A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

other serious player in the family. Occasionally the entire family would travel to a junior event. For a
while, we traveled around in a beat-up Volkswagen van.
Dad was somewhat intimidating, but if he wasn’t my best friend, he wasn’t a big disciplinarian, either.
I remember one time I said a bad word, and he tried to put soap in my mouth. He wasn’t physical with us
—we didn’t get spanked, but then we didn’t do much that would have called for spanking. Parties?
Recreational drugs? Delinquent behavior? We just didn’t do any of that in our youth. It was especially
easy for me: I was very focused on tennis, and I didn’t let anything knock me off that trajectory.
The nurturer in our family was my mother, Georgia. She was the compassionate one. She would listen,
be there to talk to you, and walk you through whatever was on your mind. My mom has been way under
the radar as far as an acknowledged influence goes, but some of my best—and toughest—qualities
probably come from her. She’s the sweetest lady on earth—she gave us lots of hugs, she felt our every
adolescent pain. But underneath that warmth and deep concern for her family, she was tough.
Mom was born and raised in Salacia, a village near Sparta. She grew up dirt-poor. She had seven
siblings, and slept on a concrete floor for a good part of her youth. When her oldest brother emigrated to
Canada, he basically took his siblings with him. So my mom landed in North America without speaking a
word of English, and ended up working with some of her sisters (she has five, all close in age) as a
beautician in the Toronto area.
When Mom was in her twenties, she moved with her sisters to Washington, D.C., and that’s where she
met my dad—they were introduced by mutual friends. My dad’s father had advised him to find a nice
Greek girl to marry and start a family with, and Georgia turned out to be the one for Sam. They shared a
vision based on the importance of family life and creating a home where their children could flourish.
Partly because my mom is a relatively new American, we were raised with a very strong Greek
influence. We have an enormous family support group—I must have thirty cousins, although my life has
made it tough for me to cultivate relationships with them. We attended Greek Orthodox church every
week, and we went to all kinds of Greek festivals and outings—it was just like that movie My Big Fat
Greek Wedding. Mom still cooks traditional Greek dishes like spanakopita (a spinach-based dish) and
dolmades, and I’ve heard more than my share of bouzouki music. But we were on the road to assimilation.
We never had to wear any of those crazy traditional costumes or anything like that, and we often had
spaghetti bolognese for dinner.
When I think about my mom and how poor she was as a child, I realize she had to be pretty resilient
and very strong. She immersed herself in a totally foreign culture—as a woman from a traditional society,
no less—at age twenty-three. She had family to help, but still—it couldn’t have been easy for her.
If I got my calm, reserved nature from Dad, I got my toughness, a share of my resilience, and a measure
of my stubbornness from my mom. She helped instill my basic values—showing me that I wasn’t going to
get anywhere by taking shortcuts. I think I may have gotten my ability to focus absolutely and exclusively
on the task at hand from my mother, too. Throughout my career, my mind rarely wandered, and I was never
sidetracked by distractions, no matter what I was going through off the court.
Mom had her hands full with the four of us, and my budding talent didn’t make it any easier. Stella and
I, the two enthusiastic athletes, kind of overshadowed Gus and Marion, and I gradually overshadowed
Stella. I guess I was the “golden child,” although I’ve never liked putting it that way. But a lot of the focus
was on me. A lot of money was spent on me. At times this led to a little resentment.
Gus was a big surfer and had an active social life, which was a good thing because I was always with
Dad. Still, like any kid brother, I occasionally wanted to hang out with Gus and his friends, but you know
how Toxic Kid Brother Syndrome works. In that sense, having tennis helped me; I was so focused on the
game that I was immune to some of your typical sibling turbulence. I wasn’t competitive with Gus in
childhood; the age difference of four years meant we lived in different worlds. But I know that my
privileged place sometimes bothered Gus. He would have to drive me and Stella to tennis lessons, and I