A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

Unless you’re very young in your first big final (in which case not having time to think can be a good
thing), you need time to savor and process a victory and get yourself into a proper competitive frame of
mind for your next match. It’s especially true in the late stages of major events, and doubly so in the late
stage of your career, when recovery time is longer. In the final of the 2001 Open, I would be playing
Lleyton Hewitt, a scrappy, fleet, superbly fit Aussie.
It had been a draining second week for me. After beating Rafter and winning that epic four-setter over
Andre, I handled Marat Safin with relative ease. I think he felt the pressure of the situation. Instead of
swinging freely and painting lines, he seemed a little inhibited. I won in straight sets. He was probably
going through the same thing I experienced in the year after I won my first major.
I had to play Hewitt in the final barely twenty-four hours after finishing my semi, and by that point my
brain was already slightly fried and my legs were feeling a little heavy. For a veteran, that twenty-fourhour
turnaround at the Open is one of the toughest assignments in tennis, mentally as well as physically.
Hewitt was just twenty, and he still had peach fuzz on his face. With his long blond hair and clear blue
eyes, he looked like a teenage surfing or skateboarding champ, and he played with a healthy disdain for
etiquette, forever punctuating his better shots—sometimes even errors by opponents—with gut-wrenching
screams of “Come awwwwwwn . . .” A year earlier, I had barely managed to contain Hewitt in the U.S.
Open semis, winning two of my three sets in tiebreakers. He was now a year older, a year wiser, a year
hungrier—and a year stronger.
Arthur Ashe Stadium was playing fast that year, and pundits didn’t recognize the degree to which the
conditions, while good for me, were tailor-made for Lleyton’s game. Although Lleyton was a very
consistent baseliner, he was least dangerous on slow surfaces like clay. He was slightly built and not very
powerful, so he could be roughed up and beaten down in a simple war of the ground strokes and stamina.
Opponents could also attack his serve on slow courts to take control of points. A faster court gave Lleyton
more openings to attack from the backcourt, in classic counterpunching style.
Lleyton returned well enough to be sure of getting a few looks at breaking my serve. At the same time,
being able to hold his own serve by popping in a few aces and making it harder for me to hit forcing
returns would take a little pressure off of him to hold. And he liked to have a target, forcing him to hit
passing shots. My style played right into his strengths.
Lleyton took full advantage of the conditions and played a good first set, taking the tiebreaker 7–4. I
was beat, out of gas, emotionally as well as physically. It quickly turned into a rout in which I won just
two more games the rest of the way. It was my worst loss by far in a major final, and it began the debate
over the state of my game. Some pundits thought I was slowing down. The Pete Sampras they watched in
the U.S. Open final against Hewitt looked like a tired, vulnerable tennis player, at a loss for a strategy to
employ against his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, not-yet-twenty-one challenger. It was an accurate
assessment, but it was more of a comment on the tournament I’d had than my general physical state.
I didn’t look tired because I was old, or losing focus, or banged up. I looked tired because it had been
an ultrademanding week filled with very tough opponents and a back-to-back semi and final. I didn’t
exactly feel slow out there during the Hewitt match, but I felt like I was having to work awfully hard for
the points that I won. I struggled and heaved and tried to dig into my reserves, but there was too little left
to call upon.