A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

I tried to believe those words, I tried to take heart. I wish I had been able to read them, take a deep
breath, and go out there and start serving bombs and drilling passing shots. But I was so mired in misery
that I couldn’t do it. Bridgette’s kind, loving words had the opposite effect. When I absorbed the words,
the letter kind of freaked me out; I had the sensation that my world was falling apart and thought, How
could this be happening to me? I was incapable of mustering my pride or drawing inspiration from that
sweet gesture by the woman I loved. That’s how down I was.
But after the contents of the letter sank in, I felt a glimmer of hope. I pulled my game together long
enough to win the next two sets. But I was never out from under the cloud. My funk slowly began to get the
better of me again. Usually, when a guy blows a two-sets-to-love lead against a top player, he crumbles
while the better player really pours it on. Bastl hung in there, though, and I was unable to pour on anything
but sweat that could just as well have been blood—that’s how much I was suffering.
In those crunch times, it’s all about your mind and emotions, and my usual self-assurance and predatory
gusto just weren’t there. I lost the fifth set 6–4. I walked off Court 2 just another figure in the lore and
legend of the Graveyard Court. I could’ve told myself that at least I was in good company, but you can bet
that wasn’t what I was muttering.
I didn’t know it at the time, but a photographer for the Times of London had been in the photo pit near
my chair on the court, and he took snaps of me reading Bridgette’s letter. He used such a long lens that you
could see every line of the letter, starting right at the top. Neil Harman, the tennis writer for the Times, is
one of the journalists with whom I always got on well. He told me later that they had the shot, and I asked
him not to print it. Neil and his editors had a lengthy, heated discussion about whether they should print
the picture of me reading the letter and all the contents. Neil prevailed on them to refrain, out of respect
for me and my privacy. So they printed the picture of me reading the letter, but they blurred the contents. It
was a gesture I wouldn’t forget.
A very harsh reality was setting in. Wimbledon, my last refuge, had turned into the focal point of my
demise. My loss on the Graveyard Court was big news, and to some it confirmed what they down deep
probably wanted to believe—that I was through. Given how often I had relied on Wimbledon to get me
back on track, this was a novel situation for me. I had this sinking sensation and thought, What the hell am
I going to do to get out of this hole now? Coincidentally, Andre lost in the same round, on the same day,
to the up-and-coming Thai player Paradorn Srichaphan. But that was cold comfort—make that no comfort
at all.
I felt utterly empty, and had no answers to explain it. Marriage may have had something to do with it,
especially with Bridgette being pregnant. Maybe all these big life changes were subverting my focus, or
putting me at war with myself. But I felt I knew what I wanted: my wife, our child, a good, clean, normal
life—and to squeeze every drop of potential out of my career. I had spent more than a decade beating
people for a living, putting all of my mental, physical, and emotional energy into the task. I beat people.
That was what I did, that was who I was. I had to ask myself, Am I still that person?
When I returned to our house after the Bastl match, I actually felt like crying. That freaked me out, too,
because I’d always taken losses in stride. Heaven forbid, it was just a damned tennis match. But still . . .
As we returned to Los Angeles, there was no longer any question: the wheels were falling off, and the
worse it got, the more I had to think of the “R” word—retirement.
Despite all the problems I experienced in the first half of 2002, I never really thought about hanging it
up. But I was coming up against one of the most spirit-killing problems any player has to face: the
growing, inescapable chorus of critics who seem obsessed with putting you out to pasture. In politics,
there’s this concept called “the Big Lie.” Basically, the idea is that no matter how outrageous, illogical, or
untrue something is, if you shout it out long and loud enough, on a large enough platform, people start to
believe it.
The retirement discussion is like that. If enough people all around are constantly asking you if you’re