Pete Sampras by Pete Sampras & Peter Bodo

Author:Pete Sampras & Peter Bodo [Sampras, Pete & Bodo, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845138226
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I finished number one for the year for the third consecutive time in 1995, even though Andre held the top spot for most of that time. To clinch the ranking, I had to beat Boris Becker in the final of the Paris Indoors in November. If I had finished the year a close number two to Andre, the tenor of my entire career might have changed. For one thing, setting the record for years at number one wouldn’t have become an all-consuming goal for me the way it ultimately did. But I’m jumping ahead.

Shortly after Davis Cup, I went on to Munich to play the Grand Slam Cup. When I arrived, Boris Becker pulled me aside and paid me one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. If you remember how serious Boris could sound—how downright presidential—you’ll appreciate this. He looked at me and said, “That Davis Cup performance in Moscow was unbelievable, Pete. That’s why you’re number one in the world, no question.” Given that our rivalry was intense (I had beaten him in the Wimbledon final just months earlier), it was a generous thing to say.

As the months and years passed, I would savor and treasure that Moscow Davis Cup accomplishment with increasing joy—I was especially pleased that it had occurred on clay. This was one fruit of the commitment I embraced after the 1992 U.S. Open final.

A few important threads of my career ran together in 1995. There was the emerging possibility that I might break Jimmy Connors’s long-standing record of finishing number one for five years in a row—a mark that some thought untouchable. It was also the official start of the glory days of my rivalry with Andre; it just went to a different level when we split those two hard-court finals at Indian Wells and Miami. We were over the hump; we were a hot topic in sports conversations, among general sports fans as well as tennis nuts. And we presented enough of a contrast to make people feel passionate about why they preferred one of us to the other.

The sad part for me was that all of that played out against the background of Tim’s illness. Although everyone, including the media, was respectful of our privacy, people invariably asked about Tim and expressed their sympathies. I had to bear a great deal of sorrow and uncertainty in 1995, and I believe I handled it pretty well. The public appeared to see me in a warmer light from that point on. I think they felt more empathy toward me.

But there was a price to pay for the way I overloaded my competitive plate in 1995, and the first payment came due just weeks after the Davis Cup final in Moscow, at the 1996 Australian Open. I entered that event after having had less than a month of “off season” following the Grand Slam Cup (I pulled out of that with an ankle injury), and there was no way I was ready, much less eager, to play.

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