who had played
so sublimely against Andre
Agassi.......Sampras had returned to a zone
of action, and competitive compuser, never
equalled in the annals of the game.
Boring Sampras? Sure. Boring
in the way of the sun in the morning when it
comes up the usual way, eschewing some wild
diverson from its axis. Boring in that way of
consistency, which rejects whim and mood and
just goes on producing levels of performance
which make the opposition want to sue for
peace. Sampras has been all of this all of
his adult life, which at the age of 28 must
sometimes strike him as being quite a long
time, all those years since he exploded on
the consciousness of the sporting world as a
19-year-old winner of the USopen. All of
those years of being asked to liven up his
act, add a little spice, a little colour, a
little of the wildness of McEnore or Connors
or Agassi, can wear a man down, but Sampras
has not been for wearing down. He has been
for playing, for operating on the highest
ground of his sports, and if the world cried
for a little titillatin, the world would have
to be disappointed. The world could take the
best of Sampras, only that............
Something, he added, which
would no doubt deepen down the years but he
didn't, after all, come into the game to
dazzle everyone with his personality. He came
to win, and keep on winning, and now he said:
'This is one of my best moments and I know
that over time I'll appreciate it much more
than I could do right now."
BACK TO TOP
Sampras
Wins One for Books
Victory is 13th slam, 7th Wimbledon crown
by Bruce Jenkins (San Francisco Chronicle)
Wimbledon, England -- PETE SAMPRAS wrote
his history in the gloaming. He seized it
under a sense of urgency rarely seen in the
game of tennis. He earned it in front of his
long-invisible father and mother. For all of
those reasons, and the raw numbers that set
him apart, Sampras became the complete
Wimbledon champion last night.
The grounds of the All England Club were
so dark on match point, it felt like
Wimbledon was camping out. To finish this
thing properly, Sampras didn't have a moment
to lose. At the stroke of 8:57 p.m., his
thunderous first serve glanced off the frame
of Pat Rafter's shanked forehand, and there
it was: 6-7 (12-10), 7-6 (7-5), 6-4, 6-2. Not
so special on the printed page, but
unforgettable in every other way.
Nobody wanted to see a Monday-afternoon
carryover of this match. Nobody wanted to
show up, watch about a half- hour of tennis
and then wander off. That would have been
Sampras' image in a nutshell -- vaguely
unsatisfying. So he took this match, like a
man defending his honor, and then he cried.
"I guess it all hit me in the end,''
Sampras said.
"And good on him,'' Rafter said.
``Pete's an emotional guy, and in my eyes the
greatest player ever.''
There had been a certain monotony to
Sampras' Wimbledon career, due largely to an
absence of memorable finals. Everyone knew he
would eventually win his 13th major
championship, surpassing Roy Emerson's
age-old record. It seemed a foregone
conclusion that he would match William
Renshaw's mark of seven Wimbledon titles, set
between 1881 and '89 (under a format known as
the Challenge Round, Renshaw only had to play
one match to win five of those titles). It
was inevitable that Sampras would be linked
with Fred Perry, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, John
McEnroe and Boris Becker among the all-time
performers at Wimbledon.
The beauty last night was that Sampras had
to fight for it. He'd been battling painful
shin tendinitis throughout the tournament,
practicing just one day of the fortnight.
After losing the first set --embarrassingly,
on a double-fault -- he was down 1-4 in the
second-set tiebreaker with a pair of Rafter
services coming up.
"I was nervous, I was choking,'' he
candidly admitted later. ``I really felt like
the match was slipping away.''
Like Rafter, Sampras had to deal with two
lengthy rain delays, the second one lasting 2
1/2 hours. They were still in the first set
around 6:30 when play resumed for good,
leaving only a fleeting chance that the match
would be completed before nightfall.
And in a very unusual circumstance for
Sampras, his parents were there. As they came
into focus for one of the few times in Pete's
career, Sam and Georgia Sampras were suddenly
the greatest tennis parents on earth.
While other parents were yelling,
boasting, conniving and worse, Sam and
Georgia left the young Pete alone. They paid
for his tennis lessons in Palos Verdes, the
fashionable Southern California beach town,
but the specter of competition made them so
nervous, they literally couldn't watch. In a
given junior tournament, Sam would drop Pete
off and then disappear, leaving him to go it
alone.
"Maybe we're getting sort of heavy
here,'' Sampras once said, ``but I think
that's where I got my independence, the way I
am on the court. I was always out there by
myself because my dad was going for a walk.''
Before yesterday, Sampras' parents had
only seen him play one Grand Slam final --
the 1992 U.S. Open -- and he lost that one.
``That was plenty,'' Pete said with a laugh.
``They're so superstitious, they figured they
brought me bad luck.''
This time, with so much on the line, Pete
insisted that they fly in for the final.
Typical of Sam and Georgia, they wanted no
part of the Friends Box and the inevitable
television cutaways. ``They were just fine
being up in the cheap seats,'' Pete said.
They must have sensed impending disaster
with Rafter serving at 4-1 in that
tiebreaker, but Sampras won both of those
points, the second on a double-fault. ``In
about two minutes, I went from feeling
completely out of it to being right back in
the match,'' Sampras said. ``That's grass-
court tennis. It can happen that fast.''
Then Rafter blew an easy cross- court
forehand for 4-4, ``and right there I knew I
was screwed,'' Rafter said later. ``That was
a mental blow more than anything. I got a
little bit tight.''
Sampras wound up winning the tiebreaker
with a huge first serve and put-away volley.
That was the match in essence, for Rafter not
only failed to break serve in the two-hour,
57- minute match, he forced only two break
points. ``For all of Pete's weapons,'' Rafter
said, ``that serve is just awesome. I could
never get on top of it.''
The general rule at Wimbledon is that it's
too dark to play by 9 p.m. The courtside
clock read 8:25 when a blistering Sampras ace
closed out the third set, meaning he'd have
to wrap it up quickly to avoid a two-day
final. The good people of Centre Court had
stuck it out, leaving only a few seats empty.
The sky had cleared to powder blue, a cruel
reminder of what might have been. As Sampras
forged a 4-2 lead, it was 8:51 and looking
desperate.
One of the great things about tennis is
the absence of enforced time, the notion that
theoretically, a match could last forever. It
didn't seem so wonderful with Sampras needing
a rapid-fire finish at dusk. But this was
where his greatness truly surfaced. He hit an
astonishing backhand service return winner,
laced cross-court at full throttle, for a
break point at 15-40. Then he banked it with
dispatch. He had broken serve in just three
minutes.
Now, with Roy Emerson and Willie Renshaw
looming in the darkness and three dozen
photographers cursing their bad luck, Sampras
stepped up to serve. There would be no
mistakes. At 40-love, he uncorked the
blistering first serve to Rafter's forehand
for the clincher. Make that four straight
Wimbledon titles, a 28-match winning streak
and a 53-1 record since 1993. And let the
emotions flow.
Sampras has seldom been an endearing
figure in triumph. He doesn't grasp the
theatrical end of it, and his words often
seem a bit dry. But this one was special. He
bent over to cry for a moment and then, at
the urging of coach Paul Annacone and his
fiancee, actress Bridgette Wilson, he ambled
into the stands in search of his parents.
Finding them at last, he held them both at
long embraces.
Tradition stops for nothing at Wimbledon,
not even the onset of night. In a hasty but
fitting ceremony, the Duke and Duchess of
Kent still found a moment to chat up the
ballboys and ballgirls. Important tournament
officials were introduced. Fans lit the way
with a hundred flashbulbs as Sampras walked
the court's perimeter, holding aloft the
winner's cup and looking like a character
from an old Fillmore West light show. All in
all, even Rafter had to admit, ``a very cool
scene.''
As the press conference unfolded later,
people began to realize what it meant for
Sampras' parents to be there. After all these
years, it seemed almost surprising that he
even had parents. ``They always kept their
distance,'' he said. ``They did what good
parents do. They love you and say the right
things, good times and bad. They gave me the
strength and the heart to be here. And when I
come home, I'm the same Pete they always
treated as a kid.''
All those years, he was the little boy who
had been left alone to play. Now there was a
great convergence on the Centre Court, tennis
lore and adulation and family coming together
in the only setting that made sense. There
was a clock on tennis last night, because
history wouldn't have it any other way.
BACK TO TOP
Wimbledon
champions dinner an American affair
 LONDON (AP) -- Venus
Williams arrived at the Wimbledon champions
dinner wearing the ball gown she bought as
the incentive to win the women's singles
title.
``I feel like I deserve to be here,'' she
said as she walked into the Savoy's Lancaster
ballroom Sunday night to a standing ovation
from 500 guests.
She wore a sleeveless light purple gown,
bought at a Florida mall just before leaving
for London. Younger sister Serena wore a full
length gown in rose pink.
``All of you talked about my dress, but I
failed to get shoes, so I had to go out today
and get a pair,'' Venus said. ``It's great to
be here. It's always been my dream to be at a
Wimbledon ball.''
She said her sister showed her how to win
a Grand Slam at the U.S. Open last year, and
that winning Wimbledon was her dream come
true.
The dinner was scheduled to begin at 9
p.m., but that was only a few minutes after
Pete Sampras finished his rain-interrupted
victory over Patrick Rafter to claim a
seventh Wimbledon title.
Sampras finally arrived to a standing
ovation at 12:20 a.m., but stayed only about
15 minutes. While many guests wore tuxedos,
Sampras wore a blazer over a polo shirt and
sneakers.
``You played great tennis and you should
be proud of what you did,'' Sampras told
Williams. ``My congratulations to you and
your family.''
Two American flags draped the curtain
behind the head tables.
On the menu was smoked salmon, cold cream
soup, lamb, vegetables and potatoes. The
Williams sisters left after the main course,
since they had to be back on court in less
than 12 hours for the women's doubles final.
BACK TO TOP
The one & only Pete Sampras
By NIRMAL SHEKAR (Sportstar,
India)
AND then he cried. His ears shut to the
roar of the crowd, bent down and his face
hidden from the hundreds of flashbulbs that
popped simultaneously, shining through the
evening gloom and turning the court into a
Michael Jackson stage, his mind benumbed by
the monumental meaning of the moment, he
broke into tears, weeping like a child.
Who was this? This couldn't be him. This
couldn't be Mr.Cool, the poker-faced robot
that unfailingly turned up on the second
Sunday of the Wimbledon fortnight, scorched
the green, green earth of one of the most
famous pieces of sports real estates in the
world, pummelled flesh-and-blood opponents
into submission and walked away with the
Challenge Cup.
And again he sobbed.
Wiping the tears trickling down from his
eyes with his shirtsleeves as the whole world
watched him, Mr.Ice Man melted, swirling in a
warm emotional whirlpool.
Who was this? This couldn't be Pete
Sampras! This couldn't be the
ice-in-his-veins master pro who kept his
emotions - if he felt any - to himself as he
blew opponent after opponent off the centre
court at Wimbledon while winning title after
title on the famous lawns.
Was it a Sampras look-alike, tongue
lolling out, head stooped, who did a fair
imitation of the champion with the iron mask
but, then, at the moment of triumph couldn't
keep up the act anymore, the greasepaint
melting away to show the imposter for who he
was?
What folly! How vulnerabe we are when it
comes to myths in the world of sport! How
ready we are to swallow what is passed on as
popular perception! Indeed, it was the great
Pete Sampras standing out there on a piece of
turf that he could claim to be his own on
that unforgettable Sunday evening at
Wimbledon, shortly before 9 p.m., when he
left every other great player, or legend if
you like, who played the game before him some
way behind.
It was not that the mask had slipped. For,
there never was a mask in the first place. It
was merely that a very private man was so
overwhelmed by the enormity of a moment of
history unparalleled in the sport of his
choice that he could no longer guard the
privacy of his emotional psyche.
Really, it was as simple as that. With
Sampras, it has always been as simple as
that. Of all the great sportsmen we might
have seen in the high noon of modern
professional sport, there is no more
uncomplicated legend than Sampras. He is a
simple genius - if this is a contradiction in
terms, then so be it. He is the boy-next-door
who became one of the true giants of modern
sport and never lost his boy-next-door
simplicity and humility.
The problem is, of course, with us - with
the fans, with the media, with everybody who
follows sport. In a world of Maradonas and
Laras and Tysons, we have come to expect the
greatest of sporting icons - well, we seem to
almost will them to - to be complicated
two-faced supermen.
Or, in the least, we expect them to give
us a lot more than what their primary -and
perhaps only - role would suggest they would.
Yes, Sampras is a great tennis player. And
yes, Sampras plays great tennis. The question
is, is that all there is to him?
Spoilt by the likes of Ilie Nastase, Jimmy
Connors and John McEnroe, many of us no
longer seem to be able to yearn for the
purists' joy derived from sporting
excellence. Led down the garden path by
greedy image makers in a multi-million dollar
business, we have come to believe that great
sportsmen, as entertainers, should have
"personality" - which, almost
always, means they have to be brash and
offensive.
Would Sampras be perceived as a greater
champion than he is if he were to make finger
gestures to the crowds a la Connors? Would he
be a bigger megastar than he is if he were to
blow kisses north, west, south and east on
the courts after each victory a la Agassi?
Yes, of course, he would be. Perhaps he
could have earned a few million more in
endorsements and made a lot more headlines
for the wrong reasons. But that is not what
Sampras wanted. He never played for the
millions, nor for the headlines.
He played to be the greatest player there
ever was. And, in gathering darkness on the
greatest stage in the game on that historic
Sunday, he came to be widely acknowledged as
the best player to ever pick up a racquet.
"Sampras is the greatest of all time
and I give him a pat on his back for getting
there, because the tournaments are a little
deeper these days," said Roy Emerson,
with whom Sampras had shared the Grand Slam
record (12) for a year until this year's
Wimbledon.
Little wonder that, for once, the great
man could no longer contain his emotions. For
him, it had been a very, very difficult two
weeks at Wimbledon. A painful injury to his
left shin reduced him to helplessness early
in the first week but the great man
courageously continued to do battle.
"If it was not Wimbledon, if it was
another event, I don't think I would have
played," Sampras admitted after beating
Pat Rafter in four sets in the final on that
rain-hit Sunday to break his tie with Roy
Emerson and pick up his 13th Grand Slam
title, and his seventh at Wimbledon.
A man with a great sense of occasion, of
history, Sampras would not have wanted the
world record to come anywhere other than on a
court where he has won 53 of 54 matches in
the last eight years.
"This court is very special. This is
my home away from home. And this is a great
moment in my life," said Sampras.
"It hasn't hit me. It won't hit me for
months. I am just kind of still spinning a
little bit."
On the other hand, maybe it has not hit
us, too, for what it really it.
Maybe it won't for months, even years to
come. Don Bradman's contemporaries, for all
the praise they heaped on him, seldom
realised the historic significance of his
achievements. But we know now, for sure, that
no batsman of our time, or any time, will
ever be quite as prolific a run getter in
Tests.
In the event, long after Sampras' career
is done, long after this generation of tennis
players has passed into history, we will
perhaps tell our grandchildren stories of the
greatest's unmatched excellence on court, and
not the least of the day the Greek-American's
emotional roller-coaster ride in the 2000
Wimbledon championships climaxed in
semi-darkness to mark the beginning of a new
chapter in the sport's history, its record
books.
"Pete, in my eyes, goes down as the
greatest player ever," acknowledged
Rafter, after coming rather close to ending
Sampras' domination of the Wimbledon turf.
Playing the best grass court tennis of his
career - and for the first time in many
months free of any injury worries - the
handsome Australian received a huge boost to
his morale on beating Andre Agassi in a
thrilling five-set semifinal.
And he seemed to be picking to playing
just such an impressive brand of serve-volley
tennis in the final too as he staved off
breakpoint after breakpoint in a rare show of
defiance and raw courage in the first and
second sets.Having taken the first on a
tiebreaker where Sampras double faulted twice
in a row in the end, Rafter was three points
away, two of them on serve, from opening up a
two-sets-to-love lead as he was ahead 4-1 in
the second set tiebreak "When he was
serving at 4-1 I really felt it was slipping
away," said Sampras. "He lost his
nerve there. We were both feeling it. I lost
my nerve in the first set," he said.
The difference between the greatest of
champions and the ones that are just great
players - which, of course, in this context
simply means the difference between Sampras
and Rafter - is that the latter breed more
often than not will lose their nerve at the
crunch.
And, as he has done many, many times in
the past, Sampras found a way out as only he
can, first breaking down Rafter's resolve,
and then his serve.But people who know
Sampras, what he can do in a Wimbledon final,
knew the moment he had won the second set
that the match was over. And indeed it was,
in rather quick time, once Sampras broke
Rafter's serve in the fifth game of the third
set.
"With a great champion like Pete, you
have to take your chances. I got mine and did
not take them," said Rafter.
In the second set, Sampras got his, to
become the most successful champion in
history. And he took it and never looked
back.
What's left for you to accomplish in
tennis now? he was asked at the post-match
press conference.
"From an achievement standpoint I
have done what I wanted to do. But I still
love competing and I love playing," said
Sampras.
Should this love affair continue through a
few more seasons, who knows how many major
titles the great man will end up with!
And, for that matter, who knows too, how
many this year's woman's champion will
collect in the years to come!
Having soaked up the enormity of her
achievement in the company of her father and
sister, and a few close friends, Venus
Williams sat there smugly self-assured on
that Saturday, a young woman who knew the
world was at her feet and was quite in
control of herself and her emotions in the
finest moment of her life.
...In the end, headline writers would call
it the Williams Wimbledon. Sounds good. But,
as impressive as the Williams show was, this
Wimbledon belonged to The Greatest.
PART ONE: Previous Articles
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