August 2007
Hall of Fame: Pete Sampras goes home for the first time
By Bill Dwyer
The curly black hair, receding a bit, will be the same. So will the athletic gait and the slightly slumped shoulders.
But it will be a different Pete Sampras takes the stage on July 14 to be welcomed into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. It will be a 35-years-old with the perspective of a Harvard grad --- his graduation being from the school of hard knocks on tennis courts around the world for 15 years. A 35-years-old with the comfort of knowing he did something great and left it when he should have.
"I have no regrets about my decision to retire when I did," he said in a recent interview with Tennis Life Magazine. "People kept asking me, for a long time, when I was going to come back, or if I was going to come back. In the end, my heart just wasn't on the road anymore."
At the 2002 U.S. Open, Sampras stunned a tennis world that was convinced he didn't have enough left to win another big one. He beat Andre Agassi in the final, collected the trophy that marked his 14th Grand Slam victory, a record, and never played another ATP event.
Not that he didn't agonize for at least a year, maybe longer. His toughest times were the late spring and early summer months, as Wimbledon drew closer. He won that tournament seven times.
Nor did he find a comfortable alternative quickly or easily.
"I played a lot of golf. I saw a lot of days just kind of go by," he said. "I got down to a 4 handicap. That was good, but after a while, you see that you can only play so much golf. Your body gets soft, and you actually start to miss the soreness. You want to get a little sweaty again."
He also changed a lot of diapers and had plenty of family time at home in Beverly Hills with wife and movie star Bridgette Wilson and their two young sons. He made some investments, such as part-ownership in the Indian Wells, Calif., tournament.
Still, a lot of life was drifting by.
"It was kind of a rough time," he admitted.
Not so anymore. Something very familiar brought him back. Gave him the structure he needed again. Reminded him of how good it made him feel.
Tennis.
"I played some World TeamTennis, and that started to get me back out on the courts," he said. "And then Jim (Courier) came calling and he got me back out there in some senior events. And now there is a nice balance."
Last year, on the Monday night of the women's event in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, promoters put a Courier-Sampras exhibition on the schedule --- an unusual happening on the WTA Tour. It was not overly promoted, but it nearly packed the place. Parking lots were jammed, lines formed outside of bathrooms, and there was more excitement in the air than for almost any Monday night tour event, male or female.
And oh, what a show Sampras put on. He had been playing just long enough for WTT to start to feel sharp, and suddenly, there was an American men's tennis player who could serve big, follow the ball to net, make effective half-volleys, and cover the court in cat-quick bursts. Even Courier, in the midst of a good beating, seemed to enjoy the fact that about 8,000 fans were being treated to something special.
"Yeah, I remember that," Sampras said. "I was feeling pretty good that night."
Soon golf was cut back and the tennis court became home again. For Sampras, that is literally the case since he has a court in his own yard.
Pretty soon, three or four days of tennis per week had become his structure. It was a game that, perhaps, nobody before him had ever played quite as well. Now, a semi-recreational, semi-competitive approach was just what the doctor ordered. He now had the sport he loved and the time to do the sorts of things that the tour never allowed.
Sampras recently played a senior tour event in Athens. His parents hail from Greece, but Sampras had never been to the country. Never saw the Acropolis. Never walked the 2,000-year old streets. Never sat in the bleachers of the ancient rectangular stadium that still rests alongside a main street in Athens and symbolizes the beginning of the The Olympic Games in 1896.
The old Pete Sampras would have made the trip, thought only about tennis, played as long as he could, and caught the first plane out. This time, Sampras took his father, who will turn 70 this year, and his mother, who went back to the town where she was born and spoke Greek the whole time.
"It was great," Sampras said. "I'll go back."
He did win the tournament, of course, beating Todd Martin in the final.
A few months prior, when Roger Federer was in Southern California to compete at Indian Wells, Sampras hosted the Swiss champ at his home. Sampras said he could not have enjoyed the visit home.
The old Pete Sampras wouldn't have been ready to get quite that close to a player who had handed him one of his only three losses at Wimbledon from 1993 to 2002; the player who, most likely, will top his Grand Slam record in the next several years. That would have meant giving up some sort of competitive edge.
The new Pete Sampras doesn't care about such things.
"We had a great time," Sampras said. "We played two days, and the second day we had a pretty good three-hour workout at my house. I had never really gotten a chance to talk to him, and I found out what a great guy he is. We have the same kind of sense of humor, kind of dry and sarcastic."
"We kidded about a lot of things, about how it would have been nice if he would have given me a little more time to enjoy my record. I told him Henry Aaron's home run record was set in the '70s, so he should have given me at least 30 years."
Sampras said that no score was kept --- or if it was, nobody will ever hear it --- and said that, at one point on a changeover, with Sampras playing his normal serve and volley, Federer laughed and said, "I don't have to see this very often."
Sampras said he learned something else during their scrimmages: "I can still hold serve pretty well."
The Grand Slam record once was a sacred pursuit for Sampras. Now he is happy that somebody possessing the caliber and character of Federer will likely be the one to top it.
"Roger does it like I did --- he just goes out and plays," Sampras said. "Records are made to be broken. I'm not the kind of person who roots against other people. If it has to be broken, Roger is perfect to do it."
Sampras also has become the kind of person who realizes that his great success wasn't achieved in a vacuum.
Like Greece until recently, Sampras never has been to the International Hall of Fame.
"I'm going to take whole family (brothers and sisters, mom and dad)," he said. "We're all looking forward to it. It will be a good time for the family to enjoy it, and a good time for me to reflect on what I did."
And what he is still doing.
The day after the ceremony, Sampras will play an exhibition match on the Newport grass. No matter who he faces, bets are he will still hold serve pretty well.