A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

did I ignore the potential benefits of evolving racket design, the advances in rackets helped level the
playing field for opponents who were more inclined to adapt.
Because I never settled into a clay-court game plan, every match was like a Rubik’s Cube. I always had
to start from square one. I confess that after my loss to Delgado, I never saw Roland Garros through the
same eyes. It seemed like it just wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t like I just mailed it in—that wasn’t my way,
and there was too much to gain from winning in Paris—but after that Delgado match I had the gnawing
feeling that I’d run out of options.
In the end, maybe the truth just caught up to me. Maybe I just plain wasn’t good enough on clay to win
Roland Garros, and I never caught the lucky break or hot streak that might have landed me on the
champion’s podium even for that one critically important time.
At Wimbledon, I had a good run, beating Mark Philippoussis and my friend and frequent practice partner
Tim Henman in back-to-back matches starting in the quarters.
In the final, I was up against Goran Ivanisevic—again. But this time, there was something funny in the
air. Underneath my calm, confident exterior, a part of me sensed that maybe it was Goran’s time. He’d
come so close, so often. Wimbledon was the tournament that mattered more to him than anything else; he
was bound to break through at some point. Although the speed of the surface was changing by then, he and
I were going to bang aces even if we played with water balloons. We still had that mentality, and maybe
that was a big part of why we were able to play that way despite the changing times. Goran had put on a
fierce display of power serving in his semifinal, outlasting Richard Krajicek 15–13 in the fifth—after he
had failed to capitalize on two match points in the fourth set.
Goran won the first set of our final in a tiebreaker, and he had two set points in the second set. My
premonition seemed about to come true, but then he missed a critical shot by inches, and I ended up
squeaking out the set in a tense tiebreaker. Getting out of that jam to even the match at a set apiece was
huge, and it left me feeling better. Maybe my instincts were wrong. Goran had chances to really put down
the hammer, in classically brutal grass-court fashion, but he had faltered.
With Goran, I always expected a lapse here, a sloppy error there. The name of the game was staying
focused and eager enough to pounce on those opportunities. We continued to trade bombs and split the
next two sets on the strength of one break each time. In the fifth set, I could see that fatigue was getting to
Goran. He hit just two of his total thirty-two aces in the fifth set, and I closed it out comfortably, 6–2 in
the fifth.
Goran was disconsolate after the loss—he blamed it on a loss of energy stemming from his inability to
close out Krajicek in four sets in his previous match. I made a point of expressing my sympathy for Goran
in the press conference afterward, saying: “There was almost nothing that separated Goran and I from
each other at this stage of the tournament. I just managed to squeak this one out.” But like me, Goran was a
realist. He knew he’d had me and let me off the hook. As he said afterward, “This time, I had the chance,
because he didn’t play well. In ninety-four, we played two sets, and then the third set, he killed me. [The
scores in that final were 7–6, 7–6, 6–0.] But today was very close—a lot of everything. It was interesting,
but now it’s the worst moment of my life. You know, I’ve had some bad moments, when you are sick or
when somebody dies, but for me this is the worst thing ever, because nobody’s died yet.”
Although there were undercurrents of discontent following this typical grass-court service battle, more
people seemed to appreciate the icy, minimalist majesty that Goran and I produced in our Wimbledon
matches. They were unlike most of the other matches that either of us had played there. One of the career
statistics that gives me the most pride is that I was 3–1 at Wimbledon against my most consistent and
dangerous rival, Goran.