A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

focus. I proved slightly more steady in the crapshoot tiebreakers, and after I won two of them, Goran
folded up. I won, 7–6, 7–6, 6–0.
The match marked the high point in the growing debate about grass-court tennis. A growing chorus of
critics charged that Wimbledon tennis had degenerated into a serving contest between two giants who
almost couldn’t lose serve, but couldn’t break each other, either. Goran and I personified the trend, never
mind that neither of us was the biggest guy around. Our big serves and our desire to end points quickly
added up to a perfect storm of Wimbledon controversy.
Tennis at Wimbledon, some pundits said, was in danger of becoming irrelevant, because ongoing
technologies had produced more powerful rackets that buried the needle on the power meter deep in the
red. Even the tabloids got into it, running pictures of prominent politicians and others in the Royal Box
sleeping soundly. Ostensibly, that had something to do with the way the game was being played.
Ironically, though, I never did take advantage of the evolving racket technologies. My earliest racket as
a junior player was the wooden Wilson Jack Kramer Pro Staff. I also played with a Kneissel, briefly, and
a Donnay that was essentially the same as the racket I would come to use for my entire career—a Wilson
Pro Staff 85 Graphite with an 85-square-inch head (the smallest available). It was a racket that probably
lost whatever “cutting edge” appeal it had long before I posted my best results with it.
Every one of my frames was customized for me by Nate Ferguson, who worked for the guy who pretty
much invented the high-end customization trade, Warren Bosworth. All of my rackets were weighted with
lead tape and balanced. I also had grip work done. I played with a big grip—somewhere between 4 5/8
and 4¾, and I liked a fairly big butt cap; I always wrapped my grips with Tourna Grip. I admit I could get
pretty neurotic about racket tuning. I would go to these events early in my career, and the stringing
machines were different and the stringers were different guys, so I would have to get four, five rackets
done before they got it right—if they got it right. I was always worried that poor or inconsistent stringing
might cost me matches, so as I began to win big, I decided to spend a little money. I hired Nate.
Nate basically traveled with me as my racket guy; he also did all of my stringing. I was very particular
about my tension, and used the thinnest strings available, 17-gauge gut. On clay, I strung 32 to 33 kilos
(70.4 to 72.6 pounds); on grass, 32 kilos; on some fast hard courts, I went to 34 kilos (74.8 pounds).
Because of the thin string and high tension, the gut sometimes snapped at crazy times—like in the middle
of the night, when the pop would wake me up. One year, I went through more than seven hundred sets of
gut (gut sells for about $35.00 a set, retail). I wanted my rackets strung for every match, which means that
if I won a major, I went through at least fifty-six sets of gut over the two-week period. At the French
Open, if I had my rackets strung after a match and it happened to rain on the off day, I had the frames torn
apart and restrung before I played again.
Over the years, I was offered money—sometimes a lot of money—to switch rackets. I went as far as
trying a few demos. But they never felt the same, and I’m the first to admit that a lot of this probably was
in my head. By the same token, you hear a lot of war stories about tennis players and golfers who changed
rackets or clubs and ended up miserable. Wilson was all too aware of my feelings, and had me captive to
that Pro Staff 85. I was so fastidious about this issue that for a few years I played with the racket even
though Wilson and I had not come to terms on a contract and I was basically getting paid nothing.
Looking back on it now, I think changing to a larger-headed racket in the latter years of my career
would have helped me. My racket was great for grass—it was very precise, with that small head and
narrow string at high tension. But on clay, you can benefit from having a greater margin of error. The
sweet spot on my racket was just three or four inches. With a larger head and different strings, I might
have generated a lot more power and spin from back in the court. I would have played more like guys
play today.
It’s hard to know just what would have happened, but in any case I’m certain that my small-headed
racket was an ideal tool on grass. I admit that the critics had a point when they claimed that we were in