A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

I went into 1993 determined never to give up in a match again. Whatever happened, I would never lose
another battle—especially a Grand Slam final or similar big opportunity—because I didn’t have the heart
to fight to the finish and walk off the court spent. I’d had my conversation with commitment; now it was
just a matter of backing up my promise on the court.
As the year developed, I felt I was right in the mix of top players, and enjoying the game more than
ever. I lost to Edberg in the semis at the Australian Open, where he always played well and I did not. I
won Philadelphia, Miami, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and claimed the number one ranking on the computer
for the first time in my career. It was a controversial ascent because I became number one by winning
everything but slams. Still, I was hardly to blame for the way the ATP computer allocated points, and I
was clearly the most consistent player in the early part of the year.
It rankled me that I had yet to win my second major, while Jim Courier by then had a whopping four
(two at Roland Garros, two from the Australian Open). He’d taken command in our generation (Michael,
Andre, and I had just one major apiece), and I was determined to regain my place at the top of our pecking
order. It was more important to me than the computer rankings.
I turned in a good clay-court season, putting up wins over Alex Corretja, Andrei Cherkasov, Guillermo
Perez-Roldan, and some other clay-court experts. At Roland Garros, I lost in the quarters to the eventual
champ, Sergi Bruguera. Then it was on to the grass: I went on to Queen’s Club and lost in the first round
to one of those accomplished South African grass-court players, Grant Stafford. But that wasn’t so bad,
because I never did well at Queen’s in the years when I was in the hunt at the French Open. This had less
to do with having to make the transition from clay to grass than the letdown I always felt after missing a
chance to win a Grand Slam. I needed time to recuperate, emotionally and mentally, from a major
campaign—especially one that was unsuccessful.
I was one of the clear favorites going into Wimbledon in 1993, and not just among the pundits and London
bookmakers. This time I was comfortable with the expectations, and I wanted to win. One of my major
goals when I hired Tim was figuring out the grass-court game, and we worked on that, in various ways,
from the onset of our relationship. We felt that the early loss at Queen’s Club could be helpful, because it
meant we had almost two full weeks of valuable extra time to iron out what we both hoped were the final
kinks in my redesigned Wimbledon game.
When my brother, Gus, and I first arrived at Wimbledon in 1989, we’d gone straight to Centre Court
and just sat there, taking it all in. Centre Court—it had such a huge impact on me as a child that years
later, as a young pro, I was almost shocked to see that the place really, truly did exist. And it was much
smaller than Gus and I had imagined. We just sat there for ten minutes, drinking in the sight of the empty,
quiet stadium and gazing at that cool, inviting, emerald green grass. This was the place where, as we’d
watched, John McEnroe had won; this was the place where Laver had played all those matches—on our
living-room wall.
But there was this little problem of actually having to play on that grass, instead of merely watching
others do it. And that problem was relatively simple: I could hold serve easily and still lose matches 7–6,
7–6, 7–6. Despite the hype, grass-court tennis isn’t about the serve; it’s all about the return. My game was