Immortal Sampras
We feel with absolute certainty
that if we could only swing like that all the time, we would
be our best selves, our true selves, our Authentic Selves.
-The Legend of Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield
By Kim Shanley
To The TennisONE Community
Pete Sampras said there are ten things you have to do to be a
champion. When he tried to practice for a few days to see if
he wanted to make another run at Wimbledon, he found he couldn't
do one of them. "When you're done, you're done," said
Sampras, and announced his retirement.
George Bernard Shaw said, "I want to be thoroughly used
up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live." When
I watched Pete looking up at the 22,000 fans in Arthur Ashe stadium
showering down their love, admiration, and respect for him, I
saw a man who had achieved Shaw's goal. The competitive fires
had done their job, burned through all of his immense potential,
and now here he was openly weeping in gratitude for the fans
thundering, respectful applause, thankful that his journey was
now done.
Every journey has its stages, and Pete's first stage (at least
that the public witnessed) was the stage of preconscious greatness.
When he won the 1990 US Open as a skinny nineteen year old,
Pete wasn't thinking about his coach, his fitness, or his strategy.
He simply played without thought, effortlessly producing one
unreturnable serve after another. It was here we first
saw Sampras's signature shots. Most great players have one signature
shot (does Agassi have even one?). Sampras had three: his serve,
his ripping cross-court forehand and his sky-overhead, a move
of awesome athletic grace and intimidation. It was the equivalent
of Michael Jordan playing tennis leaping above the rim of an
imaginary basket and spiking the ball into your court. "Take
that," Pete never said as stood at the end of the tournament
holding the champions cup over his puffy, springy hair, grinning
ear to ear.
The preconscious stage ended when Stefan Edberg dismantled
Pete in the 1992 US Open final. "That really changed my
career for the better," Pete said. "I felt like I gave
in that match; I felt it was good enough getting into the final.
After that, the fact that I gave in bothered me a lot. I learned
the hard way and went from a kid who didn't know what he wanted
to knowing exactly what he wanted in the course of one match."
Pete then embarked on the second stage of his journey, the
conscious effort to become not just the number one player in
the world, but the greatest tennis player of all time. In the
next eight years (1993-1990), Pete won seven Wimbledon championships,
three US Open and two Australian Open titles and became the player
to hold the number one ranking longest (six years). But we're
getting ahead of ourselves.
While Sampras established his conscious goal of becoming the
all-time greatest after his 1992 US Open loss, he had to grow
as an athlete and as a person. With all his natural gifts, Pete
never worked hard on his fitness. After his defeat to Edberg,
Pete began a systematic regimen of physical training. He was
never going to drag two people on a sled like Courier or sprint
up hills in 120 degree heat like Agassi, but Pete began to do
something he had had only haphazardly applied to playing tennis,
work.
After he achieved his first goal of becoming the number one
player by winning Wimbledon in 1993 and 1994, Pete's coach and
surrogate father, Tim Gullikson, was diagnosed with brain cancer.
The day before Sampras was to play Jim Courier in the quarterfinals
of the 1995 Australian Open, Gullikson, who had suffered two
strokes in the past three months, had to fly back to the U.S.
for treatment. Pete was alone, and in the match with Courier,
he was obviously thinking about Gully, and quickly found himself
down two sets to love. Pete had the best reason in the world
to give up at that moment, but he realized not only would he
be letting down his friend and coach if he quit, he would be
letting himself down. He came back and won the next two sets,
but at the changeover in the fifth set, Sampras couldn't hold
his concern and grief for his friend at bay any longer. He wept
into a towel, and continued to cry off and on during the most
crucial moments of a close fifth set. Courier, like many opponents
in later years, couldn't believe Pete could keep playing at the
highest levels while looking like a basket-case. Pete literally
would wipe away his tears one moment and serve an ace the next.
Pete beat a flummoxed Courier, but lost to Agassi in the finals.
The hill Pete was climbing became much steeper on May 3, 1996,
when Tim Gullikson, 44, died of brain cancer. Now he would have
to climb the hill alone. The culmination of this stage of the
journey came in the 1996 US Open quarterfinal, where Sampras
faced Alex Corretja. After playing four hours and reaching a
tie-breaker in the fifth set, Sampras was not only completely
dehydrated and exhausted, he was sick to his stomach. At 1-1
in the fifth set tie-break, Pete walked to the back of the court
and puked, receiving a time delay warning by the umpire. But
with vomit streaming from his nose and mouth, Sampras continued
on, seemingly barely able to stand but continuing to hang-in
against Corretja, who wasn't about to succumb to feeling sorry
for Sampras as Courier had done at the Australian Open.
The tie-break went to 7-7, and Sampras, barely able to stand,
hit a pathetic 76 mile an hour first serve that missed. Sampras
had obviously lost any control of himself or his serve, so Corretja
shifted his return position to favor his lethal forehand, anticipating
that this was the end. And then the miracle. In The Legend
of Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield's godly caddie Bagger
Vance says, "I believe that each of us possesses, inside
ourselves, one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone."
This swing is "the pure expression of his being, his inner
grace and nobility, his power, his concentration and even his
flaws and imperfections."
Barely able to stand to deliver his second serve, I believe
Sampras was able surrender to completely to whatever destiny
had in store for him and find the pure expression of his being
and his authentic swing. Pete swung, sending a 90 mile an hour
second serve out wide to the space just vacated by Corretja.
An ace! Corretja was completely stunned. Sampras was now up
8-7, and had a match point. Corretja, still trying to fathom
the incomprehensibility of Sampras's second serve ace, double-faulted,
giving the victory to Pete.
After this match, the rest of the 1996 US Open final was anti-climatic,
with Pete easily defeating Michael Chang in the final. Pete
now entered the third stage of his journey, conscious mastery
as he strived to become the all-time Grand Slam champion. It
was during this period that I first noticed the Sampras shoulder-flex
when he was feeling in the zone. Often it would appear very
early in the match after hitting an ace, and Sampras, loathe
to preen or showboat, but finding need for expressing the energy
and force of his Sampras-ness, would flex his shoulders forward
as he extended his elbows in a quick motion, sometimes delicately
picking off his shirt from the points of his shoulders.
At the height of his dominance, Sampras reminded me of the Spartans,
an invincible fighting force in the ancient world. The Spartans,
like Sampras, never expressed emotion prior to battle. As the
opposing army approached, banging their shields and screaming,
whipping themselves into a frenzy to overcome the terror of battle,
the Spartans were trained to remain silent and still. Then,
acting in complete unison, the Spartans executed what they called
"palming the pine," snapping their spears from a vertical
into a forward position. The psychological effect of this one
motion executed throughout the entire line of battle was devastating. Sampras's shoulder-flex was the sporting equivalent of the Spartans
"palming the pine," and it sent the same message to
opponents: you are doomed.
When Pete beat Pat Rafter in the 2000 Wimbledon, breaking the
Grand Slam record, the Pete Sampras journey, by any one's measure,
should have been over. He had been the number one player for
a record six years and he had broken the all-time Grand Slam
record. What more was there? But Pete said he felt there was
one more Grand Slam left in him, and he wasn't going to retire
until he had fulfilled his own inner sense of destiny.
So Pete began the fourth and final leg of this journey, perhaps
the most mysterious and sublime part of his legendary career
and journey. For two agonizing years, he pushed himself to win
this final victory for no one but himself. But the more he tried,
the more the goal seemed to recede, until he was losing in the
first and second rounds of Wimbledon. His backhand, never his
strong suit, seemed to be completely breaking down. The six
year grind to become number one and win his 13th Grand Slam seemed
to have exhausted him. The tennis god had become a mere mortal.
His confidence plummeted and his mighty shoulders slumped, inspiring
pity, not awe.
But the reason why sport is so fascinating, says Pressfield in
Bagger Vance, is that it's a metaphor for life. On the
playing field or tennis court, you have a chance to find your
self. At the 2002 US Open, Pete Sampras began to reacquaint
his body with his authentic self. The serve, the crosscourt
forehand, and even a few sky-overheads all migrated back to the
courts at Flushing Meadows and reanimated the six foot one inch
frame of Pete Sampras. By the time he beat Rusedski and Roddick,
the shoulder-flex was back. Yes, Pete was feeling it
again, and the it was himself. When he played his great
rival Andre Agassi in the final, I knew after Sampras hit a few
backhand winners early in the match that Agassi was in deep trouble.
The backhand was Sampras's Achilles heel throughout his decline,
and if that vulnerability disappeared, it was all over for any
opponent, even an opponent as great as Andre Agassi. Pete's
serve, the "pure expression of his being," returned
to its full power, and Sampras rolled over Agassi, hitting 33
aces. There it was, his 14th Grand Slam title, the one he won
truly for himself, completing a journey of complete self-mastery
in his chosen world of tennis.
Though he didn't know it for a year, Pete was done. He had returned
from his legendary and immortal quest and was now standing in
front of us, not in his warrior's garb of tennis whites, but
in a strangely modish black outfit, looking like an ordinary
young man entering his middle years, hair showing some bald spots,
holding his baby while he gave his farewell salute to the crowd.
At one level, it was a very sweet moment. No one deserved to
enjoy a carefree retirement more than Pete. But at another level,
I couldn't help feeling that Pete realized what he would be missing.
He would no longer surrender his self into the white heat of
competition and no longer experience the exultation of emerging
triumphant, having moved another higher rung above the tennis
immortals. Today, he was human again. And he was done.
As always, I would love to hear your views on the subjects
raised in this newsletter. Please click
here to send your email directly to me.
Kim Shanley
President, TennisONE
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Last year the kid came into the US Open with high hopes but folded
under the bright lights and Sampras showed him the stuff that
legends are made of. Although Sampras is officially retired,
there's still a long hard road to glory. Will his serve and forehand
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September
1, 2003