A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

I won the Australian Open to launch my 1997 campaign, a pleasant surprise given the way I felt about the
tournament. I took extra pride in the win for a couple of reasons. In the round of 16, I played Dominik
Hrbaty in a five-set war that I eventually won 6–4. The on-court temperature during that match hit 135
degrees Fahrenheit. To day, with the “extreme heat” policy in effect, they would have stopped the match,
or closed the roof on Rod Laver Arena. Given what had happened at the U.S. Open just months earlier in
my match with Alex Corretja, I was glad to survive that test of stamina in the infernal Aussie heat.
It was also encouraging for me that while the Australian major is a hard-court tournament, in ’97 it was
dominated by slow-court players. After Hrbaty, I beat, in order, Al Costa, Tomas Muster, and Carlos
Moya, to take the title. Each of those guys had won—or would win—Roland Garros. That gave me hope
—maybe my fate at Roland Garros, the one slam that continued to elude me, wasn’t sealed quite yet.
Back in the States after my successful campaign down under, I added two tournament wins to make it a
pretty good little roll, although I lost in the first round at Indian Wells. That was another tournament, like
the Australian Open, where the conditions were less attractive to me than you might think. While I won the
event a number of times, and Indian Wells was pretty much my “home” tournament, geographically, I
didn’t like the combination of wind, dry air, and ball pressure that you had in the Southern California
desert. I always felt like everything flew on me, like I wasn’t quite in control. I preferred Miami, where
the humidity made the air thicker, but I felt like I had greater control.
I went to Europe in pretty good shape, but I didn’t win a single match in three tries going into the
French Open. What’s worse, in Rome I got a phone call from my sister Stella that really threw me for a
loop. Pete Fischer, the coach who had shaped and orchestrated my development, had been arrested and
charged with child molestation. One of his former patients had stepped forward to bring charges (Pete,
you’ll remember, was an endocrinologist with Kaiser Permanente, specializing in growth-related issues
in young boys). The news freaked me out. I’d lost Vitas Gerulaitis and Tim Gullikson in a short span of
time, and now my original coach was in disgrace. It was a repugnant charge, and I wasn’t sure what to
think. Could it really be true? With the bombshell weighing on my mind, I failed to win a match on clay
until I survived for two rounds at Roland Garros before falling to Magnus Norman.
The charges against Pete Fischer really baffled me. Although Pete was a single guy, he usually had, and
frequently talked about, girlfriends. He was actually engaged at the time he was arrested. Nothing in
Pete’s life or habits suggested that he was anything but a typical guy. He fit in fine in the locker room. He
was brainy, he worked hard, and led a very disciplined, straight-and-narrow sort of life. I’d never seen
him act out of character or in a way that indicated that he was not what he appeared to be. Sure, he was
arrogant, but that was neither here nor there.
I’d spent a lot of time at Pete’s house, usually with my brother, Gus, when I was a kid. I never had an
inkling that he was capable of this kind of crime. But as I thought about things and reviewed my childhood
experience, I saw some red flags. Pete always surrounded himself with boys; he was around them day and
night, whether at his job, at the Kramer Club, or at his home. He sometimes organized ski trips to
Mammoth Mountain. I went on one of those trips, and it was all boys. But it was a good mix, with some
older boys along, too—kids who would be more on guard about sexual predators.
My parents trusted Pete, and until the time we parted ways over money, nothing unseemly ever
happened to harm our relationship with him. I was sure of one thing—I’d always been special in Pete’s