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Pete Sampras, a tennis king content to stay home
(New York Times)
Updated: 2009-06-29 11:50 THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.: As soon as Pete Sampras sat down for lunch Friday, his cellphone started vibrating. Someone was answering the S O S he had placed after running after his two revved-up children all morning. The voice on the other end was confirming his boat rental at Lake Sherwood for later in the afternoon. Sampras, desperate for his two sons, Christian, six, and Ryan, three and a half, to catch a few moments of repose, was taking them fishing. He repeated the name of the boat, the better to commit it to memory: Low Profile.
How fitting. In the years when Sampras, 37, ruled tennis, he was the cloistered king, his towering legacy built on a windowless, steely structure of repetition and ritual. Since his retirement in 2003, Sampras has been no more visible, retreating to the light- and noise-filled world of fatherhood, his focus on the development of his living legacies. Sampras could receive an urgent phone call some time in the next few days from an All England Club official, perhaps, or maybe a network executive hoping to lure him to London for the Wimbledon men's final if Roger Federer were to grace it. If Federer, who is through to the fourth round, wins his sixth Wimbledon title, he will earn his 15th major singles championship, one more than Sampras's record total.
It would be a long way to travel for a cameo appearance, he said. And it would require leaving his boys - or less palatable still, taking them. "Have you ever tried traveling with a six-year-old and a three-year-old?" he said, laughing. If any place has the power to pull Sampras out of his routine, it is Wimbledon. For Sampras, it became more than a tournament; it was a time share he possessed for two weeks every summer. Wimbledon is the place that holds many of his fondest memories. It is where he won seven singles titles, losing only four service games in those seven finals. It is where, in 2000, he came from one set down to defeat Pat Rafter and supplant Roy Emerson as the most-decorated men's tennis champion, with 13 major titles. (Sampras added the United States Open crown in 2002, long after most people had given him up for gone.) These two weeks, when Wimbledon dominates the sports headlines, are the only time, Sampras said, that he misses tournament tennis. "Center Court, there's no other place like it," he said. "It just gives you a buzz." The 2000 Wimbledon crown was Sampras's fourth in a row, but it was anything but routine. "It was a tough two weeks," he said. He was hospitalized in the first week with a shin injury that continued to bother him despite cortisone injections and acupuncture treatments. At one point, he told his girlfriend, Bridgette, who is now his wife, that he might have to withdraw from the tournament. |
