A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

But Marat has always blown hot and cold; he has the whole package except for the mental part.
There’s a bit of Goran in Marat, both in his personality and in his big, go-for-broke game. He just never
liked grinding, although sometimes you need to grind if you’re going to win a lot of matches. Marat
opened a huge window for himself when he made that statement by beating me in the 2000 U.S. Open, but
he jumped right out of the window and didn’t win another major until the Australian Open in 2005. For a
guy with his talent, it was too long a time between big wins.
MICHAEL STICH (4–5) . . . Out of all the guys who were real or potential rivals, Stich was the one who
scared me the most—just look at his superior head-to-head record. I didn’t play Stich a lot—he didn’t
seem to enjoy life at the top, so he left the game at a relatively young age. But if he had played a little
longer, and wanted it as badly as I did, he would have been extremely tough.
Stich had a huge first serve and a big second serve that he could come in behind confidently, because he
was a gifted volleyer. He moved very well and could do it all—stay back, chip and charge, serve and
volley. He really had an all-court game and, among all the guys I played, the best combination of power,
movement, and mental strength. Unfortunately for Stich, Germany was in love with his contemporary,
Boris Becker. The rivalry between them was bitter and intense.
I always measured guys by the quality of their second serve, and that was the big difference between
Stich and the other guys who could hurt me. He had a really easy, natural service motion, and while the
Beckers and Krajiceks and Ivanisevics had days when their second serve was deadly, Stich was the one
who seemed able to do it most consistently. It’s a pity he quit the game so soon, although it made me
breathe a huge sigh of relief.
That about does it, although you may be wondering whose strokes I would use to create the ultimate
tennis player. Let me give it a shot. If you were building a composite player out of the guys who were my
main rivals, I’d say you’d take Agassi’s backhand and Ivanisevic’s first serve. Throw in Stich’s second
serve, Rafter’s or Edberg’s volley, and Hewitt’s or Chang’s speed. The forehand would be Ferreira’s,
Becker’s, or Agassi’s. I’d take Jim Courier’s mentality, although Chang and Edberg (late in his career)
were mentally tough as well. For an all-court game, I like Becker or Stich. I’d go with Agassi’s service
return, although I would take a really close look at Hewitt’s and even Chang’s, too.