A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

Paris was running out. I had plenty of good results to call upon from the past to try to change my own
mind, but that didn’t work. I could neither convince nor fool myself. That Delgado match was the straw
that broke the camel’s back as far as Roland Garros went for me. Even for me, thinking about Roland
Garros raises more questions than it answers.
One thing I know for sure is that the year when I actually made a big effort to do all I could to win in
Paris was a mess. In 1995, I had set up my tournament and training schedule with an eye toward doing
well at Roland Garros. I did it partly to placate critics as well as friends, all of whom thought I had to
target the event if I wanted to unlock its mysteries. The strategy didn’t just backfire, it blew up in my face
when I lost my first match to Gilbert Schaller. Tim and I had expected to make a run in Paris that year, and
the loss really hurt my long-term confidence as a clay-court player.
The situation was perplexing. I periodically put up some fine results on clay (I had won the Italian
Open and Kitzbühel, and led the United States to that key 1995 Davis Cup final win in Moscow), but it
was almost like they came out of the blue. Tim died shortly before the 1996 French Open, and that
inspired me to make what would be my best run there. But let’s face it, that was an extraordinary
circumstance. The cold reality is that after 1996, I was never really a factor in Paris—even if I happened
to go a round or two.
My problems on clay were related to my versatility, and the confidence that was so helpful to me on
hard courts. I could win from the back—I had beaten French Open champs like Jim Courier and Sergi
Bruguera from the baseline. So I was reluctant to heed the advice of Paul and others who thought my only
chance to win was through attacking. Sometimes I did feel obliged to attack, and felt comfortable
embracing that game plan. At other times, I tried to feel my way into matches from the baseline, not
entirely confident but hoping I’d hit upon something that would help me crack the clay-court code.
I never really evolved in Paris, never made progress toward a comfort zone. I was accustomed to
feeling totally in control of my game—that’s how it was at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. On grass and
hard courts, I just had this mentality: bring the gas—serve big, push the action, notch it up, and see if the
other guy can take it. On clay, though, you have to back off the gas a little, even when you’re playing
attacking tennis. You need to be more patient, awaiting your opportunity. I didn’t really feel comfortable
playing within myself that way. When I played well on clay, it was because I was reasonably calm, and
just felt my way around in matches—it wasn’t that different from how I played on hard courts.
But there was always pressure on me, some of it self-imposed, to win in Paris with an attacking game.
A part of me wanted to come in all the time, the way Stefan Edberg did. His daredevil attacking style
carried him all the way to the final one year, which was further than I ever got. But when I rushed the net
behind every decent serve, I’d often feel uncomfortable, like everything was happening too fast. I don’t
think I was a great mover on clay, and that was a subtle factor in my struggles. I found the surface was a
little slippery and uncertain underfoot, so I played a little too upright, at least compared to a guy like
Yannick Noah (the Frenchman who won Roland Garros by attacking the net in 1983). Noah played from
this crouch, like a big cat always ready to pounce. I was often ill at ease, even up at the net.
Paul was always after me to attack the net in Paris, but I resisted his advice. In fact, the year I beat Jim
from the backcourt, it was as much to prove my point to Paul as anything else. But the reality was that I
couldn’t win from the back consistently enough to beat the very top players in the three or four successive
rounds it takes to win a major. One year, I decided to embrace the chip-and-charge strategy that Paul
thought might work, but I was picked apart by Andrei Medvedev. So much for that.
Clay gave my opponents additional advantages. They could expose my backhand—my weaker shot—by
getting to it with high-bouncing balls. Having to hit those high backhands gives one-handed backhanders
fits—just look at the problems Roger Federer has had on clay with Rafael Nadal. In Roger’s case, the
problem is exacerbated by the fact that Nadal is a southpaw. Late in my career, technology was also
starting to catch up with me. I played my entire career with that extremely small-headed racket. Not only