August, 1998
GRAND SLAM
By Devin Friedman
Photographs by Dewey Nicks
From Milan to Paris to New York, the best clothes of the season
were a cut above classic. Pete Sampras
plays them to advantage
Lateness, especially his own, is one of the many imperfections that really upset Pete Sampras (improper sleep conditions, improper shoe conditions and improper racket conditions are others). And Pete is late for his 10 a.m. workout at LGE Sports Science Inc., which means wherever he is, Pete is probably freaking out.
Not that any one else seems concerned. The four tennis guys lounging on the floor rubbing their tanned stomachs, babbling in indeterminate European accents, don't look particularly anxious. Pat Etcheberry, Pete's trainer, reclines in his desk chair, projecting all the grave intensity or a Mileage Plus member who must choose between the chicken and the fish.．
Jim Courier strolls in sweaty from the practice court. The four tennis guys say "Hey, Jeem" without interrupting their general state of languor. Jim seems to know the tennis guys, but not their names. No one's quite sure if they work here or not. It's nothing to worry about. Pat and Jim discuss what is probably Jim's schedule, though it's hard to tell (Pat is from Chile and learned English in deep Kentucky). Then Jim steps back into the Orlando brightness to a chorus of "Bye, Jeem's," drives the 300 yards to his gated community and is swallowed into the manicured underbrush to spend Saturday doing whatever it is you do on Saturday if you're Jim Courier.
For several minutes, LGE experiences a tennis-star vacuum, a brief; cautionary glimpse into the void the sport will feel if Pete Sampras continues to hemorrhage ATP ranking points as he has this spring (a few days ago, he lost his number one spot to a ponytailed Chilean named Marcelo Rios) and disappears into the depths or double digits.
Then, at 10:35, Pete waddles in. The assembled say "Hey, Pete" (Pete is pronounceable in virtually any tongue); Pete says, "Hey, guys," in the same familiar, don't-know-their-names way as Courier. And though he's now thirty-five minutes late, Pete does not look panic-stricken. This could be thanks to one or three reasons: (1) Pete tends to internalize his worry, a habit that gave him an ulcer a few years ago; (2) Pete's default expression is a NichoIsonian smirk that, even when he's obsessing over the world's ignoble treatment of his feet, makes him appear pharmaceutically content; (3) Pete believes that in the still-reclining Pat Etcheberry, he has found tennis salvation.
"Well," Pete declares, shrugging off a tennis bag slightly larger than Andre Agassi, "I am now officially an Orlando resident. I'm all yours, Pat."
Pete, it turns out, was late because he was purchasing a 5,300-square-foot house, located in the same gated subdivision where Jim Courier is enjoying his Saturday which is part of the same suburb-leisuresport complex as LGE, (Pete's other neighbors will include golfer Ernie EIs and foot-baller Jim Harbaugh and the ever crabby coach Lou Holtz. For the time being, Pete is staying at Nick Faldo's house while Nick is out losing the Masters to Mark O'Meara.) After eight years in Tampa, Pete is moving here for Pat Etcheberry, the stiff-haired, barrel-chested uber-gym teacher who trained Pete in the early '90s and whom Pete, in what he now sees as a moment of hubris, decided he didn't need any more.
"Recently, at a couple of points...," Pete explains later, after practice, "I mean, I was winning Grand Slams and l was still number one in the world and whatever, but l may have... I don't want to say l got burned-out. I think it maybe possible that l got out of shape at a couple of points. Incidents happened."
We'd all better hope that Pete and Pat avoid further incidents, because after Pete there are only stomach rubbers-players whose names we cannot pronounce, any one of whom could replace Pete Sampras about as effectively as Jud Buechler replaced Michael Jordan. Tennis could again descend into the dark territory we glimpsed in the late '80s, when men like Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander battled to see who could bore us with greater aplomb. We must hope that Pete Sampras does not go gently into that good fortnight.
Pete walks out to the practice court to begin the first day of the rest of his tennis career. Pat emerges from his office with hands on hips and bellows a remark that, though unintelligible, has the tenor of something profound. Pete laughs, nods, raises his Groucho Marx eyebrows, then shakes his head.
"Pat," he says as he heads out to the practice court, "I have no idea what you just said."
"Oh, Pete loves long hair," Jeff Schwartz, Pete's agent, says loudly, as if he's delivering the first line in a buddy-cop movie. "Don't you, Pete?"
"Yeah," he says, "especially on little punks."
Pete and Jeff are discussing Marcelo Rios's ponytail the day after Pete bought his house. They are walking down a path at the Saddlebrook resort in Tampa, where Pete has practiced until now, snorting and hawking loogies into the shrubbery, an activity they find endlessly funny.
While Pete's in the bathroom, Jeff says, "Maybe Pete needed a kick in the ass. It's human nature to get complacent, a little bit." Jeff, confronted with the end of Pete's 102 consecutive weeks at number one, is able to see the bigger picture. Maybe because he's Rios's agent, too.
But Jeff has a point. At age 26, Pete Sampras is arguably the best tennis player who ever lived. We have become complacent about this, a little bit, too. We are concerned that his tongue hangs out of his mouth too much, that he's too hairy, that he has the personality of a barnacle, that he doesn't spit on umpires or keep AK-47s in his glove compartment or blow Centre Court kisses to the aging star of Yentl.
The most attention America ever lavished on Pete Sampras was in 1996, when the former contents of his stomach were broad-cast Technicolor and trash-can bound while he was winning the U.S. Open. So if it takes a couple of dramatic weeks playing catch-up to a Chilean midget (Rios is five-nine) to get us excited about the greatness of Pete Sampras, so be it.
If Pete ends the year at number one, he will break Jimmy Connors's record of five consecutive years. Breaking this record and crossing the threshold into athletic immortality is something Pete thinks about a great deal in the small hours before bed (he always stays up late) as he scans 300 channels of satellite television for sports highlights (it's how he spends most of his free time) alone (he has almost no friends in Florida, unless you count the people who work for him).
And deep inside his gated home, Pete imagines what might happen if he gains entry into the pantheon of statistical nonpareil, the explosion of affection that greeted Cal Ripken Jr. on his 2,131st straight day at the ballpark, the way chaos (lateness, aching feet, fluke wins by Chilean punks, etc.) will no longer be able to touch him. Finally, he will have something that can't be smudged by real life. And then, maybe, Pete will be able to relax.
Like all bodies adjusted to professional athletics, Pete Sampras's has hair-trigger sweat glands. So, though it's only sixty degrees on the Orlando practice court, it takes Pete approximately thirty-seven seconds to dampen his shirt. He starts by whistling baseliners to his practice partner, a short, goateed Armenian named Sargis Sargsian. Sargis's brother reports that, as of this day in April, Sargsian is number seventy-four in the world, which places him between Paul Haarhuis and Juan Albert Viloca and exactly million miles from your ever knowing his name. One of the stomach rubbers, a tall Italian guy with silver wraparound sunglasses, feeds them balls. No one is sure whether he works here.
After a few volleys, Pete trots back to center court and shakes the other six rackets from his bag. He always carries at least seven Wilson Pro Staffs, rackets roughly as heavy and technically cutting edge as a Betamax. He crouches, switching from one to another like a Ritalin-hungry kindergartner, banging them against one another, smirking at them for extended periods, absentmindedly twirling them in an elegant way that would take a long time to learn. Meanwhile, Sargis waits patiently.
Pete has been playing superior tennis long enough to have developed a strange and obsessive relationship with his racket. When Wilson closed the Caribbean factory that produced Pete's model Pro Staff and moved production to Taiwan, Pete stocked upon more than a hundred of the tropical-made rackets because, he said, he could tell the difference.
Pete's Caribbean Pro Staff handles are fitted with custom butt caps, which are sanded and shaved to accommodate his particularly low grip. Then they are wrapped with layers of thin lead tape so they weigh 390 grams. And while other players toy with string tension, Pete is a string-tension cabalist. He plays on clay, for example, with a racket strung at 33.5 kilos, thirty-three if it's cold, thirty-four if it's humid; he can tell if his strings are off by a gram or two by tapping the racket against his left palm.
In the end, Pete's Pro Staff has probably the smallest head and the tightest strings on the pro tour (make whatever metaphorical assumptions you will). So, sweet spot being proportional to head area and inversely proportional to string tension, if the ball is even going to clear the net, Pistol Pete must position his body so that on each shot the ball is precisely centered on an area slightly larger than a jelly bean. That Pete can get into this position without much fanfare is an illustration of what the inside word is on Pete: He is the best natural athlete on the tour.
Today Pete starts a period of six-days-a-week training with Pat. The French Open is less than a month away. Pete has never won the French and, despite Pat's help, will lose quickly this year as well. Power tennis, Pete's game, hinges on a lethal serve, which bounces friendlier off clay. What's more, there is a slew of players out there whose sole reason for living is to win tennis matches on clay courts.
"In any round at the French," Jeff Schwartz says, "there's some spaniard who can beat you."
Tennis, like relief pitching and agribusiness, is being portioned off, in this case to surface specialists; there is no single person on the horizon who will be able to dominate the game the way Pete has in the '90s. Rios, for example, while a force to be reckoned with on hard court, is a counterpuncher whose game isn't that effective on grass. Something else Pete thinks about when it's just he and SportsCenter is that he'll be taken down not by the next McEnroe or Borg or Laver in some "epic battle" but by minor players in a series of minor skirmishes.
"I was in Hanover last year," Pete says as he walks into the weight room, "and l looked around and thought to myself, There are a lot of young players coming up. It's really a new year of tennis. It's me against the young guys now. I miss the days of real rivalry."
Inside LGE's fitness bungalow, Pete begins training for this new year of tennis by hopping from one techno-exercise to the next for an hour. Lots of weights, very little stretching -- Pete isn't i nto ''stretching or yoga or any of that liberal Democratic bullshit." He does an exercise that involves stepping onto a sort of athletic coffee table. Then he moves on to weights. At the end of each set, Pete drops his dumbbells and grimaces in the mirror; Pat quietly replaces the weights like a hypertrophied valet. Meanwhile, he mumbles bromides in Pete's ear like a horse whisperer. "Reach higher !" he says, and, "C'mon, you gonna be a pussy all your life?"
After weights comes a series of wind sprints on a StairMaster. Between sets Pete mutters, "Only a couple more, only a couple more," though he has a lot more than a couple left. Pat Etcheberry and his StairMaster are the last bulwark against a Balkanized tour where tall and Frankensteinish Czech Petr Korda wins Wimbledon and wee Chilean Marcelo Rios dominates the U.S. Open and an armada of Spaniards cudgel one another at every clay-court tournament.
What Pete is preparing for is a year, a career, of fending off the nameless (at least pronounceably) masses; it is a last stand by attrition. In a week, thanks to the infinite logic of the ATP tour computer, Pete will regain his number one even as he loses the most embarrassing match of his career. And a week after that, in Atlanta, he'll win only the third clay tournament in his career. He does another round of sprints.
"Only a couple more," he tells himself. "Only a couple more.''
GRAY FLANNEL
Only better. A lighter shade of gray and a newfangled blend make this classic very cool -- literally and stylistically.
Opposite page: Wool-cotton-and-spandex three-button center-vent suit by Donna Karan Collection, $1,595. Cotton polo by Nike, $40. Leather lace-ups by Bruno Magli, $295. Pete's own Wilson racket.
NICE LINES
Think of this as a kinder, gentler pinstripe, one that prefers the company of a T-shirt over that of a tie.
This page: Stretch-wool pin-striped three-button suit, $2,600; silk crewneck, $740: both by Giorgio Armani.
TWEEDINESS
Ralph updated this professorial staple with a three-button jacket and flat-front pants. We take it a step further by eighty-sixing the bow tie and adding an open sihrt and a black V-necked vest.
Lamb's-wool herringbone center-vent suit, $995; cotton shirt, $60; cashmere vest, $335: all, Polo by Ralph Lauren. Socks by Polo/Ralph Lauren Hosiery. Leather lace-ups by Ralph Lauren Footwear; $495.
WINTER WHITES
Before the days of black Lycra bike shorts, tennis-playing gentlemen dressed simply and elegantly...sort of like this.
This page: Cashmere boat-neck sweater, $1,095; cotton-and-nylon flat-front khakis, $350: both by Marc Jacobs. Socks by Dore-Dore. Sneakers by Nike, $90.
SHEARLING
Every man deserves one piece of clothing that makes him feel like a cowboy. And a shearling coat is a lot more practical than a ten-gallon hat.
Opposite page: Suede shearling coat, $3,035; cashmere turtleneck, $280; dark denim jeans, $210: all by Gucci.
ITALIAN LEATHER
As opposed to the big, scary, mean-looking leathers you think of big, scary, mean-looking guys wearing. This coat is soft and supple and looks very nice in a down-to-earth shade of brown.
Leather three-button coat, $2,900; wool crew-neck sweater, $600; wool flat-front trousers, $500; leather cap-toe boots, $525: all by Versace.
NEUTRAL TERRITORY
A subtle variation on the clean, monochrome look: like-minded colors that get along well together.
Wool twill three-button center-vent suit, $2,080; cotton-polyamide-and-elastin shirt, $416; wiik tue, $105: all by Jil Sander.
THE DUFFLE COAT
A boyishly casual coat to stop the winter cold. Or traffic.
Wool hooded coat, $1,400; merino-and-cashmere turtleneck, $850; wool single-pleat trousers, $350; all by Gianfranco Ferre. Leather lace-ups by Bostonian, $140.
Grooming by Losi for the John Frieda Salon. Photographed at the Saddlebrook Resort and Spa, Tampa, Florida.