A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

seemed that my serve was getting stronger and more dialed-in than it had been earlier in the battle. I began
spewing out the aces; I could see he was having an increasingly hard time trying to catch up with the
serve. And it was helpful to my cause that even as he was making a furious comeback, I felt no panic. No
fear.
When you let a guy off the hook, like I had Ivan, you might hear this little voice: You had him, you’re in
trouble now. . . . Don’t panic, but this is kind of scary. . . . Play safe . . . play aggressive . . . forget your
game, listen to me; we’ve got to do something! Listening to that voice is the downfall of a competitor,
and if I’d paid attention to it, I would’ve lost that match. No doubt in my mind. And if I had lost that
match, chances are I would pick up that dialogue again in similar circumstances in the future. It’s true
what they say about winning being a habit. Once you open that Pandora’s box of doubt, all kinds of nasty
things come flying out. I can’t stress how important it is to train yourself to seek clarity at moments of
doubt. You have to stay calm and have complete faith in your abilities. It takes a strong mind.
I was able to do that, and it helped me establish a career precedent. With aces pouring off my racket, I
won the fifth set going away, 6–2. In the end, it was my game that got me through that situation, not my
heart or my mind. But neither of those two organs intervened to screw things up, either. When it was all
over, I found myself on a higher plateau as a competitor. It was the match that launched the Sports
Illustrated headline A STAR IS BORN.
At the time, though, I was oblivious. I just focused on getting ready for a semifinal rematch with
McEnroe. I had a day off to prepare, during which I did a few interviews. But I still felt no pressure. It
was ironic—as a kid I had been wide-eyed about the prospect of playing on a stage like the U.S. Open,
but when I got there, it didn’t really feel much different to me than Cincinnati or Toronto. It’s a measure of
how off the radar I was that McEnroe, on the eve of the match, said, “I can’t ask any more than to be
playing Pete Sampras in the semis.” He didn’t mean it as an insult, and I didn’t take it as one. Lendl
owned Flushing Meadows, and he was now out of the way for McEnroe. I was a stripling, happy with
anything the tournament gave me.
It was a godsend that at some level I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was simply focused on the
job at hand, and unaware of the ramifications my success might have. I didn’t have any desperate hunger
to be a celebrity or the toast of the town. I liked playing tennis, I felt comfortable playing tennis, and I saw
no reason why you shouldn’t, or couldn’t, play the same way on one court as you did on another. I just
thought, Well, here I am, doing what I’ve always wanted to do. . . . I’m just going to throw the ball up,
serve as hard as I can, and hope I hit the line. Sports psychologists make a living trying to teach athletes
to adopt that attitude, but to me it came naturally. I doubt whether it can be taught, or learned.
I played Mac in the third and final match of Super Saturday, and picked up right where I had left off
with Lendl. In the McEnroe match, I hit a few of those jump-shot overheads, which would become a
trademark of sorts. But overall, I was popping aces, serving and volleying effectively, and hitting my
backhand return really well—and that’s always a key to success against a lefty, especially one like
McEnroe, who had that vicious southpaw slice that curves away from a righty in the advantage court. I
won the first two sets comfortably, he started coming back a little in the third and won it 6–3, but I didn’t
feel he was getting to my game at all. I still felt in complete control and rolled through him 6–3 in the
fourth.
The only good thing about Super Saturday, which for most of my career consisted of the two men’s
semifinals sandwiched around the women’s final, was that it didn’t leave you time to overthink the final.
Sometimes you had to play that final less than twenty-four hours after the end of your semi, but I was lucky
in ’90. I wasn’t exhausted by the McEnroe match. I did my press chores after that match and ended up
staying up pretty late. When I woke up the next day, it was almost time to go out there and play the last
match of the tournament.