9707070048
DETROIT FREE PRESS
970707
Monday, July 07, 1997
METRO FINAL
1D
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1997, Detroit Free Press
SAMPRAS' PEERLESS TALENT OBSCURED BY LACK OF RIVAL
"He's human, but not by much."
Todd Woodbridge, on Pete Sampras
Quick, somebody, get the man a rival. A foil. An enemy. A villain with a
sword. Get him a Wilt Chamberlain for his Bill Russell, a Pharaoh to his
Moses, a Lex Luthor to his Superman. Otherwise, Pete Sampras, the greatest
tennis player we have ever seen, may skip over our horizon without anyone
realizing what a remarkable talent he truly is.
He won his fourth Wimbledon on Sunday in less time than it takes to play the
first half of a football game. Straight sets. Never surrendered his serve. The
reaction at Centre Court? I think I caught the Duke of Kent nodding off.
Four Wimbledons now puts the 25-year-old Sampras ahead of John McEnroe, Boris
Becker and John Newcombe, and if you add those jewels to his four U.S. Open
and two Australian crowns ...well, let's cut to the chase: Three more Grand
Slam titles and Sampras will rank, trophy-wise, as the best there ever was.
The best there ever was. Read that again. The best there ever was. I'm
repeating it because they don't say that about too many people. The best there
ever was. Yet when they say it about Sampras it seems to drip off his back
like water off a British umbrella.
"He leaves you no air to breathe," sighed the man he vanquished Sunday
afternoon, France's Cedric Pioline, who had as much chance of victory as he
did of turning a croissant into a tuna.
(Besides, and I don't mean to digress here, but it's pretty hard to get behind
a guy named Cedric. Hearing fans yell "You da man, Cedric!" just didn't cut
it.)
But back to his comment about Sampras. He leaves you no air to breathe. That's
pretty impressive coming from an opponent, no? So why did so many fans leave
Wimbledon with an empty feeling, as if they'd run out of cream before they'd
run out of strawberries?
Well. Consider the drama of the match. You want me to skip to the highlight? I
mean the real heart-thumping moment? Here it is. Third set. Break point for
Pioline. That's to break one game of Sampras' serve. Not to win the match. Not
to win a set. Just to break his serve.
And it didn't happen. Sampras -- who later confessed to a momentary lapse in
concentration (perhaps he was trying to remember whom he was playing) --
stormed back with two service winners and an easy volley winner.
Danger over.
I'll give you a moment to catch your breath.
If only Agassi could challenge again
Let's face it, Sampras had a run for the ages at this Wimbledon. He blistered
everyone he played. He lost only two games on his serve, and more than half of
his serves never even got returned. And people shrugged it off?
This only proves that Sampras needs a regular enemy, if only to give the world
a measuring stick for his excellence. Connors had Borg and Borg had McEnroe,
Ali had Frazier, the Lakers had the Celtics. But in his four Wimbledon titles,
Sampras has beaten four different players.
"In the United States, you do need a rivalry," he admitted Sunday. "When you
have one, people who don't follow tennis will follow it.
"Two times in my career, I thought I had some real rivalries kicking up. Once
against Boris and once against (Andre) Agassi.
"But it's so difficult in the 1990s. There are so many great players and the
game is so much deeper. It's hard to have the same people coming through all
the time."
"Well," I said, "it hasn't stopped you from making the final here four times."
"Yeah," he said, smiling. "Thank you."
You're welcome, but I didn't mean it that way. I meant if Sampras can do it,
why can't someone else? Becker and Stefan Edberg met in three straight finals
here in 1988-90. McEnroe, Borg and Connors -- in some combination -- met five
times in six years for the crown in 1977-82.
And admit it. You remember those guys more. It isn't -- as some critics say --
Sampras' deadly serious personality. It isn't that he fails to throw tantrums
out there or that, as he said Sunday, "I'm not David Letterman during
interviews."
Hey, Borg was as boring as they come. But he had McEnroe to contrast him.
Edberg was as stoic as grass, but Becker's emotion helped shade him.
"That's why when Andre and I are competing, it works," Sampras said. "He's the
flamboyant emotional one, and I can be me."
Of course, Agassi -- who has met Sampras three times in Grand Slam finals, by
far the closest contemporary Sampras has had -- bagged out of Wimbledon again
this year. He's either too hurt, too distracted, too in love or too nuts to be
consistent. Poor Pete. It's not his fault that history gave him a head case
for a challenger.
"Do you ever see yourself changing the way you are on the court?" a Brit asked
him. "You know, playing with more emotion yourself?"
"Well," Sampras said, biting his tongue, "my way has worked so far."
Sampras has all the shots
Say that again. Sampras is not only a model of laser-like focus, he's fluid in
all strokes.
It wasn't just serving that won him Wimbledon. He hit passing shots that
kicked up chalk on the baseline, and he came to the net brilliantly. On one
memorable play Sunday, Pioline had Sampras running, and he smacked a forehand
down the line. Sampras had no business getting to it, but he lunged -- pure
instinct -- and the racket head was perfect, the ball shot almost horizontally
across the court for a dropping winner.
"Sometimes," Sampras said of that play, "your muscle memory takes over."
Muscle memory? You mean his body does that on its own? No wonder Becker quit
Wimbledon for good after losing to Sampras in the quarters, saying he could no
longer compete with the likes of Pete.
Given the way Sampras is going, the shock isn't that Boris retired, but that
more players didn't.
Oh well, as they say here, there you have it. Thus ends another Wimbledon
fortnight, one in which familiar patterns repeated: It rained forever, players
whined, critics argued the tournament should be junked, and it all managed to
finish on time, as usual, with yet another teenage sensation capturing the
women's crown -- Martina Hingis -- and Pistol Pete going home with the big
trophy once more.
The only thing lacking is what I've been suggesting, a rival for Sampras,
because he truly is as wonderful a player as there has ever been. Strong,
fast, resilient, intense -- and, by the way, American. In fact, it is only
because he is as great as he is, and we need to do whatever it takes to show
it, that I would even dare, in a million years, ask the following question:
Does Dennis Rodman play tennis?
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
COLUMN; PETE SAMPRAS; TENNIS