A Champion's Mind - Pete Sampras

little blurry around the edges. I then told myself that whatever else happened, I could get through this. It
could be as short as seven points. It was just a tiebreaker; I had played a million of them before, and none
of them lasted forever.
At 1–1 in the tiebreaker, all the pain and distress and nervous energy got to me and I got sick. My back
was cramping and my legs felt like they were made of wood, and not entirely under my own control. I
remember playing a tough point and all of a sudden I had this realization: Holy shit, I’m going to throw
up. I’m going to puke—in front of the whole friggin’ world!
It was coming up and there was no way I would stop it. I staggered back from the baseline, and up
came the Coke and acid and whatever else—thankfully, it wasn’t much—that was still in my stomach. By
the time it actually happened, though, I didn’t care. I didn’t really hear or see anything. I didn’t care how I
looked or what anyone thought. I was in my own little world of pain, and as bad as it was, I wasn’t going
to quit the match.
When you throw up like that, and it’s happened to me in training sessions, it’s a sure sign that you took
yourself to the absolute limit—the point of no return. But I needed to push on, I had to get through a few
more points. I was staggering around, my senses dulled and my body aching. I remember playing a hard
point and getting through it, and then it would take me two points to recover. I was aware enough to think
of only one or two things, strategywise. I had to put all I had into the serve and, if I saw a forehand, I had
to let the sucker ride.
We lurched along to 6–6 in the tiebreaker, with me serving. It was time to decide things. I went for
broke on my first serve end and missed. My second serve went wide to his forehand and, to my
everlasting good fortune, Alex guessed backhand. There was nobody home. The ace brought me to match
point. By that stage, the atmosphere was totally supercharged. People were leaning over the railings in the
stadium, hanging into the court, screaming encouragement at me. I didn’t know it, but all over the United
States and the world, things in many places came to an utter standstill as people got sucked into the drama
of it all.
And then Alex blinked. He did the one inexcusable thing, under the circumstances: he double-faulted at
match point. I won without having to take that additional step—one that I might not have been capable of
making.
I left the court completely spent, dehydrated, disorientated, and vaguely aware that I had made a
spectacle of myself. I went right into the doctor’s office under the stands in Louis Armstrong Stadium and
collapsed. They immediately hooked me up to an IV bag. Paul went to gather my things from the locker
room, and when we finally opened the door to leave the doctor’s office, I saw a sea of faces, members of
the press who had staked out the room.
But I didn’t need to talk to the press that day; they already had their story and it was one that more or
less wrote itself. The Corretja match quickly became engraved in everyone’s mind as my defining moment
—my warrior moment. And I was lucky, because other players have won matches like that, but few have
done it at such a conspicuous, crucial moment. If I had played that very same match against Alex in the
second round at Monte Carlo instead of at the U.S. Open, I doubt it would have had anything like the same
impact. It might have been a footnote in the roundup section of most U.S. newspapers.
But it had occurred in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, a Grand Slam event and my native major, in
the prime-time slot right after Labor Day when everybody was back from vacation, under the gaze of the
international press corps and before an international television audience. So it became something special,
something the entire world saw and everyone commented on.
The New York crowd had been a tough nut for me. I’m not sure they were ever all that fond of me or my
game. They were accustomed to blustery, bombastic showmen who were great competitors, but not
necessarily elegant or classic players. It’s hard to beat a pair of acts called Jimmy Connors and John
McEnroe. Sure, I had this easy, natural game. I had won half a dozen majors. But I wasn’t very Broadway.