Pete Sampras: Reflections on a Career
NB. All statistics about still active players are up to and including Wimbledon 2013!
It must seem
terribly old-fashioned to write anything about Pete Sampras nowadays. In the
single decade since his retirement the amazing Roger Federer has surpassed, or
at worst equalled, virtually all of his records, from the number of Grand Slam
titles to the number of weeks at No. 1. Connoisseurs of tennis widely regard
Federer as the “GOAT”, a mysterious acronym that presumably means the “Greatest
Of All Time”. Why bother with old stuff like Sampras? Well, I have several
excellent, if personal, reasons.
First of all,
there is no such thing as the “GOAT”. The reason is simple: you can’t compare
different eras. This, of course, is a well-known cliché, yet it is astonishing
how seldom people stop to think about it. The enormous amount of intellectual power
that is regularly lost in such futile debates makes one despair of the human
race. Since the beginning of the Open Era in 1968, the game has changed almost
out of recognition; the rules and the court’s dimensions are just about the
only things that have remained the same. (And even that isn’t quite true; the
tiebreak, for example, is a relatively modern invention; it’s been used since
the mid-1970s.) And different people have very different criteria of greatness.
They can talk till they are blue in the face, those knowledgeable fellows on
tennis history, but this won’t change the subjective – and, dare I say it,
irrelevant – nature of their mighty discussions. So long as they are fun and
not taken too seriously, such arguments provide a nice diversion. But they are
nothing more than that.
To take but
one example, it is generally agreed that the number Grand Slam titles, fondly
called Majors, is the best indication of greatness as far as tennis is
concerned. This is a very sensible assumption. But the agreement,
unfortunately, ends here. What exactly do you count? Roy Emerson used to hold
the record for most Majors (12) before Sampras broke it, but all of his titles were achieved before the Open Era even began. There
were many great champions between the two world wars, even back in the end of
the nineteenth century when Wimbledon began.
But the world of tennis – indeed, the world at large – was a vastly different
place in those times. Comparisons are out of the question. Even if we agree to
consider the Open Era only, another almost obligatory condition, there are
other problems as well.
Some people
lay great stress on the so-called “Career Grand Slam”, winning the four biggest
tournaments on three very different surfaces (grass, clay, hard court), and
tend to despise players who never achieved that. This is foolish for several important
historical reasons.
First, there
is the controversial issue of the so called “convergence of surfaces” in the
recent decade or so. I’m not well versed into this thorny problem, but there
appears to be some data that do suggest homogenization of surfaces which used
to be much more different in the past. Obviously it must have been much harder
to win Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same
year when grass was much faster than clay, as Bjorn Borg did no fewer than
three times in the late 1970s. It is certainly suspicious that most holders of
“Career Grand Slam” (Federer, Nadal) have emerged only in the last few years.
Agassi is the only one who could complete his Grand Slam as early as 1999 when
he finally won the French Open. This actually makes his achievement all the
more impressive. He seems to be the only player in history who managed to win
the four biggest tournaments on three very
different surfaces.
Why nobody
did it before Agassi? Why two fellows have done it since? Are players today so
much more versatile than they were in the old days? Not really. Another
drawback of the surface-orientated mentality is that it often neglects history.
The fact that a player has never won Roland Garros does not necessarily mean
that he has never won a Grand Slam title on clay; likewise with grass and Wimbledon. People often forget that the “three surfaces”
situation is a relatively recent innovation. Until 1974 the US Open was held on
grass, for the next three years it switched to clay, and only since 1978 it has been employing hard courts.
The Australian Open, unbelievable as this may seem to young tennis lovers not
very fond of history, was held on grass until as recently as 1987. So, in
short, there are players who never could win Wimbledon yet did win a Grand Slam
title on grass (e.g. Wilander in Australia, 1983-4), and there are those who
never conquered Roland Garros yet do have a Grand Slam title on clay (e.g.
Connors at the 1976 US Open). Indeed, Jimmy is the ultimate versatile player.
He is the only one to have won the US Open on three different surfaces: 1974 on
grass, 1976 on clay, 1978 and 1983-4 on hard.
Since clay is
a most peculiar stuff to play on (very slow speed, very high bounce), Roland
Garros has always been the most difficult of the four Majors. It has most often
been won by the so-called “clay specialists”, fellows who could hardly reach a
final in the other three Majors let alone win a title there (Kuerten, Muster,
Bruguera, Moya, and many others), and it has most often been the only Grand
Slam title that eluded many outstanding players who at one time or another won
all three of the others. Should we question the place in tennis history of Sampras,
Becker and Edberg, to name but three, just because of that single omission in
their Grand Slam collections? Is the greatness of John McEnroe in some way
diminished because he never won either
the French or the Australian Open? I should hope not. In this context it must
be remembered that John didn’t participate much in the Australian Open during
his prime, nor did Jimmy in Paris
for that matter. In those days, apparently, breaking GS records was not a
priority.
The one-slam
snobbery is not limited to Roland Garros. Far from it. There are some people
who still cast the shadow of doubt over Ivan Lendl because he never won
Wimbledon and indeed was greatly prejudiced against the surface (“grass is for
cows”, he once snapped), never mind that the man won the French and the US Open
thrice each, not to mention two
crowns in Melbourne and eleven lost
finals in all four tournaments. Others are fond of putting down Borg because his
eleven Majors were confined to Wimbledon and
Roland Garros only, so his surface versatility was very limited indeed (even
though no two surfaces can be more different than grass and clay). To
complicate the situation still further, until well into the Open Era (1974)
three of the four Majors, that is all of them except Roland Garros, were played
on grass; at that time (1969) and under these conditions did Rod Laver achieve the
only Grand Slam in a single calendar year so far. So much for surfaces.
Such
arguments about types of surfaces are clearly short-sighted and of little
value. Their complete and lamentable disrespect even of post-1968 tennis history
renders them worthless, no matter how many times they have been advanced as
“objective criteria” by blind fanatics. (However, the type of GS titles, as
we’ll see later, is not entirely irrelevant.) A much more difficult proposition
is the comparison of the competitions during different eras, and it is this conundrum
which, to my mind, makes the whole “GOAT” hypothesis nonsense by default. Sampras
dominated the 1990s like no single player had ever dominated the 1970s or the 1980s.
Federer went one better by dominating the first decade of the new century like
Sampras never had. But no player exists in a vacuum. Quite on the contrary, he
does exist only against a certain group
of rivals, at least several of whom are almost his equals. Here arises the
really difficult question: was Federer (or Sampras) really greater than Sampras
(Federer), or was he just lucky to have a weaker set of rivals? Was any of them
better/worse than Lendl, McEnroe or Connors?
This is a
tautological situation with no solution. The moment you concede a weaker
competition, you automatically concede diminished greatness, and vice versa of
course. And that’s the problem: even successive generations of rivals cannot
really be compared, because they depend as much on the “GOAT” in question as on
anything else. For example, I do think that the “weak era” argument does have
some relevance to Federer’s unprecedented domination. It took Nadal several
years to emerge as a first-rate competitor on surfaces other than clay, and it
took Djokovic and Murray the same period, if not longer indeed, to emerge as
worthy rivals on any surface at all. Roger was indeed lucky to have his best
years largely to himself; his greatest rival was the never-better-than-just-good
Andy Roddick whom he could beat handsomely; Safin and Hewitt had made a great
stir just a couple of years ago, but both already were past their brief if
glorious prime. That said, I do think this argument is often artificially
boosted and dishonestly used to degrade Roger’s greatness. This is authentic.
He would have been at the top in any era, that’s for sure, although I am quite
convinced that he would have needed a longer period to win this jaw-dropping number
of Majors.
On the other
hand, Pete Sampras spent his whole
career surrounded by pretty strong rivals. In the early years Becker and
Edberg, and even the past-his-prime-but-still-formidable Lendl, gave him a good
deal of trouble; indeed, Becker remained a potential threat until the second
half of the 1990s. Andre Agassi was his greatest single rival. He was there all the
time, and despite the vicissitudes of his erratic career he was always ready to
give his best against Pete. In later years several brilliant youngsters came on
the stage too, most notably Hewitt and Safin, both of them full ten years
younger, who beat him heavily in two consecutive finals at the US Open. In
addition to all that, there was a whole galaxy of lesser players who could
always be counted on giving him a hard time on the court. These included Goran
Ivanisevic, the Croatian with stupendous serve, the great Aussie Patrick Rafter,
the Dutch Richard Krajicek and the German Michael Stich, all of them exemplary
serve-and-volleyers, the stubborn Michael Chang, the tenacious Petr Korda, the
unpredictable Yevgeny Kafelnikov. None of these players ever won more than one Major
in his career yet all of them were more than the derisive label “One Slam
Wonder” might suggest, and there were plenty of others who didn’t achieve even
that but were always ready to put a strong fight against the great (e.g. Henman,
Rios, Ferreira, Philippoussis, Rusedski, Bjorkman, Larsson, Enqvist, Corretja,
Schalken, Haarhuis, Medvedev and so many others).
All this is
by the way. To get back to the beginning, while I greatly admire Roger Federer,
it is Pete Sampras who is my “GFOAT” (Greatest Favourite Of All Time). This is
because statistics don’t really tell the whole story, and because this is
purely personal opinion that makes no claims to be objective, let alone
relevant to anyone but myself. Roger may hold the records, and so far as I can
see he may hold them for quite some time, but it is Pete who – personally for
me, I repeat – transformed tennis into art. There was something feline in his
movements on the court, some effortless grace coupled with awe-inspiring power
that made his game perfectly compelling. That’s why I’m paying him this little
tribute, if the random reflections that follow can be called thus. I will deal
almost exclusively with statistics, of course, but I will try, as far as I can,
to put Pete’s achievements in their right order and against the proper
historical context of his life and career. I will also try to keep detailed
descriptions of the game itself to the minimum, for there is nothing more
tedious and there is plenty of material on YouTube.
NB. Please
keep in mind that the video quality on YT is usually far from stellar. In many
cases the tennis ball may be hardly visible!
1988-89: Years of Obscurity
Pete’s career
started inauspiciously. He turned pro in February 1988, at the tender age of 16
(born August 12, 1971), and quickly lost his first match at the tournament in
Philadelphia (4-6, 3-6 against one Sammy Giammalva Jr., a compatriot then 105th
in the world but today vastly forgotten). The very next week he made a little
stir in Indian Wells, no less, when he reached the third round defeating one
Top 40 and one Top 30 player, but he then lost to one Top 20 guy (the Spaniard
Emilio Sanchez, 5-7, 2-6). At that time, Pete himself was No. 893 in the world!
During those
early years of obscurity Sampras didn’t even have a positive win-loss balance
(29-32 for both years), and he didn’t advance beyond the quarterfinals (QF) in
32 out of 33 tournaments played; the only exception was the small (and now
defunct) tournament in Schenectady, NY, where he did reach the semis but lost
to No. 11, Tim Mayotte, 6-7, 2-6. He did attract some attention, though. In
1989 he reached the fourth round (4R) at the US Open, defeating the defending champion Mats Wilander in the 2R, 5-7, 6-3, 1-6, 6-1, 6-4. Since the Swede
was No. 5 at the time, this was also Pete’s first win over a player from Top 10.
It is quite safe to assume, however, that nobody at the time suspected that
this scrawny kid from California
would one day win the US Open five times. Nor did anybody think that Pete will
end his career with 63.6% (124-71) success versus Top 10 players. This puts him
at No. 6 in the Open Era, after Borg, Nadal, Becker, Federer and Lendl. Note two
things: 1) two of these players are still active; and 2) Borg played more than
twice fewer matches versus Top 10 players, 67-28 (70.5%).
It’s
interesting to note one last detail about those early years. In 1989 Sampras
met for the first time two of his long-term rivals: Michael Chang and Andre
Agassi. Despite a very small difference in the age (Chang is one year his
junior, Agassi one year his senior), both of them were already promising young
stars in Top 10, while Pete was struggling to be in Top 100. He lost pretty
badly to Andre in Rome,
2-6, 1-6, and he was absolutely wiped out by Michael in their first encounter:
1-6, 1-6, 1-6 in the 2R of the French Open. (It was at the same Roland Garros,
of course, that the 17-years-old Chang became the youngest Grand Slam (GS)
champion ever.) They met twice more on
hard that year, twice more Pete couldn’t win even a single set; indeed, Michael
Chang is one of the very few players who can boast to have taken a set with 6-0
against Sampras.
We may deal
briefly with the Sampras-Chang rivalry here, for it is the least dramatic among
the great ones. They met 20 times in the course of 13 years (1989-2001), Pete
leading 12-8. At first glance, this looks rather close. Not so at second
glance. Five of Chang’s wins were in 1989-90, a period during which Sampras
beat him only once. However, from the next 14 meetings, Michael won only three:
QF in Miami (1992), SF at the Masters (1995) and
R16 in Rome
(1998). Otherwise, Pete demolished the little guy of Asian descent any time
they met on court. They played at three finals – Tokyo
in 1994, Hong Kong in 1996, and most
significantly the US Open later on the same year – but Chang managed to win but
a single set in all three matches. Except for the crushing defeat at Roland
Garros mentioned above, there were three further encounters in GS events, but
Chang proved to be a slightly difficult obstacle in only one of them, QF at the
1993 US Open, 6-7(0), 7-6(2), 6-1, 6-1; Pete won without much trouble in the
semis of the 1995 Australian Open, 6-7(6), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, and he simply run
over Michael in the quarters of the 1994 Wimbledon, 6-4, 6-1, 6-3. I reckon
Chang must be feeling very uncomfortable when he is described as one of the
Golden Generation for American Tennis that produced Sampras, Agassi, Courier
and him. The other three, taken together, have no fewer than 26 (!) GS titles. Michael
has one.
1990: First Grand Slam Title
1990 was the
breakthrough year for Pete. In February, exactly two years after his
professional debut, he won his first title in Philadelphia,
a small indoor tournament on carpet; in June he caught another one on grass in Manchester. But this was
just a little horse d’oeuvre. In the
beginning of September Sampras took the tennis world by storm. Less than a
month after his 19th birthday, Pete became, and still is, the
youngest man to win the US Open. And it wasn’t just a fluke for the skinny guy.
On his way to the title he beat two former champions, indeed two of the
greatest players in the history of the game, Ivan Lendl in five sets in the quarters
and John McEnroe in four in the semis. In the final he had no problems whatsoever with Agassi, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.
It is true
that by the time this US Open began on 27th of August, partly due to
his first two titles and partly due to several semi-finals (Rome, Cincinnati,
Los Angeles), Pete had reached No. 12 in the world. But surely nobody expected
him to go that far that soon. Lendl and Agassi were No. 3 and No. 4, Thomas
Muster, whom Pete beat in
four sets and in the 4R, was No. 6, and though McEnroe had fallen to No. 20
he wasn’t exactly harmless either. His first Grand Slam title sent Sampras
straight in Top 10, where he remained for the next ten years, and gave him the
opportunity to participate in his first Masters (aka ATP World Tour Finals),
the year-end tournament where the first eight in the world play for lots of
money and lots of points. He didn’t advance beyond the round-robin phase, but
he finished the year in style by winning the so-called Grand Slam Cup, an ITF
alternative to the Masters (which is organized by the ATP, of course). This
short-lived tournament was once notorious for the astronomical money prizes it
offered: even in 1990 the winner took $2 000 000, just about the same
amount that is received today by the
US Open champion. In his autobiography, A
Champion’s Mind (2008), Pete called the Grand Slam Cup’s prize “insane” and
quoted McEnroe who denounced it as “obscene”. But he had to
work hard to get it, beating Cherkasov, Ivanisevic, Chang and Gilbert in a row.
The 1990 US
Open final was the third meeting between Sampras and Agassi, but it was the one
that really started their tremendous rivalry, one of the finest during the
1990s and indeed in the whole history of the game. For the 14 years between
1989 and 2002, Pete and Andre played 34 times against each other, Sampras
leading 20-14 in the final score. No fewer than 15 of these matches were
finals. Here Pete leads only 8-7, but it should be noted that in Grand Slam finals
the result is 4-1. Only at the 1995 Australian Open final could Agassi win,
while Sampras was victorious three times at the US Open (1990, 1995, 2002) and
once at Wimbledon (1999). They played only
three more GS matches. Agassi won a SF at the 2000 Australian Open, Pete
prevailed in two QFs, 1993 at Wimbledon and
2001 at the US Open. There will be many occasions in the next paragraphs to
recall unforgettable matches between these tennis colossi. Their rivalry
exemplified the collision between the two basic types of tennis, serve-and-volley
versus baseline, and the results were invariably riveting.
Pete’s first
Grand Slam title nearly proved to be his undoing. Many times has he stated, in
his autobiography and in interviews, how difficult it was for him to cope with
all the publicity that came together with the title. Suddenly he was expected
to win more and more, to defend his title on the next year, to be a force in
men’s tennis. He wasn’t ready for that. He was still a 19-year-old kid from California, rather shy
and introverted, not at all fond of being the centre of great attention. These
were not empty confessions. Statistics are there to prove it. Pete had to wait
two full years to reach his next Grand Slam final. He had to wait even longer
to win one.
1991: The First Title at the Masters
During the
first half of 1991 it was evident that Sampras was under pressure. He reached
the finals in Manchester and Philadelphia but failed to defend either title;
Ivanisevic in straight sets (4-6, 4-6) and Lendl in an epic five-set thriller
(5-7, 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 3-6), respectively, were insurmountable obstacles. Until
the end of this year he lost two finals more, both of them important
tournaments (Cincinnati,
Paris) and both of them to the same tough Frenchman, the left-hander Guy Forget
(one of Pete’s most inconvenient rivals, by the way, 5-4 head-to-head between 1990 and 1996).
Isn’t it strange that a player who finishes the year without a single loss in a
final match then goes on to lose four in the next year? To me it is. And the
only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the young Pete was under the
pressure of huge expectations he was not ready to meet.
Worst of all,
Sampras reached only the US Open’s quarterfinals that year, losing to Jim
Courier in straight sets. He was unwise to state later in an interview that he
was relieved by his loss because he no longer had to fulfil all those high
expectations. The statement caused a good deal of criticism, including by
Courier himself, and I daresay many specialists were ready to write Pete off. I
suppose on the next year they had the satisfaction of being able to tell their
incredulous colleagues “I told you!”, for even greater disappointment awaited
Pete for his 21st birthday. But first things first.
Fortunately
for Sampras, in the second half of 1991 he won three titles and so could finish
the season in Top 10 (at No. 7, to be exact). Two of these were minor
tournaments (Indianapolis, Lyon),
but the third was his first Masters crown. He beat Stich and Agassi in the group,
smashed Lendl in the semis, 6-2, 6-3, and finally took revenge for the loss
at the US Open by defeating Courier in a tense final, 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-3, 6-4. (Question:
is there anything more nerve-wracking than a second-set tiebreak to stay in the
match?) After that he ended the year with a pretty nice win-loss balance – 52-17
(75.36%) – even better than the fine ratio from the previous year (51-17, 75.00%).
(As a matter
of fact, however, the year ended with two painful losses for the Davis Cup. The
USA met France on their own territory, and
the vocal French crowd so irritated Pete that he couldn’t win more than a
single set against Henri Leconte or Guy Forget. Then again, team playing never was
Pete’s forte. He was a lone wolf. All great champions are. That’s why in this
essay matches for team competitions, Davis Cup and World Team Cup, are excluded
from the win-loss statistics; the same of course applies to titles. Only
singles tournaments are considered.)
1992: The Cornerstone of Pete’s Career
1992 was a
better year – sort of. Pete won five titles altogether, the most in his career
so far, including reclaiming the crown in Philadelphia
and defending the ones in Lyon and Indianapolis
(d. Courier, 6-4, 6-4). He also captured his first title from the
so-called-then Mercedes Super 9 series (MS9 for short from now on, today known
ATP World Tour Masters 1000), the most elite tennis tournaments after the Big
Four. This happened in Cincinnati
and included memorable victories over Petr Korda (No. 6) in the quarters,
Stefan Edberg (No. 2) in the semis, and Ivan Lendl (No. 11) in the final. He
also claimed his first title on clay in Kitzbühel, although he lost the final
in Atlanta to
Agassi on the same surface (his weakest by far).
The year
wasn’t was so great Grand-Slam-wise. Pete made some stir at the Roland Garros
(QF, l. to Agassi in straight sets) and Wimbledon
(SF, l. to Ivanisevic in four sets), but a bitter disappointment stalked him at
the US Open. He advanced to the quarters after two strenuous wins over Todd Martin (R32),
7-6(1), 2-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 and Guy Forget (R16), 6-3,
1-6, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3, in both of which he actually ended with fewer won games, a somewhat paradoxical
situation. In the quarters he smashed Alexander Volkov with 6-4, 6-1, 6-0, and
in the semis he didn’t have much trouble with Courier, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2,
6-2. However, Stefan Edbeg’s blend of elegance and power proved to be
impossible to beat in the final. The Swede took the match with 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-2,
and together with it his second US Open and sixth Grand Slam title overall.
This was the
only final among the 14 matches Sampras and Edberg played against each other
between 1990 and 1995. They met in six SF (3-3), one of which was their only
other match at a GS event, the 1993 Australian Open, and Stefan won that too.
Since Edberg, much like Sampras, was one of the most gifted and graceful serve-and-volleyers
ever to have stepped on a tennis court, the matches between them were
unforgettable feasts of volleys, passing shots, lobs and anything else
beautiful the tennis fan can imagine. Unfortunately, Sampras and Edberg share
one other similarity: both have been consistently underrated, no doubt because
neither was fond of putting an antic disposition on-court or playing a
flamboyant rock star off-court.
The loss at
the 1992 US Open’s final was the watershed in Pete’s career. He has stated so
himself a number of times, and statistics again corroborate his words. I guess,
for this is of course sheer speculation, that many tennis specialists were at
the time ready to mark Sampras with the derogatory label “One Slam Wonder”.
After all, he hadn’t won another one in the two years after his fairy-tale like
triumph in 1990, and now he lost the only final he had reached ever since. Pete
had other plans, however. With a final win-loss balance 68-16 (80.95%), 1992
was a fine year, certainly an improvement over 1991. But 1993 was a huge
quantum leap.
1993: No. 1 in the World
1993 was the
first Anno Mirabilis in Pete’s
career. That painful loss to Edberg did indeed create miracles with his
motivation and determination to win; it raised both to unheard-of-before
heights. Nothing shows this more convincingly than his results during this
miraculous year. On April 12 Pete became No. 1 for the first time in his
career. He stayed there for total of 286 weeks (then a record, later surpassed
by Federer), finishing No. 1 for six consecutive years (still a record). The
Grand Slam dry ended abruptly, too. In 1993 Pete won two Majors in one calendar
year for the first time in his career, and he continued to do so for three of
the next four years. No single player had ever dominated the world of tennis
more strongly before, only Roger Federer has done it since.
The year
started promisingly. Pete won his 14th title in Sydney and reached the semis at the
Australian Open for the first time (but there Edberg was lurking, again). Despite
another painful loss, this was enough to make Sampras No. 2 in the world. A
16-matches winning streak and three titles (Miami, Tokyo, Hong Kong) in March
and April put him at the very top for the first time in his career. He stayed
there for 19 weeks before Courier replaced him. Through the years, Pete was demoted
to No. 2 (or even below that, indeed all the way down to No. 7 in 1999) and
regained the most coveted place in tennis on ten occasions in the next seven
years. It was Agassi, of course, who dethroned him most often (four times),
Rios (twice) and Muster, Moya, Kafelnikov, Rafter and Safin (once each) also
contributed.
In June he captured
his first Wimbledon title. Nobody knew it at
the time, but this was the beginning of a new era at the All England Club.
Until 2000 Pete won the unprecedented seven titles in eight years, breaking Bjorn
Borg’s record of five (consecutive) titles between 1976 and 1980;
Federer has equalled both achievements since. There are only two players in the
Open Era who had won Wimbledon three times
(McEnroe, Becker), and only a handful of guys who have managed to duplicate
their titles (Laver, Newcombe, Connors, Edberg, Nadal). Wimbledon
is the most exclusive of all Grand Slam events. The number of “interlopers” is
very small, and they are hardly second-rate players: Stan Smith, Jan Kodesh,
Arthur Ashe, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray. And
the number of “one slam wonders” is almost non-existent. For 46 Wimbledons
since the beginning of the Open Era, only four players (Cash in 1987, Stich in
1991, Krajicek in 1996, Ivanisevic in 2001) have won their single Major at the All
England Club. Obviously the competition at Wimbledon
has always been merciless. Consider what it takes to win seven titles in eight
years there…
Pete’s first Wimbledon was no fluke. The defending champion Agassi in
the quarters, 6-2, 6-2, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, the three-times former champion and No. 4 in the world
Becker in the semis, 7-6(5), 6-4, 6-4, and finally No. 2, Courier, 7-6(3), 7-6(6), 3-6, 6-3,
were beaten on his way to the title. He did have some luck two months later at
the US Open where only one Top 10 player (No. 7 Chang in the semis) stood in
the way to his second title in New
York. But he earned his luck in the next ten years,
winning three titles more and thus sharing a record with Connors and Federer,
the only other players to have won the last Grand Slam event for the year five
times. Between 1990 and 2002 Sampras played altogether eight US Open finals,
thus joining Ivan Lendl in another awe-inspiring record, although the great
Czech-American did it in consecutive
years. Fortune favours the brave, they say. One could claim with equal justice
that fortune favours the great, too.
If the above
logic about Wimbledon is accepted, namely that the importance of one Major is
estimated best by its exclusiveness (i.e. been won most by the best in certain
era and least by “one slam wonders”), then the US Open is every bit as
prestigious as Wimbledon. During the 45
editions in the Open Era so far (1968-2012), only four players have won the US
Open (one of them twice) and no other Major in their careers. These are Manuel
Orantes (1976, on clay), Patrick
Rafter (1997-8), Andy Roddick (2003) and Juan Martin del Potro (2009). Two
important things should be noted. First, the last of these fellows is still
active and may improve his GS record. Second, at least two of the other three
were far from mediocre. Rafter played in two Wimbledon
finals, Roddick in three.
It may be
profitable to apply the same method to the Australian Open and Roland Garros,
and thus show why they may be regarded as the two least important Grand Slam events. (For Roland Garros this has been
alluded to above, but now it will receive a strong support.) However, first it
must be noted that during the 1970s and the early 1980s many of the greatest
players, at least the non-Australian ones, seldom went “down under”. For
example, Borg participated in only one Australian Open (1974), Connors in two
(1974-5), McEnroe in five – but only two of them (1983, 1985) were in his
prime. Likewise, Roland Garros was sometimes skipped by great players in top
form because of contractual complications, the classic example being Jimmy
Connors who was banned from the tournament between 1974 and 1978.
Keeping all
this in mind, it is still astonishing to find so many nobodies among the
winners of the Australian Open and Roland Garros, and not only in those ancient
times referred to in the above paragraph but also in the last quarter of a century
when all four Grand Slam events have, with but very few exceptions, been booked
by everybody every year. Among the Australian Open champions are names like
Thomas Johansson (2002), Petr Korda (1998), Johan Kriek (1981-2), Brian Teacher
(1980) and Roscoe Tanner (1977). No doubt excellent players, all of them, but
if they never won another Major they couldn’t have been that good, could they?
As for Roland
Garros, its champions’ list is full of “clay court specialists” who never did
anything remarkable on other surfaces; and we should remember that only one
fourth of the Grand Slam, and no more than one third of the regular ATP season,
is on clay. Recent “one slam wonders” include Gaston Gaudio (2004), Juan Carlos
Ferrero (2003), Albert Costa (2002), Carlos Moya (1998), Thomas Muster (1995),
Andres Gomez (1990) and Michael Chang (1989). Again, many of these fellows did
win important titles on hard (e.g. from the ATP Masters Series), some of them
even reached other Grand Slam finals (e.g. Chang at the 1996 US Open, Moya at
the 1997 Australian Open), yet never did they achieve anything more memorable
in the other three Majors. This is true even of some of the greatest Roland
Garros champions from those recent times. Gustavo Kuerten (3 titles, 1997,
2000-1) and Sergi Bruguera (2 titles, 1993-4) did have some success on hard,
but neither of them ever left a significant trace in the other Majors.
This long
digression has served the purpose to show one thing: the fact that most of
Pete’s Grand Slam titles are confined to Wimbledon
and US Open is not without significance. Now let’s get back to his career.
Sampras
entered the 1993 US Open as No. 2 in the world, but after winning the title he
was of course back at the top. This time he held it for the remarkable 82 consecutive
weeks, from September 13, 1993, to April 9, 1995. Excluding the two Majors,
however, the second half of 1993 wasn’t all that impressive. He won two small
titles more, in Lyon and in Antwerp, and lost his only final for the year at
the Masters where Michael Stich defeated him, 7-6(3), 2-6, 7-6(7), 6-2.
Nevertheless,
1993 was a great year for Pete. He played in 23 tournaments (including 4 GS),
winning eight titles (2 GS) and reaching one final, seven semi-finals (1 GS)
and 3 quarterfinals (1GS); only in four tournaments did he fail to reach at
least the quarters. His win-loss balance in the end of the year reached the
impressive 84.54% (82-15). Most important of all, he finished at No. 1 and made
a strong claim to be one of the all-time greats. Yet I doubt there were many
tennis specialists who expected Sampras to become a living legend, undoubtedly the
greatest player of his era.
1994: Annus Mirabilis #2
1994 was the
most miraculous of all miraculous years. Pete won 10 titles (personal record)
on three different surfaces, including two Grand Slams, three Mercedes Super 9
tournaments (personal record), and the Masters. No wonder that he didn’t drop
the No. 1 for a single week this year. He won fewer matches but he also lost
fewer and his year-end balance was better, percentage-wise: 73-9 (89.02%). This
was a personal record also. Although Pete continued to win more than 80% of his
matches in five of the next six years, he never again achieved quite so high a
percentage. In this respect, he remained far from the records set in the 1980s.
McEnroe’s 1984 season holds the record with 96.5% (82-3), followed by Jimmy
Connors’ 1974 with 95.9% (93-4). Even Roger Federer couldn’t quite match these
staggering figures, although in 2005 (81-4, 95.3%) and 2006 (92-5, 94.8%) he
did come close.
The year
started with Pete’s longest winning streak in his whole career. After losing in
the first week of the year and in the first round of the tournament in Doha (to No. 205, the
Moroccan Karim Alami), he lost only once more in his next 40 matches; 27 of these
wins were consecutive. They brought him 5 titles (Indian Wells, Miami, Osaka,
Tokyo, Rome), three of them from the Masters Series, beating in the finals
Korda, Agassi, Roux, Chang and Becker, respectively. Among other things, this
was the only year in which Pete could triumph in both Indian Wells and Miami, two great tournaments held in two consecutive weeks
including a journey from California to Florida. Were it not for
another first-round loss, to the tough Dutchman Jacco Eltingh (No. 89) in Philadelphia, Pete would
have had 40 wins in a row, but it was not to be.
Until the Philadelphia hitch in mid-February, Sampras defended his
title in Sydney
(d. Lendl, 7-6, 6-4,
in what turned out to be the last – 146th! – final in his long
career) and won his first Australian Open. In Melbourne he was nearly knocked
out in the 2R by the completely unknown Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov, then No. 60
but soon to find a place among the first ten, but he got away with 9-7 in the
fifth (after he’d lost the fourth with 1-6). Pete dropped but one set more
during the whole tournament (against Magnus Gustafsson in the quarters), beating in straight sets
Lendl (No. 17 but still strong) in the 4R, Courier in the semis, and
Todd Martin in the
final.
Apparently
fatigue accumulated, for after this stunning series of titles Pete’s
performance started to wane. He reached another quarterfinal at Roland Garros
and his first final at the Queen’s Club, but lost on both occasions. In the 2R
in Paris he
beat the long-haired Chilean Marcelo Rios who at the time was No. 283 but a few
years later would contest the No. 1 place with Pete; three rounds later he lost
to Courier in four sets. On grass he was defeated by his friend and sometime
doubles partner Todd Martin, but when they met again at Wimbledon
a few weeks later Sampras was victorious again. He defended his Wimbledon title by defeating three Top 10 players in the
last three rounds, including Todd, No. 9 at the time, in the semis against whom
he lost his only set in the whole tournament. Ivanisevic was his rival in
the final, but despite his stupendous serve the Croatian couldn’t achieve
anything more than tiebreaks in the first two sets; he lost the third to love.
But Goran and Pete would meet again in a Wimbledon
final, this time as equals.
The second
half of the 1994 was far less successful than the first. Perhaps most painful
of all, Pete couldn’t defend his US Open title, having been defeated by the tough
Peruvian Jaime Yzaga (No. 23) in the 4R. Nor was the European indoor season any
better. He took part in two big tournaments from the Mercedes Super 9 series
but reached only the semi-final in Stockholm (l.
to Becker, 4-6, 4-6)
and the quarterfinal in Paris
(l. to Agassi, 6-7(6), 5-7). Defending his title in Antwerp was a small consolation: he didn’t
have to beat anybody even in Top 20. The stubborn and technically very
well-prepared Swede Magnus Larsson (No. 22) fell in the final, as he had done
on two previous occasions in the last two months or so. Magnus took his revenge
by defeating Sampras
in four sets in the final of the lucrative Grand Slam Cup, the last tournament
for the year. Pete might well have been tired from the epic five-set thriller
(10-8 in the last set) with Ivanisevic in the semis. But before that final loss
for the year, there was one great triumph.
In 1994 Pete
won his second Masters, the only ATP tournament that may be compared to the
Grand Slam events. It is much less strenuous of course (five matches at most:
three in the group, semi-final and final, only the last one is best-of-five),
but it does collect together the eight best players in the world. Pete started
with a loss to Becker (5-7, 5-7) but later beat him in the very final
in four sets (4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4). Meanwhile the road to the last match was
hard indeed. His second match was with the great Stefan Edberg who, as was
his wont, gave him a lot of trouble with fabulous passing shots and impeccable
volleys. Sampras fought hard to win with a third-set tiebreak. In the semis he defeated Agassi but only after
losing the first set and taking the second with a tense tie-break (7-5 points).
Thanks to
this Masters and to the glorious first half of the year, 1994 was in the end
perhaps the greatest of all 15 years that Pete spent in the professional tennis.
He didn’t know it at the time, but the next year would bring personal grief
mixed with the professional glory.
1995: Personal Grief and Professional Glory
1995 started
with the Australian Open and one of the most famous – and certainly the most
affecting – personal episode in Pete’s whole career. In the fifth set of the
quarterfinal against Courier, having just learned that his coach and friend Tim
Gullikson was terminally ill, Sampras broke down completely on the court and
could barely finish the match. The incident made sensational news. The world at
large was finally convinced that Pete Sampras was human after all. He always
was, if not criticized, at least thought boring because he seldom showed
emotion on the court. Evidently most people are simple-minded enough to think
that if one doesn’t express one’s feelings with histrionic outbursts one doesn’t
have any. I’d rather think the opposite is true. But what does it matter
anyway? Pete was well aware of all that and in his autobiography, with his
typically quiet self-assurance, he put it very well:
Players
like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and Boris Becker won legions of fans because
they so freely vented their emotions. I understood that they needed to do that
to play – or feel like they were playing – their best tennis. And, of course,
it always made good copy, and added an extra layer of interest to the
personalities of those guys. I never begrudged or envied that. But I also felt
that the media could have done more to appreciate that I was the yin to their
yang.
In
tennis, you always have two opponents out there – the other guy and yourself. […]
The most important guy you have to beat is yourself – the part of you that’s
prone to doubt, fear, hesitation, and the impulse to give up. If you’re too
busy struggling with yourself, like some players, you can hardly be expected to
beat your opponent.
[…]
I
also was less interested in being appreciated or understood than in being a
champion, and I didn’t mind being an exemplary one. I wanted to wring every
ounce of potential from the Gift, and the only way I could see doing that was
through self-control. I also believed that if I just lived up to my potential,
appreciation and even understanding would follow. That was my blueprint for
success, and it created a backlash once it began to pay off. It didn’t help
that guys like McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were around bemoaning the lack of
“personality” in tennis.
[…]
Besides,
who said a tennis player was obliged to show personality (if that’s what you
want to call it)? I wasn’t in tennis to win popularity contests, to show how
interesting a person I was, or to be an entertainer. I was in the game to play
tennis at the highest level within my reach, and to win titles. Tennis was my
first love and also my professional business. And I never confused that with
show business. If I wasn’t going to be remembered for my game, I wanted to be
remembered for the way I carried myself. If I wasn’t going to be remembered for
that – I didn’t want to be remembered.
I can only
add that John and Jimmy obviously confused the personality on court with the one off
court. The fact that most tantrums did happen on court doesn’t mean they have
anything to do with the game. The funny thing is that in those times, the
1990s, there was a great variety of different playing styles among the great;
in other words, there was a good deal of “personality” on the court. This is hardly the case today when three of the “Big
Four” share the same kind of dreadful anonymity as do the matches in a single matchbox.
What would McEnroe and Connors say today? Well, I don’t know about Jimmy, but
John regularly praises highly the current crop on the top. Then again, he is a
commentator for great companies. He’s on a payroll.
Even the
British, whom one might expect would appreciate reserve, always thought Sampras
a bit of a bore. Why? Because he didn’t make brilliant speeches at the
Champions’ Dinner. In fact, through the years they have shown themselves, and
their precious, tradition-stuffed Wimbledon,
no different than any mindless crowd involved in a highly publicized event.
Sampras played some of his finest tennis on the grass of the All England Club,
yet never did he become half as popular as Becker or Agassi, both of them born
showmen who always entertained the crowd. It should be the game that matters
first, right? Well, it seldom does. At least the titles more often do.
Somewhere around the third or fourth title, the former Empire Makers finally
realised, if dimly, that Sampras really was a great player.
As a matter
of fact, Sampras has shown lots of emotion on the court. He just did it only after really important points, and even
then it was far from the elaborate gymnastics or frantic shouting employed by
many others. Most of the time while playing his demeanour was cool, collected,
almost indifferent. He never smashed rackets or shouted to umpires; I saw him
only once to just drop his racket on the ground after missing a very easy point
at the net, and in the rare cases when he did argue with the man in the high chair
he kept his voice at normal levels. But all this, I repeat, is entirely irrelevant.
Of course in those exceedingly rare instances when Pete’s game was discussed,
it was deemed tedious because it’s only “serve, ace, serve, ace, serve, ace”
and nothing more. This may mean only one of two things: 1) YouTube is a figment
of my imagination and it doesn’t really exist; or 2) most people are blind.
In spite of
such emotional disturbances, and in spite of the fact that Pete didn’t defend
his title, the 1995 Australian Open was one of his strongest Grand Slam
performances. He reached the final where he lost to Agassi
in four sets. But the real gems were the 4R and the QF against Larsson and
Courier, respectively. Pete won both from two sets down: 4-6, 6-7(4), 7-5, 6-4,
6-4 against the Swede,
6-7(4), 6-7(3), 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 against his compatriot.
The latter was an incredible all-court drama, some three and a half hours long, that continued until
well after midnight and left the audience, nearly intact despite the late hour,
completely drained. There was everything in this match: from Pete’s emotional
breakdown to an obscenity warning for Courier (who at one place, after he made
an easy forehand mistake, was frustrated enough to exclaim quite audibly
“Fuck”) – and lots of great tennis of course. It’s a pity that such glorious achievements
– two comebacks from 0-2 sets in a row – had to end without a title, but that’s
tennis. After the 1990 US Open, this was the first time when Pete and Andre
contested a GS crown. The score now was 1-1, but little did Andre know that
until the end of their careers he would lose three more of the most priceless
finals in tennis. As for Pete, he didn’t lose another one for more than five
years.
By the way,
in 1995 the Sampras-Agassi rivalry reached its absolute peak. After the final
in Melbourne
they met four times more, all of them in high-profile finals. They dominated
completely the California-Florida coupling of Masters tournaments, Pete winning in Indian Wells, 7-5,
6-3, 7-5, Andre prevailing in Key Biscayne a week later, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6(3). Agassi
also won in Montreal,
another elite tournament of the Masters series and one that always eluded
Sampras. Pete had the last word for the year, however. He defeated his greatest
rival in the US Open final
with 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5, and claimed his third title at Flushing Meadows. Only
after this crucial win did he regain the No. 1 place. For the greater part of
the year, 30 consecutive weeks from April 10 to November 5, Andre had been at
the top.
The 1995 clay
season was a total disaster. Pete entered five tournaments and lost in the
first round four times – including at Roland Garros by the Austrian Gilbert
Schaller (No. 24). The only slight spark in the clay darkness was the semi-final
in Hamburg,
but Andrei Medvedev put an end to all hopes for something more, 4-6, 6-2, 4-6.
In stark
contrast, the grass season on English soil in June could not have been better.
Pete won his first title at the Queen’s Club (d. Guy Forget, 7-6(3), 7-6(6))
and his third one at the All England Club (d. Becker, 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4, 6-2
with one of the finest performances in his whole career). Both winning streaks were notable for
marathon semi-finals. At Queen’s No. 73 in the world, the relentless German Marc-Kevin
Goellner, didn’t give up until he lost the third set with 11-13 games. At Wimbledon Ivanisevic was twice
trailing only to come back in the match by winning another set; he finally lost
the fifth, 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. It is worth noting that Pete also beat
two Britons during the early stages, No. 174 Tim Henman, 6-2, 6-3, 7-6(3), and
No. 60 Greg Rusedski, 6-4,6-3, 7-5. Both would soon be much higher in the ranking and both would
create a good deal of court trouble for Pete, especially Henman in two
memorable, four-set SF in 1998
and 1999 in which he
was supported by the frenzied English crowds.
The
post-Wimbledon part of the year was a mixed bag. Pete lost two finals (in Lyon
to the freckled Wayne Ferreira, and in Montreal
to Agassi as already mentioned) and won two titles (in Paris, d. Becker in straight sets, 7-6(5), 6-4, 6-4, and at
the US Open as already mentioned). At Flushing Meadows, he met his last-year’s
executor, Jaime Yzaga, in the 2R, but this time he dispatched the Peruvian in straight sets, letting
him take but eight games. Pete was lucky with the draw, but winning the
tournament still required four-sets victories over Philippoussis in the 3R
and Courier in the semis.
The year-end was lacklustre – a semi-final at the Masters (l. to Chang, 4-6,
4-6) and a quarterfinal at the Grand Slam Cup (l. to Ivanisevic due to injury
and withdrawal from the match).
In 1995
Sampras also won the Davis Cup with the USA team. They defeated Russia on
their own soil (and on clay) in the final, Pete winning both of his singles
matches, in straight sets against Kafelnikov (now No. 6)
and in five long ones against Andrei Chesnokov, 3-6,
6-4, 6-3, 6-7, 6-4. In the latter match, the exhaustion proved a little too
much and Pete collapsed on the court while raising his hands after the last
point; he was immediately taken away for medical examination but fortunately
there was nothing serious. Earlier during this year, he won two singles against
Sweden (Enqvist, Wilander)
and Italy
(Furlan, Gaudenzi). This time, unlike the debacle in France four years ago, he clearly
was the right man for the job.
Taken as a
whole, 1995 was a very strong year indeed. Despite Agassi’s leading their
head-to-head with 3-2 and holding the No. 1 for most of the year, it was Pete who
ended as No. 1 for third consecutive time, and justly so, although he regained
the place as late as November 6 (just after his title in Paris). Altogether he
won five titles, including two GS and two MS9 events, and he lost four finals
more, including one GS and two MS9 tournaments. He finished with 66-16 (80.49%)
win-loss record (72-16, 81.82%, if you count the Davis Cup).
1996: Downfall?
1996 was the
year of the first signs that Sampras’ domination would not be everlasting. He
won eight tournaments and 87.84% of his matches (65-9), lost only one final,
and ended as No. 1 for fourth consecutive year and indeed held the place during
all the time except for eight weeks in the first few months. Yet there were subtle
but disturbing differences with previous seasons.
The Grand
Slam campaign was only moderately successful, to begin with. For the first time
in four years he won “only” one title. In Melbourne he was knocked out in the 3R,
beaten in straight sets (including two tie-breaks) by the Australian (but
fellow of Greek descent) Mark Philippoussis, a big man with a big game, especially
his bullet-sending serve, who could avenge himself for the loss at the US Open
on the previous year and at the same stage of the tournament. (The overall
head-to-head between Sampras and Philippoussis is 7-3 for Sampras, 5-2 in GS
matches.). In Paris
he reached the only semi-final in his career, defeating the twice ex-champion Jim Courier from 0-2 sets
in the quarters, but lost in straight sets to Kafelnikov (who later won
the tournament). By far the most painful loss was in London, where the Dutch Richard Krajicek,
another big man with a big serve, eliminated Pete in the quarterfinal and
stopped his series of 25 consecutive match wins at the All England Club.
This quarterfinal
in Paris was the last important meeting between
Sampras and Courier; they played only two matches more, in 1997 and 1999 in Rome and Miami
respectively, both times at R64, their earliest ever. Friends off court (well,
sort of) and Davis Cup partners, Pete and Jim played no fewer than 20 matches
in the course of 12 years (1988-1999), Sampras leading 16-4 in the final run.
One of the main reasons why Courier could never repeat his impressive success
from the early 1990s, when he won 4 GS titles (2 AO and 2 RG), is that he
managed to beat Pete in only 20% of their matches. His victories were usually
big – QF at the US Open, 1991; SF at the Masters, 1992; QF at the Roland
Garros, 1994 – but they were the exception rather than the rule. Pete leads 5-2
in GS matches, 4-0 in finals overall (including one GS, the 1993 Wimbledon, and one Masters, 1991), and 7-1 in semi-finals
overall (3-0 in GS). Courier, much like Agassi, was a powerful baseliner who
always brought the best in Pete and made him work hard to win. Unlike Andre,
however, Jim was rather weak mentally and, perhaps, he developed something of a
Sampras complex. (So, to some extent at least, was and did Andre?) Courier is
the only player against whom Pete has won two matches from two sets down (Australian
Open 1995, QF; Roland Garros 1996, QF).
When the US
Open came, it was time for Grand Slam retribution. Neither Ivanisevic in the semis
nor Chang in the final
could stop Pete from winning his fourth title at Flushing Meadows. But the real
masterpiece was the quarterfinal against Alex Corretja, an unseeded clay-courter
from Spain
and possessor of extraordinary stamina. After more than four hours of superb
tennis, the match had to be decided with a fifth-set tiebreak. (As is
well-known, the US Open is the only GS tournament in which there is such a thing; the other three employ
two games difference in the deciding set.) Pete was obviously struggling with
great physical exhaustion, he could barely stand on his feet in this tie-break.
At one point, he actually felt sick and threw up on the court! Not much came
out of his mouth while he was bending over, using his racket as a crutch, but nevertheless
he was taken away by the medics immediately after the match was over. Somehow,
by sheer effort of will, he managed to finish this tiebreak against the
Spaniard who looked impossibly fresh and fit. Only in the very end of this epic
match, surely one of the greatest and most moving in the history of the US
Open, did Providence
smile at Pete: Corretja made a double fault on match point. The final result, 7-6(5), 5-7, 5-7, 6-4, 7-6(7),
and the touching hug Pete and Alex exchanged over the net, are things hard to
forget.
Six of the
rest seven titles this year were relatively
minor (San Jose, Memphis,
Hong Kong, Tokyo, Indianapolis, Basel), certainly none was
from the MS9 series, something that happened for the first time in five years
(he reached one final, in Stuttgart, but he lost it). This is not to say that
these were easy wins of no significance. Far from it. In many of them Pete had
to negotiate victories against some of his strongest rivals, including Agassi, Ivanisevic and Chang. But the real jewel
in the 1996 crown was Pete’s winning his third Masters, not only because this
is the most prestigious tournament after the Big Four, but because of the way
he did it.
The end of
the year was marked by two grand, five-set clashes in finals with Boris Becker.
The first one was in Stuttgart, where the blond
giant won, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3,
3-6, 6-4, and the second one was at the Masters in Hanover, again on German soil where the
crowd was cheering every point of their favourite with something much like
hysteria. Just like 1994, Pete lost to Boris in the round-robin but later defeated him in the match
for the title. He would later repeat the stunt with Agassi in 1999.
Stretching to
some four hours and including three tiebreaks, the 1996 Masters final has
become the stuff tennis legends are made of. Certainly, it is one of the
greatest matches in the history of the game. Like the quarterfinal against
Corretja at the US Open, Pete won this battle by his iron will alone. He was
not quite in top form. During the whole match his serve was shaky, while
Becker’s was stupendous: he outaced Sampras by a factor of two! Pete also made
unusually many not-so-forced errors, not least in the marathon tiebreak in the
fourth set where he missed two match points. The final score was 3-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(4), 6-7(11), 6-4, but a more telling statistic is the number of
points won: 178 to 166 for Becker! Only 10 of all 344 points in the match were
breakpoints; only two of them led to breaks (one for Becker in the first set,
one for Sampras in the final one). In other words, this was the kind of match
decided by no more than three or four critical points. It is not a coincidence
that when Pete finally broke Becker’s serve, in the ninth game of the decider
thanks to several precise passing shots, he expressed his satisfaction with a
violent fist pump and a nearly savage cry: one of his least restrained moments
on court ever.
It was not
for nothing that Pete titled his autobiography A Champion’s Mind. Physique and technique are very important, no
question about that, but it is the strength of mind, the champion’s mentality,
that forges the great victories on the court. It’s not enough to love tennis.
You have to love winning also. I have never seen a better proof of that than
this tremendous final.
This is the
place to say a few words about the Sampras-Becker rivalry, the second most
important after the one with Agassi. Pete and Boris played two matches more in
1997, but the 1996 Masters final was their last epic battle. Between 1990 and
1997 they met 19 times on the court, Pete leading the head-to-head with 12-7 (6-1
in finals). Except for the aforementioned tournament in Stuttgart,
Becker never won a final against Sampras, losing six times through the years
(twice at the Masters, and once at Wimbledon, Paris,
Rome and Indianapolis).
Oddly enough, Wimbledon was the only GS event where
they shared a court, so to say. Pete won all three encounters: SF in 1993, F in
1995, QF in 1997. The rivalry reached its peak during the period from 1994 to
1996 when they played ten times. In all cases, these were great spectacles
between all-court titans. Both could serve-and-volley and grind from the baseline as well as anyone. These matches are
classics now, especially in the present era of appallingly cautious and
monotonous tennis.
1997: Resurgence?
1997 opened
with a bang: 17 straight wins and three titles, including Pete’s second (and
last, alas) triumph at the Australian Open. He also beat Greg Rusedski to
defend his title in San Jose and Pat Rafter to
claim his third crown in Philadelphia,
one of his favourite tournaments, perhaps partly for sentimental reasons for it
was there, of course, that he won his first professional title in 1990.
He had some
really tough moments in Melbourne.
In the 4R he met the 19-year-old Slovak Dominik Hrbaty, No. 70 in the world,
who in time was leading with a break in the final set. Truth to tell, Pete was
to blame himself, for his playing was apathetic this
day, but in the end he could take advantage over the young man’s inexperience
and close the match with 6-4 in the fifth. Afterwards the cocky Slovak boasted that the next time he
would teach Pete how to play tennis, or other words to that effect, but in fact
he lost in straight sets in Wimbledon’s first round (1998); in 2000 he could finally beat him, 0-6, 6-4, 6-4, but that was
for the entirely unimportant World Team Cup. Hrbaty made a decent but entirely
unremarkable career, reaching No. 12 in 2005 and winning altogether six minor
singles titles. Five-set drama, too, had to be played in the quarters against Albert Costa, one of
those Spanish clay court specialists who could always be relied on making your
life hard on any surface. But then Pete speeded up, giving only 10 games to Muster in the semis and
only eight to Moya in
the final.
The 1997 San Jose final is
notable because it is the only one Pete ever won because of his opponent’s
injury and retirement. Rusedski took the first set, 6-3, was playing really
well, and had no reason to funk it. However, it is interesting that the
problems with his wrist started only at 4-0 for Sampras in the second set, and
he retired when the result swelled to 5-0 and 0-30 on Rusedski’s serve. The
Canadian Brit won their only other final, in Paris on the next year, 6-4, 7-6(4), 6-3, but
this was his only success in ten matches between 1995 and 2002. Only two of
them were at GS events, 1995 at Wimbledon’s
R16 and 2002 at the US Open’s R32. The former was a routine win in straight
sets, 6-4, 6-3, 7-5, but the latter was perhaps the most difficult step to the
last title in Pete’s career.
The rest of
the hard court season was disappointing. Pete reached a semi-final in Miami but lost to Sergi
Bruguera, a clay court specialist (twice champion at Roland Garros) who “was
better than that” and “moved like a deer” as Sampras recognised in his
autobiography. In Indian Wells he lost his very first match (the one from the
second round, the top seeds generally starting from there) against the Czech
Bohdan Ulihrach. The clay court season didn’t fare any better. He lost three first
matches at three consecutive tournaments (Monte Carlo,
Rome, World
Team Cup) and reached only the 3R of Roland Garros.
Pete then
failed to defend his title at the Queen’s Club, losing to Jonas Bjorkman in the
QF, but he more than compensated for that by winning his fourth Wimbledon a month later. It must have been tough to
resume his “subscription for the title” after the 1996 loss, but Pete did it with
his characteristic thoroughness. He won four consecutive titles more, achieving
31 match wins in a row until Roger Federer stopped him in the 4R of the
2001 tournament. Back in 1997, while he beat Becker in the QF, the
really hard match to win was the one with Petr Korda in the 4R. Pete took the
first two sets but lost the next two, a rare thing indeed, before taking the
match with 6-4, 6-3,
6-7(8), 6-7(1), 6-4. In the last two rounds he had little trouble with
lucky losers like Todd Woodbridge
and Cedric Pioline;
both of them were indeed lucky to reach such stages at Wimbledon.
The rivalry
between Pete Sampras and Petr Korda is one the most underestimated in the
tennis history of the 1990s. Perhaps it is inaccurate to speak of rivalry
because the final score is 12-5 in Pete’s favour, but it’s a fact that the
lanky Czech nearly always made his life on court pretty miserable. Korda was
not exactly nobody, to begin with; at one time (February 1998) he was No. 2,
and he finished his career with ten singles titles (including 1 GS and 1 MS9)
and 14 finals (including 1 GS and 2 MS9). Of the 17 matches they played, 11
reached a deciding set; four of these turned into nerve-wracking five-set
thrillers (including their only meeting in a final, Indian Wells, 1994). After
the 1997 Wimbledon they met at the US Open two
months later and Korda took a bitter revenge. He dethroned the defending
champion in the 4R after three and a half hours and three tiebreaks, 6-7(4), 7-5, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 7-6(3). A little consolation for Pete was that he won their last meeting in
Paris later on
the same year.
Probably the
most mesmerising, though certainly not the most important, match between
Sampras and Korda was the 1993 SF at the Grand Slam Cup in Munich. This really was the tennis equivalent
of a Greek tragedy, or a Wagnerian drama if you like. After four and a half
hours Korda won with the highly unorthodox result 3:6, 7:6(3), 3:6, 7:6(10),13:11. Merely to enumerate the highlights would take pages. It is enough to say
that Pete lost altogether five match
points, three in the monstrous tiebreak of the fourth set and two in the 16th
game (8:7) of the last set. Missing so much was rather unusual for Pete, to say
the least. This may indicate the kind of special pressure he must have been
under when playing against Korda.
In the second
half of 1997 Pete won four titles more, all of them important ones, and aside
from the US Open and the Davis Cup he played and lost early in only two other
tournaments (Indianapolis, Stuttgart). He captured 2 MS9 events after
two great series of wins against formidable rivals from the top of the ranking.
In Cincinnati he defeated Rafter
(No. 19, R16), Kafelnikov
(No. 6, QF), Costa (No.
17, SF) and Muster (No.
4, F); three months later in Paris he “took the scalps” of Becker (No. 38, R32,
their earliest match ever, round-wise), Korda (No. 8, R16), Muster (No. 12, QF), Kafelnikov (No. 8, SF)
and Bjorkman (No. 10, F).
In addition to all that, he took his second Grand Slam Cup and fourth Masters,
again after impressive series of wins: Mantilla (No. 14, R16), Bjorkman (No. 13, QF), Rusedski (No. 10, SF), Rafter (No. 3, F) in Munich;
and Rusedski (No. 5,
RR), Rafter (No. 3,
RR), Bjorkman (No. 4,
SF), Kafelnikov (No.
6, F) in Hanover. He lost to Moya in his first match
at the Masters, but that was of no consequence except that it gave the Spaniard
an opportunity for a mild revenge for the crushing defeat in the Australian
Open final nearly 11 months earlier. In other words, in 1997 he achieved the
finest indoor season in his career: almost two months of awesome consistency
and three titles out of four tournaments entered (l. to Krajicek in Stuttgart).
Taken as a
whole, 1997 was Pete’s last truly glorious year; from 1998 onwards he started
having more and more problems with his game, became more inconsistent, and had
to put up with some embarrassingly long “dry” periods (i.e. without winning a
title). He ended as No. 1 for fifth consecutive year, at the time sharing a
record with Connors, and didn’t relinquish the top place for a single week. He
won eight titles including 2 GS, 2 MS9 and the Masters, as well as 84.13% of
his matches (53-10). He didn’t lose a single final. A glorious year indeed!
1998: The Beginning of the End
1998 was
spent under record pressure. Pete was chasing one of the greatest records in
the Open Era: six straight years ending at No. 1, one more than Jimmy Connors
between 1974 and 1978. Together with Roy Emerson’s 12 Grand Slams, this was the
ultimate challenge for Sampras. In his autobiography, he makes a most
fascinating comparison between the records. Twelve GS crowns are impressive
achievement, he says, but that actually means winning two for six years,
consecutive or not, and you have at least ten years career at your disposal.
But ending at No. 1 for the year – now that is different. It requires a much
greater consistency of performance. Even if you are not No. 1 for the greater
part of the year, you still have to keep yourself close enough to attack the
top at the end. You can afford neither to miss many tournaments nor to lose
many times in the early rounds. If your aim is to win two grand slams a year,
you can afford both.
Again in his
autobiography, in the same low-key but highly revealing on careful reading
style, Pete makes it clear what an enormous pressure this record put on him at
the time. It was quite nerve-racking. He well knew that this was an opportunity
that opens but once in a career, and he was probably right that had he missed
it he would have been sorry forever. But of course he didn’t. Only one player superseded
him at No. 1 that year, the Chilean Marcelo Rios who won an impressive string
of titles but no Slams at all. So he became only the second player, after
Lendl, to become No. 1 without a single GS title, and he has remained the only
No. 1 who never did get one. Rios spent no more than a few weeks (six overall,
to be exact) at the top, but the short and swarthy Chilean remained a potential
threat until the end of the year.
Finally, it
was sheer luck that kept Pete on the top. He had to win the Masters at all
costs, but then Rios injured his back and withdrew from the tournament. Devoid
of incentive, Sampras won all three of his round-robin matches but lost to Alex
Corretja in the semis with a third-set tiebreak. In a way, Pete was right and
this was his most remarkable achievement. Not even Roger Federer could match
it: he has “only” four straight years as No. 1 on his account. As a matter of
fact, no player has ever finished six times as the year-end No. 1, in a row or
not; Federer and Connors have five years each, Lendl and McEnroe have four. This
achievement speaks perhaps even more tellingly of Sampras’ domination than his
titles, finals and win-loss balances.
Otherwise
1998 was full of ups and downs. Pete won only four titles altogether, the
fewest since 1991! Three of these were relatively minor tournaments (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Vienna),
the fourth was Wimbledon, his only GS title for
this and the next two years. Pete was lucky to win all those titles by beating
only one Top 10 player! He lost no fewer than three finals, including the MS9
events in Cincinnati and Paris (he was also demolished by Agassi in the San
Jose final, 2-6, 4-6);
he had lost more finals only twice before, in 1991 and 1995. Pete’s win-loss
balanced dropped below the 80% mark (61-17, 78.21) for the first time since
1991. Clearly, his career was in decline. And he knew it.
There are few
highlights worth noting. Pete lost to the Slovak Karol Kucera in the Australian
Open QF, 4-6, 2-6, 7-6(5), 3-6, but when they later met at the US Open, again in the quarters, he was
in much better form and didn’t give Karol a single set, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. The climax
of this mini-rivalry came on the fast indoor carpet in Vienna where they met in the final. Again,
Pete had no mercy, 6-3, 7-6(3), 6-1, though he certainly wasn’t in his best form. This was
his last title for the year and the only one from the gruesome indoor season
that fall. In a desperate attempt to secure the No. 1 in the end of the year,
Pete played six tournaments in a row in five different countries,
criss-crossing nearly the whole of Central Europe (Basel,
Vienna, Lyon, Stuttgart,
Paris, Stockholm).
He reached the final in the French capital (l. to Rusedski, 4-6, 6-7(4), 3-6) and the
semis in Stuttgart (l. to Krajicek, 7-6(2), 4-6, 6-7(5)), but
in Basel and Stockholm he was knocked out in the first round, in the former
case by the South-African Wayne Ferreira, a rather mediocre player who always
outdid himself against Sampras. In Lyon he “lost”
without play to Tommy Haas (then No. 53) in the quarters.
1998 also
marked the first more serious clashes with Pat Rafter, even though they had
already played eight times, Sampras leading 7-1 (2-0 in finals, Philadelphia
and Grand Slam Cup, 1997). The great Aussie was in his absolute if short prime,
practising with great skill the art of serve and volley, a little dated even
then and completely extinct today. He beat Sampras in two very important
matches, the final in Cincinnati and a SF at the US Open. The latter was a particularly
impressive five-set epic, 7-6(8), 4-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3. The aggressive play at the net and his remarkable
athleticism later brought Rafter his second US Open title in a row. It was to
be his last GS, not least because Pete defeated him in the 2000 Wimbledon final.
The
Sampras-Rafter rivalry is a curious one, partly because of the unusual personal
tension that accompanied the professional relationship in 1997-98 and partly
because of the unusual time course. Rafter won their first meeting in 1993 (Indianapolis, QF) in
three sets with three tiebreaks, but he lost the next seven matches from 1994
to 1997. The final in Cincinnati
was where the off-court fight started, and it was Pete who did it. Asked what
the difference between him and Pat was, he replied truthfully but very
tactlessly: “Ten Grand Slams”. This Pete acknowledges in his book, but he
doesn’t mention that after the US Open SF he tried to excuse his loss with some
dubious leg injury or that he disputed the umpire’s call at Rafter’s match
point in Cincinnati
(which may explain why he was somewhat flustered at the press conference later).
So Pat, who is a model of sportsmanship by the way, was naturally hurt on both
occasions. Pete was generally a gentleman when it came to losing, and that’s
why these careless, not to say insulting, remarks may perhaps be explained if
not condoned with his overwrought condition during much of this record-breaking
year. Anyway, later they spoke on the phone and patched up their differences,
so the handshakes over the net became noticeably warmer.
On-court Pete
acquitted himself much better. He won four of their next (and last) five
matches. Pat’s only victory was for the World Team Cup, a tournament of lesser
import. They met again in a Cincinnati final in 1999 and Pete won in straight sets. He couldn’t achieve that at GS
events, but he did manage in four sets, although at least once he was forced to
the wall. The 2000 Wimbledon
remains the hardest of all seven final matches that Pete played at the All
England Club. Rafter, much like Agassi, always brought the best in him. For
once, the starved public must have been satisfied. Rafter took the first set with
a lengthy tiebreak, 12-10, but lost the second with a shorter version, 5-7.
That’s where Pat’s resistance broke, but the next two sets were tougher than
the score suggests, 6-4, 6-2. A year later Pete and Pat met for the last time
in the 4R of the US Open,
6-3, 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4. In between there was one far-from-easy QF in Indian Wells
(2001), one of those mentally exhausting cases of second-set tiebreak to stay
in the match, 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-4. I have never seen a Sampras-Rafter match that is
not a feast for the eye of the tennis fan.
(Meanwhile,
it is interesting to note how many times Sampras lost in quarter- and semi-finals
to future champions. In addition to the just-mentioned case of Rafter in the 1998
US Open, there are plenty of other examples. For instance, Kafelnikov at the
1996 Roland Garros, Agassi at the 2001 Australian Open, Krajicek at the 1996
Wimbledon and in 1998 in Stuttgart, Corretja at the 1998 Masters, and many others.
On the whole, however, Sampras used to lose relatively little at later stages;
most of his losses were in early rounds and often to insignificant opponents who
seldom achieved anything more than the short-lived fame of “the man who defeated
Sampras”. This is a well-known phenomenon characteristic of quite a few great
players: they give their best against the great rivals but often lose to
nobodies, either because they underestimate them or because they fail to reach
their own peak performance. To my mind, however, this is testament also to
Pete’s outstanding mental strength, one of the most important components of his
long-lasting success; the same is true of the winning percentage in finals that
will be discussed in the last section of this piece. When he advanced to the
quarters, especially of a GS tournament, it is safe to say that Pete was more
committed to win the title than most players.)
The 1998 Wimbledon has entered tennis history because its final
between Sampras and Ivanisevic was reportedly so terribly ace-driven and it
bored the audience so much that it became one of the main reasons for the
notorious slowing down of grass and hard courts during the last decade or so.
Be that as it may, I remember the final as a suspenseful drama of great
magnitude, especially the first two sets, 6-7(2), 7-6(9), 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.
If anything, this final actually proved that great service alone can’t win you
a Wimbledon title. Ivanisevic served thrice more aces than Sampras. Nothing
doing. Perhaps Goran is the only GS winner in the Open Era of whom it could be
said that he had little but his mighty serve. It is notable that he won his
only Wimbledon (and his only GS title) in 2001
and only after Sampras was eliminated in the 4R by Federer. Other stupendous
servers from this era, such as Philippoussis and Rusedski, didn’t achieve even
that. Draw the conclusions yourself and compare with today’s tennis scene where
serve-and-volleyers are an extinct species (because you can’t play that way
without powerful serve and fast surface) and grinding from the baseline – powerful,
unimaginative, tedious grinding – is the name of the game.
1999: The Last Masters
1999 was
Agassi’s year. He won the French Open, thus completing the first Career Grand
Slam in the Open Era, later claimed the US Open as well, and he finally ended
the year as No. 1 for the first time in his career. But Pete had the last word
at the expense of his great rival. They met twice at the Masters, and Sampras
applied the tactic that had brought him success against Becker in 1994 and
1996. He lost the round-robin match, and lost it badly too, 2-6, 2-6, but in
the final he gave Agassi no chance whatsoever, 6-1, 7-5, 6-4. On the whole,
Pete played much better this year than he did in 1998, as if he was relieved
that the stress of the record was no longer there. Those guys who still claim
that records don’t affect players, in whatever sport you care to name, should
think again. A record is nothing less than a passport for history, one of the
finest forms of immortality there is. One must be inhuman not to let this (pardonable
vanity) affect one’s performance. The great ones have merely learned how to use
it in a positive direction, to raise their morale and strengthen their ambition.
In this year,
Sampras experienced his first serious physical setback, an ominous reminder
that old age was knocking on the door. Of course he was but 28 years old, but
after nearly a decade of professional tennis in an era as physically draining
as the 1990s (as opposed to the more leisurely 1980s, not to mention the 1970s)
he was beginning to feel, if only slightly, the burden of the years. He had to
miss the US Open and much of the indoor season because of a severe back injury.
After he was forced to retire during the tournament in Indianapolis
(QF vs Vincent Spadea) in mid-August, he didn’t play again until the beginning
of November in Paris
(and there he had to withdraw from his match with Tommy Haas at the R16 stage).
It’s a minor miracle that he was able to win the Masters and finish the year at
No. 3.
It was a year
of stark contrasts indeed. The hard court and the clay seasons were disasters.
Pete played six tournaments but couldn’t achieve anything more than two QF, in San Jose (l. to Philippoussis, W/O) and in Miami (l. to Krajicek,
2-6, 6-7(6)). Then something happened. I don’t know what it was and I doubt
Pete himself did. Suddenly he achieved the second longest winning streak in his
career (after the one in 1994): 24 match wins in the course of two months. It
brought him four titles: second in Queen’s (d. Ivanisevic in the QF, Hewitt
in the SF, and Henman
in the F, 6-7(1), 6-4, 7-6(4)), sixth at Wimbledon (d. Henman in four sets in the
SF and in the middle of pandemonium on Central Court, and Agassi in the F, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5, in what he
has rightly described as “the best tennis I ever played”), third in Cincinnati
(d. Rafter in the F but also Agassi in the SF and
Krajicek in the QF) and first in Los Angeles (d. Agassi in two tiebreak sets).
Who knows how long this series might have continued if Pete hadn’t been forced
to withdraw from the QF with Spadea in Indianapolis.
It was an
awesome series in every way. Agassi, Henman and Rafter were in Top 10 at the
time, Krajicek and Ivanisevic – in Top 20. Pete ended the year with 4-1
head-to-head with Agassi (3-0 in finals: Wimbledon, Masters and Los Angeles), Andre’s
only win being the entirely unimportant one in the round-robin stage of the
Masters. It was the most intense year of their on-court war since 1995, and
Pete came out as the absolute winner, even though Andre finished the year at
No. 1. Having broken Connors’ legendary record, Sampras surely didn’t care
about that anymore. In his autobiography, with typical graciousness and charm, he
mentions casually that Andre deserved it. In the same stylish and restrained
way he praised Kuerten for reaching No. 1 in the end of 2000 by one last
supreme effort: winning the Masters on the very inconvenient for him fast
indoor carpet.
By the way, the
QF at Queen’s was the last match between Sampras and Ivanisevic, the ultimate
rivalry to prove the difference between a great server and a great all-around
player. In the course of ten years (1990-99) they played 18 matches, Sampras
leading 12-6 (4-1 in GS; 3-1 in finals overall, including the two Wimbledon ones; 4-3 in SF). It’s interesting to note that
Goran won five of their first eight matches until the end of 1993. But then
Pete’s maturity started and Ivanisevic managed to win only one of their last
ten matches, a SF in Miami
(1996). The Croatian has another win also, a QF in the 1995 Grand Slam Cup, but
that was after withdrawal (W/O) and is not in the official statistics. Cf.
Sampras’ highly successful head-to-head stats with other fellows who possessed
serves as deadly as cannons, Rusedski (9-1) and Philippoussis (7-3) for
instance.
Taken as a
whole, despite some hardships, 1999 was a great year Pete. He won five titles,
three of them very important ones (1 GS, 1 MS9 and the Masters). For the first
time since 1989, his second professional year, he played fewer than 50
matches per season. But he won 84.44% of them (38-7). Quite apart from the
titles, he scored a great success at personal level. It was during his
recuperation from the back injury that he met Bridgette Wilson, his future
wife. They are now happily married and have two children. Pete knew that his
career would never again be the same cornucopia of success as in the mid-1990s;
he was too smart not to know that. But he also knew, or sensed to be more
precise, that he could win more Majors (“they are the ones that matter”, as he
simply put it once). He was determined to get them at any cost. Now that he had
equalled Emerson’s record 12, he wanted to break it.
2000-2002: Indian Summer at Flushing
Meadows
The last
three years of Pete’s career were, of course, by far the most difficult for his
fans – and especially for himself. He still played great tennis, but he played
it far less consistently. One of the things most difficult to cope with in
professional tennis is the tournament system. To win a title, you have to win
at least five matches in a row; or seven in GS events, all of them exhausting
best-of-five affairs. And you have so to organise your energy and concentration
as to give your best in the very last match, the final. This is fearsomely
difficult at both physical and mental level; that’s why so very few players in
the 1990s, and even fewer today, could do something memorable after the age of
31-32.
Furthermore,
in the first few years of the new millennium a new crop of young and talented
players arrive. The best of them could – and did – give Pete the best running
for his money he’d had in years. It is not a coincidence that the
slightly-better-than-mediocre Andy Roddick (2-1), the cocky Aussie Lleyton
Hewitt (5-4) and the hugely talented Russian Marat Safin (4-3) all have
positive head-to-head balance against Pete. They have earned it with some
spectacular wins, but I can’t help wondering how they would have measured up to
Sampras in his prime. From Pete’s own generation only a handful of players with
more than three matches against him can boast positive head-to-head records, namely
Sergi Bruguera (3-2), Richard Krajicek (6-4), Michael Stich (5-4) and Paul
Haarhuis (3-1).
At least
Stich and Krajicek deserve a few words of their own. The Dutchman, a most
talented player who never fulfilled his potential due to many injuries, was
Sampras’ most inconvenient opponent by a wide margin. Nine of their ten matches
were high-profile (Masters series and GS), and though there are no finals among
them, there are five quarters and two semis. At one time between 1996 and 1999
Krajicek achieved four consecutive wins: no other player has ever done that in
Sampras’ prime. Pete may derive some pleasure from the fact that he won the
last two encounters, including their only meeting at a GS event (US Open, 2000)
other than that unfortunate QF at Wimbledon
(1996). As for Stich, this prodigiously gifted but seemingly indifferent to
fame German is the only player who has beaten Pete in a Masters final (1992).
Oddly, they met but once in a GS tournament, a QF in the 1992 Wimbledon
when Stich was the defending champion, and Pete gave no quarter, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. Then
again, the German had a really off day and played lousy through the whole
match. Finally, it’s worth noting that a sizable portion of Pete’s balance
against Stich (1 win and 2 losses, that is one third of all matches!) happened
at the World Team Cup.
Sometimes statistics
can be truly revealing. In 2000 Sampras won only two titles; he’d never won
fewer in his career so far. In 2001 he won no
titles at all. Now that hadn’t happened for the last 12 years since 1989,
his second pro year. In 2002 he won but one title, the last one. All these
titles were big – 2 GS and 1 MS9 – but Pete had to pay for them with 7 lost
finals (2 GS, 1 MS9, and four minor tournaments). In other figures, in his last
three years (23% of his career!) he won less than 5% of all his titles and lost
nearly 30% of all his finals! In 2000 he could still finish at No. 3, but in
the end of 2001 he was already No. 10; in 2002 he dropped to No. 17 before the beginning
of the US Open. He won only 71.43% of 140 matches played during those three
years (100-40),
the lowest percentage since his rookie years. Between
Wimbledon 2000 and US Open 2002 he experienced the second longest “dry season”
in his career: 34 consecutive tournaments without a single title, again the worst since 1988-1990
(36). For every admirer of Pete Sampras these are depressing stats.
But he has compensated for them with the finest retirement in the Open Era.
In February
2001 Pete won his third title in Key Biscayne and last, 11th, from
the MS9 series. He beat Rusedski and Hewitt on his way to the final where he
barely managed to defeat Gustavo Kuerten, the flamboyant Brazilian, in four
sets, three of them with tiebreak, 6-1, 6-7(2), 7-6(5), 7-6(8).
It was yet another match that Pete won, not so much with his playing, which was
becoming increasingly erratic, as with his psychological power to concentrate and
put pressure on his opponent in the most important points. He failed to defend
his title at the Queen’s in June (l. to Hewitt, 4-6, 4-6) but he claimed his
seventh and last Wimbledon on the next month.
Despite Rafter in the final (who had dropped to No. 26 but was still playing great
tennis), he had a relatively easy draw. In the quarters he played No. 56,
Jean-Michael Gambill, and in the semis he defeated No. 237, Vladimir Voltchkov
from Belarus,
one of the most surprising GS semi-finalists in history.
The Wimbledon fairy tale ended abruptly in the 4R of the 2001
tournament. The hangman was a 19-years-old Swiss fellow named Roger Federer.
After five tremendous sets, he put an end to Pete’s 31 straight wins at the All
England Club, 6-7(7), 7-5,4-6, 7-6(2), 5-7. Seldom, if ever, has there been a more perfect transition
from one generation to another. Nobody could even conceive it back then, but in
the next decade Federer played seven straight finals (2003-9), winning six of
them and thus joining Borg in terms of consecutive wins yet surpassing him as
far as total crowns are concerned; he later claimed one title more and equalled
Pete’s unbelievable seven titles. We are not likely to see such Wimbledon masters for many generations. As for Sampras,
he returned on the next year only to lose in the 2R by another Swiss, George
Bastl, No. 145, in five sets. This was considerably more humiliating; Federer
had been No. 15, after all. When he next came to the All England Club, it was
as a VIP spectator of the men’s final in 2009 in order to see how Federer
breaks his record of 14 GS titles.
Apart from
the US Open and (to a lesser extent) Wimbledon,
Pete’s Grand Slam performance during the last three years was dismal. Only one
SF at the Australian Open in 2000 stands out. He lost to Agassi, the eventual
champion, in only the second of their 34 matches that went into five sets, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(0), 6-7(5), 1-6.
Andre in his late years was playing some of the finest tennis in his whole
career, so did Sampras, and that was a fabulous match to watch. It was a painful
loss for Pete, but he was to have the last word as far as Grand Slams are
concerned. I’m sure Agassi would willingly give away his wins in the 2001
finals in Indian Wells (7-6(6), 7-5, 6-1) and Los Angeles
(6-4, 6-2) if he could
change the history of his rivalry with Sampras at the US Open in those years. Pete was also
beaten in another two small-scale finals in 2001-2, in Long Island by Tommy
Haas, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, and in Houston
by Andy Roddick, 7-6(11-9), 6-3.
Without any
doubt, however, Pete’s best playing in his twilight years – indeed, some of the
greatest performances of his career – was at Flushing Meadows, the park in New York City where the
US Open takes place. Perhaps he had some sixth sense that Wimbledon,
though the scene of his greatest successes, was already gone and the place of
his first great triumph in 1990 was a better way to end his career. If he ever
thought so, if only subconsciously, he was certainly right. Between 2000 and
2002 Pete played three straight finals in New York, losing the first two and winning
the last. He now shared two great records with Lendl (eight finals) and Connors
(five titles overall, later joined by Federer). He still does.
It is sad
that Pete’s wonderful series of wins at the 2000 and 2001 tournaments should
have gone unrewarded with the title. In the first case he defeated Krajicek in one of the
greatest serve-and-volley battles ever, 4-6, 7-6(6), 6-4, 6-2, and Hewitt (No.
9) in the semis, 7-6(7), 6-4, 7-6(5), but he only reached the final to have
Marat Safin knock spots off him, 4-6, 3-6, 3-6. (It is
another almost tragic story that Safin won only one Major more, and that was
five years later; the man had the gift – but not the mentality – for so much
more.) In 2001 Pete defeated three Top 10 players to reach the final. First it
was Rafter, who was
No. 6 at the time, 6-3, 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4, then came what is quite possibly his
greatest battle with Agassi, 6-7(7), 7-6(2), 7-6(2), 7-6(5). Four tiebreak sets – now that’s something you don’t see often in
tennis. To top it, Pete didn’t give even a set to the defending champion Safin
in the semis, 6-3, 7-6(5),6-3. Unfortunately, all this tremendous effort was largely wasted, because
in the final Lleyton Hewitt completely demolished him with his precise passing shots, 7-6(4), 6-1,
6-1.
But then came
2002. Pete was the unprecedented number 17 in the draw and few expected him to
reach third final in a row, let alone win it. Yet he did. This tournament
wasn’t quite as stunning as the previous two, but neither was it a fluke. Rusedski and Haas (No. 3 at the time!)
were beaten in the 3R and 4R, respectively, the former in five sets, 7-6(4),
4-6, 7-6(3), 3-6, 6-4. In the quarters he made an exhibition of No. 11,
Andy Roddick, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, and in the semis he defeated the tough Dutchman Sjeng Schalken
(No. 25), 7-6(6), 7-6(4), 6-2. The cherry of the cake was the final against
Agassi, No. 6, which finalized their rivalry to 20-14 in Pete’s favour, 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4.
Could there
have been a more perfect ending of Pete’s career than a GS title at the
tournament of his first great success 12 years ago and, most amazingly of all,
against the same guy who just happened to be the greatest rival for the whole
of his career? No screenwriter could improve on it. Pete played no more
professional tournaments, although he didn’t retire officially until the 2003 US Open when he was given
tumultuous ovation and fine speeches by McEnroe, Becker (who flew from Germany
for the occasion) and Agassi (who was still active and wasn’t present but sent
a video message). Pete, for once, forgot his restraint and cried a good deal
while the Arthur Ashe Stadium was shaking with applause. When life offers
experiences of such emotional intensity and dramatic impact, you really don’t
need Hollywood.
The Summing-Up
Now let’s
stand back and look at Pete’s career as a whole. How does he measure up to the
best of his generation and the greatest of all time? Well, he does pretty well.
It may be claimed quite safely that he was the greatest of his era and one of
the greatest of all time (in the Open Era, that is). Whether one likes or
dislikes Pete’s playing style is of course a matter of taste and personal
opinion. It’s important to stress, yet again, that such “criteria” are entirely
irrelevant to the present discussion; its aim is to supply something useful,
not just to the present author, but to anybody interested in tennis history. Statistics
is the closest to objective truth, provided of course that it is presented in a
fair way, and it is statistics that I will continue dealing with in this
summing-up. I have so far tried to keep my personal opinions in the background
– for everybody is entitled to their opinions but nobody should inflict them on
the others – and I will keep doing so even more rigorously here.
Numbers are
very revealing for those who can use them. And yet, one of the greatest dangers
in statistics is the preoccupation with numbers. Therefore, the first thing to
look at is the number and the type of
titles.
Pete won
altogether 64 singles titles, more than any of his contemporaries*. Only Agassi
came close (60), but that’s partly due to the fact that he won his titles over
a three-years-longer span. Becker, Edberg and Chang, not to mention Kafelnikov,
Courier, Hewitt, Krajicek, Rafter or Ivanisevic, trailed far behind. In the whole
of the Open Era, Pete shares the 5th place with Bjorn Borg, although
it is very likely that both will soon be superseded by Rafael Nadal (57).
Pete’s outdoor-indoor ratio is 41-21, and the distribution of the surfaces,
despite the scarcity of titles on clay, does demonstrate his considerable
versatility: hard court (36), carpet (15), grass (10), clay (3).
Singles Titles (time span between first and last title)
Contemporaries:
1. Pete Sampras 64 (1990-2002)
2. Andre
Agassi 60 (1989-2005)
3. Boris
Becker 49 (1985-96)
4. Stefan
Edberg 42 (1984-96)
5. Michael
Chang 34 (1988-2000)
6. Lleyton
Hewitt* 28 (1998-2010)
7. Yevgeny
Kafelnikov 26 (1994-2002)
8. Jim
Courier 23 (1989-98)
9. Goran
Ivanisevic 22 (1990-2001)
10. Carlos
Moya 20 (1995-2007)
11. Marcelo
Rios 18 (1995-2001)
12. Alex
Corretja 17 (1994-2002)
13. Greg
Rusedski 15 (1993-2005)
Marc Rosset 15 (1989-2000)
Marat Safin 15 (1999-2008)
Magnus Gustafsson 15
(1991-2000)
14. Richard
Krajicek 14 (1991-99)
Sergi Bruguera 14 (1991-94)
15. Magnus
Norman 12 (1997-2000)
16. Patrick Rafter 11 (1994-2001)
Tim Henman 11
(1997-2003)
Open Era:
1. Jimmy
Connors 109 (1972-89)
2. Ivan
Lendl 94 (1980-1993)
3. John
McEnroe 77 (1979-91)
Roger Federer* 77 (2001-)
4. Bjorn
Borg 64 (1974-81)
Pete Sampras 64
(1990-2002)
5. Guillermo
Vilas 62 (1973-83)
6. Andre
Agassi 60 (1989-2005)
7. Rafael
Nadal* 57 (2004-)
8. Ilie
Nastase 56 (1970-78)
9. Boris
Becker 49 (1985-96)
10. Thomas
Muster 44 (1986-97)
11. Stefan
Edberg 42 (1984-96)
12. Rod
Laver 41 (1968-75)
13. Stan
Smith 37 (1969-80)
14. Novak
Djokovic* 37 (2006-)
15. Michael
Chang 34 (1988-2000)
16. Manuel
Orantes 33 (1969-83)
Mats Wilander 33 (1982-90)
17. Arthur
Ashe 32 (1968-78)
Andy Roddick 32 (2001-12)
18. John
Newcombe 31 (1968-75)
19. Ken
Rosewall 29 (1968-77)
20. Andy Murray* 28 (2006-13)
* Still
active player
The situation
at the top is pretty much the same – well, it’s better actually – when we look
at the type of titles. Pete has won
more Majors (14) than any of his contemporaries, and he is firmly 2nd
in the Open Era after Federer, even though Nadal (12) is close behind him. It
will be noticed that Pete and Roger share
the record for most Wimbledon and US Open
titles (the latter is shared with Connors also). It may be mentioned in passing
that Sampras’ five crowns at the ATP World Championship (aka the Masters) in the end of each year
have been surpassed only by Federer (6) and equaled by Lendl. Among the
contemporaries second is Becker with three wins (and five lost finals; Pete
lost only one). But, of course, it is the Grand Slam titles that really do
matter.
Grand Slam Singles Titles
Contemporaries:
1. Pete Sampras 14 (2AO – 7W – 5 USO)
2. Andre
Agassi 8 (4AO – 1RG – 1W – 2USO)
3. Boris
Becker 6 (2AO – 3W – 1USO)
Stefan Edberg 6 (2AO – 2W – 2USO)
4. Jim
Courier 4 (2AO – 2RG)
5. Gustavo
Kuerten 3 (3RG)
6. Patrick
Rafter 2 (2USO)
Sergi Bruguera 2 (2RG)
Yevgeny Kafelnikov 2 (1AO – 1RG)
7. Michael
Chang 1 (RG)
Richard Krajicek 1 (W)
Carlos Moya 1 (RG)
Petr Korda 1 (AO)
Open Era:
1. Roger
Federer 17 (4AO – 1RG – 7W – 5USO)
2. Pete Sampras 14 (2AO – 7W – 5USO)
3. Rafael
Nadal 12 (1AO – 8RG – 2W – 1USO)
4. Bjorn
Borg 11 (6RG – 5W)
5. Ivan
Lendl 8 (2AO – 3RG – 3USO)
Jimmy Connors 8 (1AO – 2W – 5USO)
Andre Agassi 8 (4AO – 1RG – 1W – 2USO)
6. John
McEnroe 7 (3W – 4USO)
7. Boris
Becker 6 (2AO – 3W – 1USO)
Stefan Edberg 6 (2AO – 2W – 2USO)
Novak Djokovic 6 (4AO – 1W – 1USO)
Agassi and
Becker may be mollified at least a little bit by their better balances at the
nine tournaments from the so-called ATP World Tour Masters 1000, the most
important events after the four from the Grand Slam and the year-end Masters.
Pete has reached “only” 19 finals, winning 11 of them (11-8, 57.89%; titles: Key
Biscayne and Cincinnati thrice each, Paris and Indian Wells twice each, and Rome once). This guarantees him 10th
place in the Open Era. Becker occupies No. 9 with 13-8 (61.90%), while Agassi
is seventh with the remarkable 17 titles and only five lost finals (17-5, 77.27%).
The Top 10 since 1968, sorted by the total number of titles, looks like this
(the winning percentage in finals is given out of curiosity).
ATP World Tour Masters 1000*
1. Rafael
Nadal** 24 (24 titles – 11 finals, 68.57%)
2. Ivan
Lendl 22 (22-11, 66.67)
3. Roger
Federer** 21 (21-13, 61.76)
4. John
McEnroe 19 (19-5, 79.17)
5. Jimmy
Connors 18 (18-11, 62.07)
6. Andre
Agassi 17 (17-5, 77.27)
7. Bjorn
Borg 15 (15-4, 78.95)
8. Novak
Djokovic** 14 (14-10, 58.33)
9. Boris
Becker 13 (13-8, 61.90)
10. Pete Sampras 11 (11-8, 57.89)
* This name
has been employed only since 2008. There have been several others through the
years:
- 1970-1993: Grand Prix
Championship Series
- 1993-2000: Mercedes-Benz Super 9
- 2000-2004: Tennis Masters Series
- 2005-2008: ATP Masters Series
** Still
active player
It may be
useful to give here the distribution of Pete’s titles by numbers. I know of
very few criteria that demonstrate his greatness better than that. Sampras has
won five times or more only three tournaments. It just happens that they are
the three most important ones: Wimbledon,
US Open, the
Masters. Pete’s ability to give his absolute best on the best of occasions more
than compensates for his relatively modest achievement in the MS9 series.
7 titles:
- Wimbledon (1993-95, 1997-2000)
5 titles:
- US Open (1990, 1993, 1995-96,
2002)
- Masters (1991, 1994, 1996-97,
1999)
4 titles:
- Philadelphia (1990,
1992, 1997-98)
3 titles:
- Indianapolis
(1991-92, 1996)
- Cincinnati (1992,
1997, 1999)
- Key Biscayne (1993-94, 2000)
- Lyon (1991-93)
- Tokyo
(1993-94, 1996)
2 titles:
- Australian Open (1994, 1997)
- Paris (1995,
1997)
- Indian Wells (1994-95)
- San Jose (1996,
1997)
- Grand Slam Cup (1990, 1997)
- Los Angeles (1991,
1999)
- Queen’s (1995, 1999)
- Hong
Kong (1993, 1996)
- Antwerp
(1993-94)
- Sydney
(1993-94)
1 title:
- Manchester (1990), Kitzbühel
(1991), Osaka (1994), Rome (1994), Basel (1996), Memphis (1996), Vienna
(1998), Atlanta (1998).
I believe the
winning percentage in finals is an important stat that is often underestimated.
If we take, not just the nine Masters tournaments as above, but all career
singles finals and calculate how much any given player has won, we find Pete at
No. 3 among his contemporaries who managed to reach at least 25 finals.
However, percentages can sometimes be misleading. Note that No. 2, Thomas Enqvist,
has a better won-lost ratio, but that’s because he has played only 26 finals in
his career. One has to set the limit somewhere – I chose 25 merely because it
was the smallest number that allowed me to include Pat Rafter – and watch for
misleading exceptions like that. For the whole Open Era I have naturally – but
arbitrarily – chosen a higher threshold (<40 finals), and I have found that
Pete shares the second place with the great Bjorn Borg; both of them,
amazingly, have won the same number of titles and lost the same number of
finals in their careers. No. 1 is the King of Clay from the 1990s, the massive Austrian
Thomas Muster, who has won the astonishing 44 titles out of 55 finals. We are
not likely to see this record broken in the near future.
Singles Finals Winning Percentage (Won-Lost)*
Contemporaries:
1. Thomas
Muster 80.00 (44-11)
2. Thomas
Enqvist 73.08 (19-7)
3. Pete Sampras 72.73 (64-24)
4. Andre
Agassi 66.67 (60-30)
5. Jim
Courier 63.89 (23-13)
6. Boris
Becker 63.64 (49-28)
7. Michael
Chang 58.62 (34-24)
8. Marcelo
Rios 58.06 (18-13)
9. Yevgeny
Kafelnikov 56.52 (26-20)
10. Greg
Rusedski 55.56 (15-12)
Magnus Gustafsson 55.56 (15-12)
11. Stefan
Edberg 53.85 (42-36)
12. Carlos
Moya 45.45 (20-24)
13. Goran
Ivanisevic 44.90 (22-27)
14. Patrick
Rafter 44.00 (11-14)
15. Sergi
Bruguera 40.00 (14-21)
16. Tim
Henman 39.29 (11-17)
Open Era:
1. Thomas
Muster 80.00 (44-11)
2. Bjorn
Borg 72.73 (64-24)
Pete Sampras 72.73 (64-24)
3. John
McEnroe 71.30 (77-31)
4. Rafael Nadal** 71.25
(57-23)
5. Rod Laver 69.49 (41-18)
6. Roger Federer** 68.75
(77-35)
7. Jimmy
Connors 68.13 (109-51)
8. Andre
Agassi 66.67 (60-30)
9. Novak
Djokovic** 66.07 (37-19)
10. John
Newcombe 65.96 (31-16)
11. Andy
Murray** 65.85 (27-14)
12. Ivan
Lendl 65.28 (94-50)
13. Lleyton
Hewitt 65.12 (28-15)
14. Boris
Becker 63.64 (49-28)
15. Andy
Roddick 61.54 (32-20)
16. Guillermo
Vilas 60.78 (62-40)
17. Ilie
Nastase 60.22 (56-37)
18. Michael
Chang 58.62 (34-24)
19. Yevgeny
Kafelnikov 56.52 (26-20)
20. Mats
Wilander 55.93 (33-26)
21. Stefan
Edberg 53.85 (42-36)
22. Manuel
Orantes 48.53 (33-35)
* At least 25
finals for contemporaries, at least 40 for all time
** Still active
player
I like this
parameter because I think it says something about a player’s mental strength,
perhaps the most important feature of all great champions, if he is able to
concentrate and give his absolute maximum at the most important match. What could
be more important than a Grand Slam final? Surprisingly or not, Pete Sampras is
the undisputed leader in the Open Era as far as final matches at GS events are
concerned. He lost only 4 of the 18 finals he reached, and two of these, let’s
remember, were in the end of his career against players ten years younger. This
makes for 77.78%, more than 17% better than his best contemporary (Becker, 60%)
and about 7% better than the finest players today (Federer and Nadal, with
70.83 and 70.59 respectively).
Strictly
speaking, Rod Laver is No. 1 with 83.33% success in this respect, but in the
Open Era he reached only six finals. When we take into account his pre-1968
achievements, both amateur and professional, his ratio drops to 61.11%. So this
is “The Enqvist Paradox” again. It is given here for completeness, but it
should be observed that the number of finals is much smaller (<5 being set as
a threshold) and thus the percentage is less impressive that it might look at
first glance.
Singles Grand Slam Finals Winning Percentage (Won-Lost)*
1. Rod
Laver 83.33 (5-1) – Open Era only! (Otherwise 11-7, 61.11%)
2. Pete Sampras 77.78 (14-4)
3. John
Newcombe 71.43 (5-2) – Open Era only! (Otherwise 7-3, 70.00%)
4. Roger
Federer** 70.83 (17-7)
5. Rafael
Nadal** 70.59 (12-5)
6. Bjorn
Borg 68.75 (11-5)
7. Novak
Djokovic 66.67 (6-3)
8. John
McEnroe 63.64 (7-4)
Mats Wilander 63.64 (7-4)
9. Boris
Becker 60.00 (6-4)
10. Stefan
Edberg 54.55 (6-5)
11. Jimmy
Connors 53.33 (8-7)
Andre Agassi 53.33 (8-7)
12. Guillermo
Vilas 50.00 (4-4)
13. Ivan
Lendl 42.11 (8-11)
14. Ilie
Nastase 33.33 (2-4)
15. Andy
Murray** 28.57 (2-5)
16. Andy
Roddick 20.00 (1-4)
* At least
five finals
** Still
active player
With the
obvious exception of Roland Garros, Pete’s match winning percentage at the
Grand Slam tournaments easily ranks with the best in the Open Era; and it may
improve still further in the next few years if several currently active players
fail to maintain their high standards. After the end of Wimbledon 2013, he is
the second most successful player at the All England Club. Having won seven
titles and reached 1SF and 1QF from altogether 14 tournaments, Pete has won the
staggering 90.00% of his matches there (63-7). Only Bjorn Borg has ever done
better – the unsurpassable 92.73% – but note that he played 15 matches less
(51-4). Before this year’s Wimbledon, Federer’s stats were better (65-7, 90.28%),
but after his shocking loss in the 2R they no longer are (66-8, 89.33%) – which
is as fine a proof as anything how gravely do a single bad result affect a
great career achievement. It remains to be seen, unlikely as it looks, if Roger
would be able to improve those stats in the twilight years of his career. The
Top 10 of the finest players on Wimbledon’s
grass in the Open Era looks like this:
Match Winning Percentage at Wimbledon*
1. Bjorn
Borg 92.73 (51-4)
2. Pete Sampras 90.00 (63-7)
3. Roger
Federer 89.33 (66-8)
4. Rod
Laver 88.00 (22-3)
5. John
Newcombe 86.49 (32-5)
6. Boris
Becker 85.54 (71-12)
7. Novak
Djokovic 84.44 (38-7)
8. John
McEnroe 84.29 (59-11)
9. Andy
Murray 84.09 (37-7)
10. Rafael
Nadal 83.72 (36-7)
* At least 20
wins
At the US
Open Pete does trail Roger, but this may well change after the very next
tournament, for Federer has to win the title if he wants to keep his winning
percentage on the rise. Even one loss, in the final match, would be enough to
diminish his current achievement (88.89%) if only with 0,28 (88.61%). If he
loses in the 2R as he did at Wimbledon, his
percentage will drop with more than 1% (87.84%). As for Pete, for 14 US Opens
(1988-2002, without 1999) he has won five titles and reached 3F, 1SF and 1QF at
Flushing Meadows, achieving 71-9 record (88.75%). Note that Jimmy Connors, the
record holder for most match wins (98!), comes only sixth percentage-wise,
whereas the second in this respect, Agassi with 79 wins, is not even in Top 10,
though with 79-19 (80.61%) he follows closely. (Remember, however, that Jimmy
won five titles altogether, but Andre managed to scrap only two.)
Match Winning Percentage at the US Open*
1. Roger
Federer 88.89 (64-8)
2. Pete Sampras 88.75 (71-9)
3. Ivan
Lendl 84.88 (73-13)
4. Novak
Djokovic 84.78 (39-7)
5. John
McEnroe 84.42 (65-12)
6. Jimmy
Connors 83.76 (98-19)
7. Ken
Rosewall 83.33 (30-6)
8. John
Newcombe 81.82 (27-6)
9. Bjorn
Borg 81.63 (40-9)
10. Rafael
Nadal 80.95 (34-8)
* At least 25
wins
Agassi is the
absolute leader at the Australian Open with 48-5 (90.57%). Only Djokovic
(88.64, 39-5) has a real chance to surpass this achievement, but he’ll have to
toil a lot (two titles more) to do that. Note that Roger is “only” third
(87.18) but has won more matches (68) than any other player; indeed, he has
played 26 matches more than Agassi and his total wins dwarf Andre’s 48. Having
played in 11 tournaments, won two titles and reached 1F, 2SF and 1QF in Melbourne, Pete shares
the 6th place with Nadal. Both have achieved 83.33% success, though
Sampras has 12 matches and 10 wins (45-9) more than Rafa (35-7). Again, this
sharing may cease to be at the very next Australian Open. The Top 10 looks like
this:
Match Winning Percentage at the Australian Open*
1. Andre
Agassi 90.57 (48-5)
2. Novak
Djokovic 88.64 (39-5)
3. Roger
Federer 87.18 (68-10)
4. Stefan
Edberg 84.85 (56-10)
5. Mats
Wilander 83.72 (36-7)
6. Pete Sampras 83.33 (45-9)
7. Rafael
Nadal 83.33 (35-7)
8. Ivan
Lendl 82.76 (48-10)
9. John
Newcombe 81.82 (27-6)
10.
Jim Courier 81.40 (35-8)
*
At least 25 wins
Pete’s overall
GS record stands at 203-38 (84.23%) and grants him the prestigious 5th
place in the Open Era. But note that two of the first four have played much
fewer matches (157 for Borg, 141-16, and only 70 for Laver, 60-10), while the
other two are still active and their winning percentages may be expected to
drop toward the end of their careers. On the other hand, the sixth Djokovic is
pretty close (152-29, 83.98%) and he is likely to supersede Pete in the near
future. Here’s the Top 10:
Match Winning Percentage in Grand Slam Tournaments*
1. Bjorn
Borg 89.81 (141-16)
2. Rafael
Nadal 87.70 (164-23)
3. Roger
Federer 86.53 (257-40)
4. Rod
Laver 85.70 (60-10)
5. Pete Sampras 84.23 (203-38)
6. Novak
Djokovic 83.98 (152-29)
7. Ken
Rosewall 82.88 (92-11)
8. Jimmy
Connors 82.62 (233-49)
9. Ivan
Lendl 81.92 (222-49)
10.
John Newcombe 81.60 (93-21)
*
At least 60 wins
Since Pete’s
career was neither the longest nor the most strenuous in the Open Era, it comes
as no surprise that he, together with Nastase and Becker, is member “only” of Club 700 as far as total match wins are
concerned. Again as expected, he does improve percentage-wise. Note that both
Agassi (870) and Edberg (801) are members of Club 800, but neither of them has quite as high winning percentage
(76.05 and 74.91 respectively). In fact, Pete’s winning 77.44% of his career
matches is unmatched among his contemporaries; in the Open Era he trails only
after the true Big Four of tennis: Borg, Connors, Lendl, McEnroe (all but Borg
also have considerably more match wins, which makes their percentages even more
impressive).
From the
still active players only Federer, so far, compares with the greats from
previous generations. He is only the second member of Club 900 (together with Guillermo Vilas) and with 81.45% (905-206,
including Wimbledon 2013) he is following closely John McEnroe. It remains to
be seen, however, if Roger would be able to keep this balance until his
retirement. The same is true for, and even more relevant to, Rafael Nadal who currently
has the best match winning stats (threshold >450 wins) in the Open Era. This
amounts to the stupendous 83.34% (622-124). If Rafa manages to keep it for the
three or four (at least) years of active tennis that still lay ahead of him,
this will be one of the greatest tennis miracles of all time.
Career Matches*
1. Jimmy
Connors 1246
2. Ivan
Lendl 1071
3. Guillermo
Vilas 926
4. John
McEnroe 875
5. Andre
Agassi 870
6. Stefan
Edberg 801
7. Ilie
Nastase 775
8. Pete Sampras 762
9. Boris
Becker 713
10. Michael
Chang 662
- Winning Percentage (Won-Lost)**
1. Bjorn
Borg 82.72 (608-127)
2. Jimmy
Connors 81.81 (1246-277)
3. Ivan
Lendl 81.76 (1071-239)
4. John
McEnroe 81.55 (875-198)
5. Pete Sampras 77.44 (762-222)
6. Boris
Becker 76.91 (870-274)
7. Guillermo
Vilas 76.43 (924-285)
8. Andre
Agassi 76.05 (870-274)
9. Stefan
Edberg 74.91 (806-270)
10. Ilie
Nastase 72.29 (754-289)
* Still
active players are deliberately excluded for two reasons. First, their win-loss
balance changes almost on a weekly basis. Second, it’s one thing to estimate
this balance in the peak of one’s career, it’s quite another story to do it
after his retirement.
** At least
500 wins during the Open Era. That is why Rod Laver (414-107, 79.46%) and John
Newcombe (455-156, 74.47%) are excluded.
The above
data come from the site of the ATP World Tour and I cannot vouch for their
accuracy. I have checked Pete’s career match by match as given on this site,
and indeed there is a slight discrepancy. The overall balance turned out to be
763-225 (77.23%). (Wins and losses without opponent (W/O, 3-8) are of course subtracted
by default, as they should be in official statistics). The reason for the
difference remains to be explained. For the record, when the balance from team
competitions (World Team Cup and the Davis Cup, 25-20) is also subtracted, because I still think Pete never was a team player,
the ratio becomes 738-205 (78.26%). Even without the dubious benefit of comparisons,
this is a spectacular achievement.
And don’t
forget the priceless legacy captured on video.
==============================================================
*I use the
word “contemporaries” with some trepidation. Strictly speaking, every player
whose career overlaps with Pete’s is, at one time or another, his contemporary.
That includes legends like McEnroe, Lendl and Wilander who were way past their
prime when he came on the stage, but also youngsters who reached their peak
when Pete was already past his prime
(Hewitt, Safin) or retired (Federer). I use the word to refer only to those
players whose careers overlapped significantly with Pete’s, for at least 5-6
years; for example, Edberg, Becker, Agassi, Chang, Ivanisevic, Rafter, Stich, and
Courier. Hewitt and Safin are included among the contemporaries because some of
their greatest triumphs did happen before Pete’s retirement, but Federer and
Roddick are excluded because none of theirs did.