A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

his all, he was gritty and very cool under pressure. We had, arguably, the greatest Davis Cup team of all
time—and a pretty stubborn bunch. In the opening ceremony, the promoter wanted us to wear these tengallon
hats and it kind of freaked Jim out. He snapped, “I’m not wearing that stupid hat!” So there were no
cowboy hats.
The Swiss had a very tough two-man team consisting of Jakob Hlasek and Marc Rosset. Both guys
were very good on fast courts, which is unusual because most Europeans prefer the slower clay. So much
for our home-court/fast-court advantage. Hlasek was in the midst of his career year in singles, and Rosset
was a guy with a game as tricky as it was big. He could play serve and volley, even though his career
moment of glory occurred on slow clay a few months earlier, when he won the singles gold medal at the
Barcelona Olympic Games.
Andre won the opening rubber, but then Rosset showed his mettle with an upset of Jim. McEnroe and I
would be playing Hlasek and Rosset in what suddenly looked like a critical doubles match. And when we
lost the first two sets, both in tiebreakers, it looked like tiny Switzerland might pull off one of the most
shocking of Davis Cup upsets—and on U.S. soil, no less.
John was in one of his McEnroe moods. Throughout the match, he trash-talked Hlasek, a very quiet but
cool guy who minded his own business and got along with everyone. John was suffering, and coming
dangerously close to losing control. But then he was unlike anyone else in that he often played better after
going nuts. Some of the line calls in the first two sets seemed dodgy, and in the third set John finally lost it
over another apparent bad call. He started in on the umpire, and he just kept going on. He yelled at the
official, and he yelled at our own captain, Gorman (for not making more of a fuss and “standing up for
us”). He was just going ballistic in general, in any direction he wanted, long after the point in question
was over.
Finally, I just lost it myself. I turned on John and snapped, “John, it’s over. Done with. Let’s not harp on
what happened three games ago, it’s time to move on, man.” For some reason, my own little outburst had
two welcome results. It calmed John down (emotionally, if not verbally) and it fired me up. We won the
third set and adjourned for what was then still the required ten-minute break before the start of the fourth
set. John and I came off the break with wild eyes and fire in our bellies. It was one of those rare
occasions when I got into the emotion of it all. I was pumping my fist and yelling. McEnroe must have
said, “Come on, let’s kick ass” a thousand times. We clawed and fist-pumped and yelled our way to a not
very pretty but extremely relieving win, 6–2 in the fifth.
Although I became very emotional in that match, in general John and I were like a Jekyll and Hyde
pairing; I tended to be cool and forward-looking, he was hot-tempered and all wrapped up in the moment,
always ready for an altercation. He thrived on that, and I understood it. We were good for each other. He
pumped me up with his emotional outbursts, even if I didn’t show it, and I calmed him down with my selfcontrol,
even if he was, externally, still the same contentious, fiery player.
The next day, after Jim beat Hlasek to clinch the tie, I became a Davis Cup champ. It mattered not at all
that I had played only doubles in the final; I had done my share all year and felt as proud and entitled as if
I had played every singles match for the United States in our drive to win the Cup.
But throughout the fall, I kept harkening back to the loss at the Open to Edberg. It was eating away at my
guts. I occasionally thought about what Dad had said a lifetime earlier in Shreveport. I had been a U.S.
Open finalist, sure, but who cared? The guy whom the press—and everybody else—was interested in was
Edberg.
The real giveaway, I came to realize, was that I hadn’t been nervous before the match. There are two
kinds of nervous in tennis: bad nervous, which can make you freeze up, play an inhibited game, or choke,
and good nervous, which is a sign that the match you are about to play really means a lot to you—a sign