A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

I did to offset the threat represented by his big forehand and huge fighting spirit. Jim was a great player,
and our lopsided head-to-head is a tribute to some tactical things I was able to figure out and use to great
advantage.
The big thing for me with Jim was getting my backhand to his backhand in rallies. If I wasn’t really
hitting my backhand well, he could push me back and I would end up fending off balls, hitting them up the
middle where he could spank them with his forehand. When Jim got you into that bind, he was deadly
tough. But that was the only way I felt he could hurt me.
What I really liked to do with Jim was hit my second serve out wide to his forehand—that’s right, his
fearsome forehand. You could accomplish two things by serving to Jim’s forehand—force him out of his
comfort zone, and get him off balance so that you could exploit that backhand. With Jim, like Andre, you
had to keep that ball out of the middle of the court, from where he could dictate with his forehand.
Returning is different from rallying, and Jim didn’t like to hit that forehand return because he had less
time to wind up and tag it like he could in a rally. This was such a gem of strategy that when Jose
Higueras agreed to work with me near the end of my career, he confessed that I had been the first player to
recognize and exploit that weakness in Jim’s game.
There was another reason to play Jim’s forehand more often than was advisable—his backhand, while
vulnerable, became pretty good if you kept going to it and he got in a groove. Stefan Edberg learned that
in their matches, although it was also true that Edberg didn’t serve big enough to hurt Jim.
Jim was toughest on clay, and his two French Open titles attest to it. But he wasn’t a great mover. He
made up for it by playing from inside the court (unlike, say, a Bruguera, who ran swiftly, east to west,
behind the baseline) and making the most of his power.
The main challenge against Jim on clay was making the big shot that could turn the tables in a rally. On
hard courts, you can go from defense to offense with one good shot. On clay, you need a few shots to do
that, and that makes it tougher. On hard courts, I could have a backhand-to-backhand rally with Jim and
turn it around with one swing; on clay I couldn’t do that, so he had the upper hand. Jim’s inside-out
forehand was awesome, and he was always looking to set it up with that big serve.
STEFAN EDBERG (8–6) . . . I really enjoyed playing Stefan; we had a similar sensibility, in that we always
wanted to attack, especially behind our serve. The key to playing Stefan tough was getting a hold of his
serve. If I could dial in and hit my returns so that he had tough first volleys, I was okay. It was critical to
keep the backhand return down low off his serve. That was tough for one-handed-backhand players like
me, because you had to get over the kicker to do that, and if you didn’t pull it off, he was all over the
floater or above-the-net return. His volley was instruction-video grade, silky and biting at the same time.
In his prime, Edberg had a great serve—a big kicker that gave him plenty of time to get to the net, and
once he was there it was tough to get the ball past him. He was always trying to rush you. The most deadly
thing you can do to a guy is take away his time—make him rush or feel like you’re swarming all over him.
Stefan was very good at that. His volley was superb, especially on the backhand side, and he was a tough
guy to lob.
Stefan had a strange forehand that he hit with an odd shoveling motion. He didn’t have a lot of power
on the forehand side, but he managed to keep the ball deep. He never developed the wrist action to get a
lot of snap on the ball, but the funny thing is that the forehand was ten times better than it looked, and a lot
of guys went down thinking they could attack that forehand and win.
By contrast, Stefan’s backhand was a work of art—smooth, solid, and versatile. There were times
when Stefan actually ran around his forehand to hit a backhand. One of Stefan’s great assets was his selfknowledge.
He knew what he could and couldn’t do, and as he got older he evolved into a very strong
competitor. He knew that to beat me, he had to get to the net. To that end, he tried everything, including the
chip-and-charge. He did that selectively, to keep me off balance. He would do it for a few points, than