A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

that you can’t wait to get out there to mix it up with your opponent, even if you’re not guaranteed the win.
It’s the kind of nervous that makes some great football players throw up before a big game.
I also thought about how the final hadn’t been a well-played match. Sure, the wind might have had
something to do with it. My food poisoning may have been a factor. Stefan’s own fatigue, after his death
march to the final, was in the mix, too. But this is what I kept thinking: If he didn’t play that well, and I
didn’t play that well, why did he win? And the answer dawned on me, slowly, over a matter of weeks.
For the first time, I understood and could articulate the truth: I lost because I had packed it in. And it was
part of a pattern.
Coming face-to-face with that reality enabled me to admit that on two critical occasions in 1992—the
Wimbledon semi with Goran and the Open final with Edberg—I had more or less quit while I still had
some reserves to call on. The Edberg match was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If I didn’t care,
who would? I had wasted two big moments, and there was no guarantee that I would experience those
moments again.
My future was no longer a matter of how good I could get in order to put myself in a position to win big
events. I was there; I was plenty good. I wasn’t developing anymore in any significant technical or
physical way, I was developed (except in my grass-court game). The real question was, Did I want to win
majors? The Edberg match forced me to confront that. I slowly came to a realization about myself that
wasn’t very pretty. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Dad. It would have been easy enough to do; all I
would’ve had to say was, “Listen, I have a confession to make: I packed it in on some big occasions.” But
I internalized it, and got no forgiveness from the harshest judge of them all—myself.
My inner dialogue went on for about two months: Why make this thing more complicated than it needs
to be? If you see the other guy struggling, why follow suit? True, I’d been feeling a little overwhelmed
by my swift climb to the top of the game, but I was also a little too content with what I was achieving.
Why, I finally asked myself, are you being such a pussy?
It took me some years to come up with the answer, and here it is in its most simple form: Everybody
has a place in this world, and spends a good part of his mature life carving out his niche—the zone where
he is comfortable. Some guys, they get to number one and they think, I don’t really like it up here, it’s too
lonely. Too stressful. Too demanding. So they settle back a little. They find a comfort zone at number
three, or five, or whatever. I could have done that; a part of me was doing that early in my career. The
truth is that when you’re anywhere but at number one, you can hide. You can get to the second week of
majors regularly, win one now and then, earn a lot of respect and money, and lead a great, stress-free life.
I honestly can’t tell you why my conversation with commitment took this tack, but it did: I decided that I
had this great talent and I wasn’t taking care of it. I had the Gift, and I was turning away from it, at least on
some of the very occasions when it was maybe the only thing that could pull me through. It wasn’t going to
be good enough for me to just be in the mix; it would nag and wear at me. I realized that the game was not
about getting somewhere, but staying somewhere. Some of us, we get there and we don’t want to let it go.
We don’t want to see some other guy take it. And that’s ultimately what makes you a warrior—a fully
formed, mature competitor.
You can’t really teach someone determination, although you can nurture it. It’s something that is either
in you or not, and you have to figure it out as an individual. And if you decide you need to be number one,
you have to realize you can’t hide. You have to get fitted for the bull’s-eye on your back and get used to
living with it.
I was ready. That 1992 Edberg match was my Rubicon, my version of that famous Muhammad Ali
moment when he threw his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River one night. At the end of 1992, I was
determined to have a huge 1993.