Pete Sampras is going to do this again, he said. And again. And yet again. Win Wimbledon titles.
“This is where it is for me,” Sampras said.
Forward all doubts to London, SW19, Centre Court, first Sunday in July, from now until whenever. There Sampras will be, at the net, shaking hands with another impostor, leaving his lip prints on another shiny souvenir, doing his half-hunch bow to royalty. May he never get that little bit of obeisance right.
“I guess my slump is over,” Sampras said.
What will stop him? Boredom, maybe. English food. Certainly no one in his generation. He has run through all of those, from Agassi to Pioline. Sampras has done it so often he’s beating the same guys all over again, Goran Ivanisevic for the second time.
He now has five Wimbledon titles, “like Borg and those guys,” Sampras said.
Bjorn Borg alone, among the guys in short pants, among the Open-era winners. The gaslight and ragtime guys didn’t count even then, and Sampras may yet catch the old Victorian, W.C. Renshaw, who has the record at seven.
“You have five, can you double it?” someone asked.
“I’ll take them one at a time,” Sampras said, modestly.
Sampras will be doing this when his eyebrows are easier to comb than his hair, a time not too far away.
“As a kid you see Borg’s five and I never thought I had a chance at that,” Sampras said. “I thought it would never be broken, and I still have some years left in me.”
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If there is any news out of this thing, that would be it, that Sampras is not quitting or reconsidering or rushing into real life as others have before him.
He instantly denied he was going to become engaged to his girlfriend, the actress Kimberly Williams, though who knows what kind of surprise that might be for her.
Sampras is not about to do anything foolish, like have a worldly thought or read a book, perish the thought.
This is the Prime of Pete Sampras, at 26, an age when male tennis champions seem duty bound to have a mid-career crisis, but Sampras is gifted with the complete indifference to the kind of curiosity that rushed Borg and John McEnroe into early adulthood.
His coach, Paul Annacone, explains it this way: “Pete has a way of sifting through things and moving on. He can shut things out as a competitor, even though as a regular guy he is just as affected by them as anyone else would be.
“The inability to grow while playing at the highest level may have been the reason that a guy like Borg felt compelled to quit at 25. Or maybe the lack of growth ended up exacerbating the pressure.”
In other words, Sampras is a geranium and the tennis court is his window box. No need to become a piece of ivy.
“Pete is busy proving that all the limitations and distractions people began talking about when Borg quit and when McEnroe more or less disappeared while he was still on top, aren’t necessarily legitimate concerns,” Australian coach Bob Brett said.
“Get somebody good enough and mentally capable of handling the climate in today’s game and there’s no reason why he can’t play until age 30 or 32 and win 15 Grand Slam titles.”
Keep the focus simple, like Borg’s five Wimbledon titles, or Roy Emerson’s 12 Grand Slams (Sampras now has 11) and Sampras’ attention is likely to wander.
“It is hard for me to think of myself in those terms,” Sampras said. “It is just kind of overwhelming.”
Sampras has so many of these things that he can even indulge a little regret for Ivanisevic, who did take him further, into five sets, than any of the other Wimbledon finalists.
“I feel sorry for Goran,” Sampras said, sounding perfectly sincere.
The tennis from both of them was uninspired and Ivanisevic blamed his 15-13 fifth-set semifinal ordeal against Richard Krajicek for exhausting him.
“My legs don’t listen,” Ivanisevic said.
It was not Ivanisevic’s legs but Sampras’ serve that made the difference finally, until the final set not as much a weapon as an introduction. Sampras lost only five points on his fifth-set serve and broke Ivanisevic at love for the match.
He did not even need to hit the match-point winner but merely allowed Ivanisevic’s backhand volley to sail long.
“Only one name gets put on the trophy,” Sampras said.
Over and over again.