Sampras’s MO is quite simple, really, as he delineated it while advising a group of ball kids at a recent tournament in Los Angeles: “Work hard. Don’t do drugs. Stay in school. Enjoy tennis. That’s what I do,” said Sampras. “I still enjoy it.”
Still?
Having witnessed Sampras finally achieve the No. 1 ranking that was predicted of him since swaddling clothes, win the world championship at the All England Club and turn 22 in a nifty four-month package–April 12 to Aug. 12 to be precise–the sport of tennis should be gratified to realize how wonderfully normal its pride and joy of a representative still remains. So what if Jim Courier regained the top spot a week ago when Sampras failed to successfully defend his title in Indianapolis. New York has belonged to Sampras before and he aims to own it again. When he won his shock U.S. Open in 1990, his ebony waves, disarming manner and killer smile conjuring up John F. Kennedy Jr., one journalist called him “America’s Little Boy.”
Sampras uses expressions like “flakeoff” and “PV” to explain, in order, what he doesn’t want to become (crazy, weird) and where he used to live (Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif). He couldn’t believe he “fit into that sucker” when he had to wear a tuxedo to the Wimbledon ball, an event that followed by a few weeks his command practice hit with Elton John at the singer’s country estate outside London which was, of course, “awesome,” the grounds dotted with a plethora of automobiles which were, of course, “totally awesome.”
Moreover, as ultimate bookend to his kid-lingo-beach-guy hipness, Sampras’s tastes, manners and general lifestyle are steeped in the same old-timey neoclassicism as his wondrous serve-and-volley playing style. He admires Joe DiMaggio. He listens to Led Zeppelin. He prefers to drive his four-wheel-drive clunker rather than his Mitsubishi sports car. He shares his one home–one–near Tampa, Fla., with one live-in girlfriend-one-named Delaina Mulcahy, who happens to be the first girlfriend he ever had. His parents, Soterios (Sam), a civilian aerospace engineer with the air force, and Georgia, a homemaker, are of loving Old World Greek stock. Rather than advise, meddle, swarm or, worst of all, coach, they leave the tennis to their son. They get so nervous when he plays, in fact, they not only don’t come to his tournaments, they don’t watch them on TV. “I’ve never even spoken to Sam on the phone,” says Sampras’s real coach, Tim Gullikson. Oh yes, the best tennis player on earth practices in Bermuda shorts; madras, for godsakes!
At the 1992 U.S. Open where he lost in the finals, succumbing to both a stomach virus and Stefan Edberg, Sampras was practicing one day when Martina Navratilova walked up.
“Hello, Mr. Summer,” Martina said, alluding to Sampras’s winning streak of two tournaments and ultimately 16 matches that summer.
“Oh. Uh, no, Ms. Navratilova,” the shy young man said. “My name is Sampras.”
The dichotomy is not only that one of the world’s more famous athletes has become a household name without realizing it but that his visage is so curiously contradictory on and off the tennis court. Even during a winning match it is Sampras’s habit to wander about, head down, shoulders slumped, hangdog–in the words of the Los Angeles Times’s Jim Murray: “like a guy who is a suspect in a child murder…”
In real life he has an ear-to-ear grin that survives even tough defeats. “Pete’s the best of all of us after losses,” says Michael Chang, Sampras’s California peer who has been playing against him since they were 7 years old. “It takes him 10 minutes to recover. Then he’s back to being Pete. Even when he’s No. 1, he doesn’t change. If everybody enjoyed life as much as Pete, it would be a very happy world.” Another old pal/rival, Courier, calls Sampras, with more admiration than sarcasm: “Sweet Pete.”
Way back as a junior in Florida’s Easter Bowl, Sampras attracted such a vociferous cult of prepubescent admirers with his Happy World Grin that he was nicknamed “Smiley.” At present, instead, he has manufactured a poker-faced insouciance into a reputation as a full-fledged Enigma. “I was always taught and trained to concentrate on the ball, nothing else,” he says. “I know I’m not showy or flamboyant like Andre [Agassi] or Boris [Becker]. I don’t play to the crowd or joke or smile. But this works for me. I’m not changing for anybody.”
Many in tennis questioned Sampras’s ascension to the top ranking through the spring, inasmuch as Courier held two Grand Slam titles (the Australian and French Opens) to Sampras’s none. But critics should have focused in on just what the 6-foot-1, 170-pounder had accomplished in consistency.
In 1992, injury-free for the first time, Sampras won five tournaments (three after saving match point) and was runner-up in two others while winning 70 matches, more than any other player. So far this year Sampras has won five more tournaments and 60 more matches and won more than $1.4 million, including $462,044 at Wimbledon, where he beat Courier in their finals showdown.
“SAMPRAZZZZZ,” the unimpressed British tabloids called him, mocking the spit-polish, sleep–inducing, routine manner in which he disposed of opponents. “Bored on the Fourth of July,” they yawned, critiquing his championship victory over a fellow Yank, Courier. What really offended Fleet Street, though, was when Sampras uncharacteristically screamed, “Take that, you motherf—-s” at the crowd who had supported his English opponent in a fourth-round match.
Whoops. No more Mr. Nice Laid-Back Southern Cal Guy? “Wimbledon was a turning point for this kid,” says the old lion, Pancho Gonzalez, to whom Sampras has been compared. “I like that he got feisty, that he didn’t take any crap from anybody. He’s been too nice too long. The fans, the media…they don’t matter. What matters is the tennis.” Jack Kramer, another of the old-time champions, says, “Pete’s got the most talent, the best equipment. And now he’s concentrating better because he’s found a reason to win. The reason is he finally hates to lose.”
Having stunned even himself by winning the Open at 19–the youngest male ever to do so–Sampras went into an emotional tailspin. He was resentful of the notoriety and time-consuming responsibilities–“Cocktail parties, me? Right.” he snickers–that went with being a Grand Slam winner and media target. And on the court, “I was totally unprepared. My game didn’t match my accomplishment.”
Sampras didn’t realize how much he cherished his Open title until the instant he lost it–the following September in the quarterfinals to Courier. Moments after he lost, he announced that “a bag of bricks” had been lifted from him. Moments after that, “I was really pissed off I’d said such a thing.” As were former champions such as Connors, who ripped Sampras for not possessing the heart, fight and attitude of a champion.
“I vowed that after I won my next Grand Slam, I’d do it right,” says Sampras now. “I’d take time to appreciate it, enjoy it. I’d know how to handle it.”
Favored on the greensward of the All England Club and a controversial No. 1, Sampras facing Courier in the Wimbledon final was the champion’s own personal trial by fire. “The biggest moment of my life,” he says. “A loss would have been devastating. Maybe career-threatening. I mean, it would have been really hard to get up on the horse again and come back to the Open. But I wasn’t going to lose.”
As Sampras rides roughshod across the tour and into New York this week–and despite an unusually tough draw–he now says he likes “my chances against anybody in the world.” Armed with such confidence and the most talent; motivated, focused and this time enjoying being a Grand Slam champion; he may be on the brink of ruling a sport recently considered unrulable. That’s what happens with a genius of a player when what matters is not only tennis, but bating to lose at tennis.
