A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

that sixth straight year-end number one ranking. I played seven post–U.S. Open events in Europe in the fall
in an attempt to hold off Marcelo Rios, who was making a big push for the top ranking. At the start of the
year, I had no intention of playing some of those events (Vienna and Stockholm pop right to mind), but I
ended up asking for wild cards into them. As the year progressed, Rios kept closing on me, and I became
borderline obsessed with the record.
The European circuit in the fall is no picnic, even at the best of times. It’s cold, it gets dark early, and
you’re playing night matches in massive arenas under artificial lights. At the end of the long, hard Grand
Slam season, that ambience can leave you feeling like you’re living in some strange, parallel universe.
That last big push to secure the record started on a down note when I lost to Wayne Ferreira at Basel. I
bounced back and won Vienna. I pulled out of Lyon with a minor injury, but then lost a heartbreaker of a
semifinal (in a third-set tiebreaker) at Stuttgart to Richard Krajicek. To make matters worse, I could have
clinched the year-end number one ranking by winning that event.
So it was onto Paris, which is where I started to lose it a little bit. The general fatigue that contributed
to my inconsistent results was starting to get to me at a deeper, psychological level. The stress was
causing my hair to fall out in clumps. Yet nobody in the States seemed to care—there wasn’t a single
reporter representing a U.S. newspaper or magazine covering this drive. By contrast, the European press
was all over it. It was the dominant story of the fall season, and it just brought that much more pressure to
bear on me.
Finally, realizing that I just couldn’t internalize it all any longer, I called Paul’s room in the hotel from
my own and asked him to come by. This was a watershed moment for me, because I had never before
showed the kind of vulnerability I was about to exhibit. Paul came into my room, wondering what was up.
I confessed, “Paul, I’m struggling here. I feel like I need a therapist or something. This race is so close,
I’ve worked so hard to get this record, but I’m thinking these crazy things, like, What if I don’t get it? How
am I going to deal with that?”
Paul looked at me, dumbfounded. It wasn’t an easy situation for him—it ran utterly counter to the
relationship we had established over many long years. He didn’t know what to say at first, but in reality,
he didn’t need to say anything at all. I was the one who needed to say things—I just had to articulate and
off-load all that anxiety. I explained that this was an emotional thing I was going through. I felt this huge
sense of pressure, a different kind than I had felt trying to win a major title, or as I closed on Emerson’s
record. I dreaded what might happen if I didn’t get the record. What was there to dread? Good question.
There was a sobering practical dimension to this, though. My effort to set a new mark was six years in
the making, and if I failed, it wasn’t like I could try again the following year. This was the most all-ornothing
situation I’d ever been in; if I didn’t accomplish my goal, it would be a career shortcoming that
was bound to haunt me for life, and more rather than less because I had come so close to achieving it.
This hunt had grown into an obsession; it became a weight I carried around in my chest all fall, getting
heavier and heavier. Eventually, I needed to exhale.
Paul took that information and went and thought about it, and then set about getting me ready to run the
last leg of the race. It’s not like there was a lot he could do, but understanding how much I had tied myself
in knots over this would lead him to maybe deal with the situation on his end a little differently. Basically,
Paul provided a place where I could go to be vulnerable, and his quiet encouragement and understanding
of what I was going through were very welcome. I felt better after talking with him. To the extent that I
needed an emotional anchor—an unfamiliar need, for me—he became it.
None of this had anything to do with the tennis part, the forehands and backhands, even though I was
playing tired, erratic tennis—up one day, down the next. However, the ATP was trying to capitalize on the
story, ostensibly for my benefit as much as theirs. They were asking me to do all these interviews,
including prime-time European news and chat shows. That was just what I needed—to waste my energy
and downtime in the evenings going on chat shows with the French Larry King.