GQ 2000 - Man of the
Year Award
Individual Athlete
"I
am where I am because I grew up playing with
wood. I think kids ought to play with wood
until age 14 or so. It's the only way to
master strokes. The graphite, the power -
that comes later."
He wasn't always so
laid-back. Until his midteens, Pete Sampras
regularly let it rip. The mien: all punk
and pout. The language: low, vile.
The Wilson Pro Staff: over the fence, tomahawked
into the net post. A racquet's life
expectancy: "A week, maybe two,"
he admits.
So how did the
most talented player since McEnroe (Mac calls
Sampras the best ever) morph from a whiny nitwit
into the poker-faced butcher with the
juniper-hedge eyebrows and the loosey-goosey body
posture we've come to know? The
transformation cuts against the current culture
of sport, with its emphasis on hip-hop
verbosity. Even with the country-club
sports, fans now expect their heroes to amuse
with their mouths as much as they awe with their
skills. Twenty years ago Bjorn Borg's
granite stoicism seemed "dignified"; in
Sampras it's "humorless." Even
Johnny Mac has called for him to be more
demonstrative.
So you want a
demonstration of guts? Forget the record number
of Grand Slam titles, blah blah - just numbers
Look instead at the epic '96 U.S. Open
Quarterfinals against Spain's Alex
Corretja. In the fifth-set tiebreaker,
Sampras - ashen, pasty, eyelids fluttering-
limped off the court, lurched unnaturally, then
loudly, theatrically. . .let it rip. A
collective gasp: The champ - puking!
The ump issued a time warning. Sampras
lingered, mouth as promiscuously agape as a
mezzo-tenor's drooling. Throughout the
tiebreak, he remained upright by bracing his
chest against the handle butt of his racket,
clocked serves at ladies' interclub speeds,
yakked again. Then, at seven apiece,
Sampras first-served into the net, doubled
over. Corretja stepped in. Sampras
stood, tossed. . .yowled like a wounded ape as he
struck...a smokin' second-service ace!
INSANE. The crowd knew, Corretja knew:
Sampras owned it. He won the tiebreak, the
tournament. "I had no choice," he
says now; He, too, had to bow to the
inevitable.
So the next time
somebody complains, "The champ should be
more colorful, more gutsy," tell him about
the Corretja match. Tell him, too, about
the 1995 Australian Open match in which Sampras,
grief-stricken over his coach's terminal cancer
and down by two sets, wept openly during and in
between points - and still managed to come back
and kick Jim Courier's ass. Tell him about
the time Sampras saw some chick named Bridgette
at a movie (up on the screen, not down in the
seats), thought, Suh-weeet! - then arranged to
meet her. (They're now married) And
if someone still asks what happened to the old,
racket-throwing Sampras, tell him the
truth.
He grew up, man!
(GQ
Magazine - November 2000)
GQ 2000 Award
Ceremony
October
27, 2000
Since
1995, the GQ magazine honors men of
distinction in film, television, theater,
fashion/tyle, music and sports. For the year
2000, honorees included Russel Crowe, Pierce
Brosnan, James Gandolfini, Elton John,
Michael J. Fox and Matthew Broderick. In the
field of sports, our man, Pete Sampras was
named Man of the Year - Individual Athlete
category.
The event was broadcast on US
Fox network on Dec 9.
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