27, January 1997
Two loud volleys are fired
By Bud Collins
MELBOURNE --- "Shotgun" Martina and "Pistol Pete." Not quite Bonnie and Clyde, though they broke the band near the deceptively lovely Yarra River where oarsmen grunt and Jim Courier plunged to celebrate his 1992 Australian Open championship.
Both newly coronated champions, Martina Hingis and Pete Sampras, declined a similar swim in the polluted stream after heisting almost $1 million with their high-velocity shotmaking, caring not to take a precautionary tetanus shot afterward. But their own shots rang out for two weeks. She of the double-barreled backhand joined the select society of major champs as its greenest member in more than a century at 16 years 3 months. He moved closer to the presidency of the men's lodge with a ninth major, now hounding the leader, Queensland farm boy Roy Emerson, who registered Nos. 11 and 12 in 1967.
The infamous robbery-minded roomies of the Midwestern 1930s, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow preferred profitable weapons. The biggest score was $3,500 from a small Kansas bank, but they usually nickel-and-dimed it in knocking over gas stations and stores, leaving, like Hingis and Sampras, a trail of bodies, though considerably more grisly.
Glaringly the front row of the players' friends section was empty as Sampras stirred, startling Carlos Moya, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3, in 87 minutes, only 28 minutes longer than it took Hingis to pull off her job.
The people who used to call him "Pistol," coach Tim Gullikson and long-time girlfriend, Delaina Mulcahy used to sit there. Gullikson died. The romance did, too. Sampras was rather cavalier about the football game in New Orleans. "No interest after Dallas lost," he said coldly.
"Shotgun" and "Pistol" fire on. As winners of the Aussie they're the only ones with a 1997 shot at a very infrequent Grand Slam, last turned by Steffi Graf in 1988. Next stop Paris. Graf now has to watch out for the Swiss munchkin, who has soared to No. 2. The guys who have to watch out, helplessly, for Pete are geezers Emerson, 60, Rod Laver, 58, Bjorn Borg, 40, and Bill Tilden, who would be 104, just ahead of him in the majors derby with respective totals of 12, 11, 11 and 10. After breaking a five-way tie at eight by eclipsing Fred Perry, Ken Rosewall, Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl, Sampras is going after the foremos American, Tilden.