December 1999/Junuary 2000
The Greatest Players of the 20th Century
Pete SAMPRAS
By Sally Jenkins
He has made tennis his sole act of self-expression. In all else he is a man of undeclared and hopelessly inarticulate statements. Pete Sampras has channeled every unspoken feeling, unexpressed resentment, unwailed frustration, and internalized pain into his tennis game. By suppressing his emotions, he has been able to chase history.
Sampras' first appearance was as a head-scratching 19-year-old, a lanky, solitary son of Greek immigrants who became the youngest man to win the U.S. Open (but whose parents were too reticent and nervous to watch him in person). He had limbs like knotted ropes, a serve that could bust through a chain-link fence, and all the apparent personality of two-by-four. He stared at the trophy with a puzzled grin, as if to say, "Am I this good?"
As a young man, he would experience profound loss, as hand in hand with Grand Slam titles came the deaths of his coach Tim Gullikson and his close friend Vitas Gerulaitis. As an adult, he is wordless yet explosive, with a game so fully realized, he seldom receives proper credit for its gorgeous classicism.
There have been other champions with great individual strokes, but it's doubtful any of them had as many signature shots as Sampras. The serve fells opponents like an iron shot, the running forehand is the glory of its day, the backhand is a heavy and impenetrable body blow, the jumping overhead is a gasp-evoking show-stopper, and the volleys have the finality of punctuation.
To these must be added the stubbornness of his disposition and blindness of his ambition, the ultimate testament of which is a record-tying 12 major titles and a grip on the year-end No.1 ranking that lasted six years.
The simple truth is that Pete Sampras has never said or done much worth repeating -- except for playing this game better than anybody you ever saw.