A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

going to retire, suggest that you should retire, or speculate about when you’re going to retire, you start
thinking maybe you should retire. Unless you are completely oblivious to public opinion, you begin to
second-guess yourself. Gee, maybe you are fooling yourself. Maybe you should think about calling it
quits. In my case, those voices were growing louder, more insistent, and more impatient. It was harder
and harder for me to ignore them, even though I knew they should have nothing to do with my decisionmaking
process.
The Australian Open had been a disappointment, Davis Cup a shock, the French Open a nonstarter, and
Wimbledon nothing less than a catastrophe. There was no silver lining anywhere. To top it off, the day we
got back to Los Angeles we flicked on the television and there was this talking head from CNN, Jim
Huber. They were doing a piece on Wimbledon, and Huber steps out and calls Bridgette “the Yoko Ono of
tennis”—a reference to the Japanese artist who married John Lennon and was widely blamed for the
breakup of the Beatles and a decline in the quality of Lennon’s work.
I glanced at Bridgette and saw her go pale; she looked shattered. I felt horrible, because something new
crossed my mind: maybe she did feel responsible for my troubles, no matter how silly it would have been
to do so. The poor girl—all she had done, for months on end, was support me—even as she was going
through all these changes, and this is what she got for her trouble. Some a-hole on CNN making a nasty
remark that, if you think about it, wasn’t even a valid comparison.
Bridgette wasn’t exactly barefoot and pregnant. Still, we had gotten married shortly after she finished
The Wedding Planner, and her film career at the time was rising—dramatically. A short while later she
was totally out of her career loop, sitting around a house in London, and dealing with morning sickness,
while I was gone all day, struggling with my tennis, and stressing out about it when I was at home.
That schmuck Huber probably just liked that remark. He probably thought it sounded cool, or it might
get him a laugh. The guy could have said I should throw my rackets off a cliff after that performance at
Wimbledon and jumped after them, and I couldn’t have cared less. But what he did say got to me. It made
me livid. I told myself, Someday, I’m going to see that motherf#$@&%r again.
If I had to find some crazy, even remotely positive thing in all this, it would be that the hardship brought
Bridgette and me even closer, in that it was testing both of us in a kind of marital trial by fire. If we got
through it, Bridgette and I would appreciate each other that much more. Over the next days, we talked—
we talked a lot—and I was never one to talk much. We acted like a family. We circled the wagons.
I realized that despite Jose Higueras’s great abilities, I wasn’t getting what I needed coachingwise. He
had been up front with me; he was at a stage in life when, after the intensity of his relationship with Jim
Courier, he wouldn’t ever get so emotionally vested in a player again. But what was I going to do? I
couldn’t go back to Paul, not after cutting him loose the way I had. He had moved on, he had another job.
Bridgette and I kept talking about these things, and the “R” word became part of our dialogue. The
debate was building inside me, and it all came to a head one night while we were lying around in bed. It
occurred to me that maybe I was spinning my wheels, making life miserable for both of us, when we had
so much to celebrate and be happy about. Thinking aloud, I asked myself: “Is it still worth it? What else
do I have to achieve in tennis? Why should I put us through all this?” Bridgette just looked at me and said,
“You’re my husband, and I love you. I don’t care what you do, but promise me one thing—when you
decide to quit, when you do go out, promise me that you’ll do it on your own terms.”
That comment immediately put everything in perspective for me. It was like a huge weight was lifted
off me, and the future looked less clouded. Some of the turbulence I’d been feeling melted away. I said,
“You’re right. I need to relax here and just get back to work. First thing, let’s figure out this coaching
situation.”
The next morning, I got up and called the one guy I had left. I put my pride and fear aside and dialed up