A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

ait-and-switch move or not, but I agreed to meet with Tim.
We met in Florida, hit some balls, and talked. Tim, it turned out, was more easygoing than Tom, which
suited me. He was also gregarious—a natural communicator, which would be a good quality in the coach
of a reticent, reserved kid like me. While never a great player himself, Tim was a student of greatness and
loved being around it. By nature, Tim was an attacker with a superb volley, so he had an affinity for my
style. And he was still a young man—just about forty when we met—so he had energy, passion, and
commitment. I decided to hire him, effective January 1992.
The unsettled coaching situation contributed to my inconsistency during the fall of ’91. I took a loss to
Brad Gilbert in Sydney, but won Lyon. I had back-to-back losses to Boris Becker and Guy Forget in
Stockholm and at the Paris Indoors. I put a little balm on my wounds at the year-end ATP Finals, where I
beat Agassi in the round-robin and Lendl and Courier, back-to-back, to win the fifth most important
tournament of the year.
My last event of the year was my Davis Cup debut, against France, back in Lyon. Those who love Davis
Cup, like John McEnroe or Andy Roddick, make it a top priority and consider it the ultimate honor.
Playing with the name of your country on the back of your shirt and on the scoreboard is a unique
experience. On that I’ll agree. It creates a special kind of pressure that you just don’t feel when you’re
playing for yourself, even at places like Wimbledon or Flushing Meadows.
Davis Cup is a team effort, which is also different and interesting, and the nationalistic nature of the
competition ensures that you play under some conditions you just don’t have to face on the tour.
Everything gets magnified or skewed in Davis Cup, and you can throw the records, the rankings, and the
form chart out the window. That makes Davis Cup a tough assignment for a rookie.
The Davis Cup format is a single-elimination tournament featuring sixteen nations that have qualified
for the elite World Group, and each match (in Davis Cup it’s called a “tie”) consists of five matches—
four singles and a doubles—that are played over three days (Friday through Sunday). The teams usually
devote the entire week leading into the weekend tie to on-site practice, so Davis Cup can eat up as much
as four weeks of a player or team’s time.
The four Davis Cup weeks take place over the course of the year; the big final is played in late
November or early December. The home-field advantage (every tie is either a home or an away match) is
determined by previous history on a simple basis: the teams take turns hosting ties. So if the last time
France played the United States the tie was played in France, the United States is automatically the host
for the next meeting—even if it doesn’t happen for four or eight to twelve years. Hosting is a huge
advantage. You get to fill the stadium with your home crowd (and Davis Cup fans are the rowdiest and
most vocal in tennis), but even more important, you get to choose where you play (indoors or out, at a
small club or in a huge arena) and on what surface.
Davis Cup didn’t mean much to me when I was growing up. I don’t remember watching it on television
(and it isn’t like Davis Cup was all over the tube back in the pre-cable days). So I had no pre-existing
reverence for the event. This made it tough to commit to Davis Cup because, like most top players, I put
the ability to perform at my peak in Grand Slams at the top of my priorities. And Davis Cup asked for a
lot, timewise.
In 1991, France put together a magical run under captain Yannick Noah, a very popular former player
and French Open champion. Guy Forget and Henri Leconte, two flashy lefties, carried the French squad to
its first final in the Open era. And the French also had the home-court advantage over their final-round
rivals—the United States. They chose to play the tie on fast carpet in an indoor stadium in Lyon.
When France announced the surface, U.S. captain Tom Gorman had a stroke of genius—at least
theoretically. Although I had lost my U.S. Open title in the “ton of bricks” match, I was the best fast-court