But you see me mention in the ESPN entry that a number of attacking players who never won Roland Garros, including Pete Sampras, John Newcombe, and Vitas Gerulaitis, won in Italy. When I brought up the subject with Pete yesterday, noting that his 6-1,6-2,6-2 waxing of Boris Becker (who grew up on clay - file that in the nature vs. nature argument) was an extremely impressive show of clay-court force, he just laughed and said, "Yeah. . . those were some pretty fast clay courts."
Pete is an honest guy. That's one of the things I have always admired about him, and I was reminded of that a number of times in the past two days, while Pete and I were having our first interview sessions for his autobiography. He was in Boston for the Outback Champions Series event, which started yesterday afternoon. I hadn't seen much of Pete in the past few years, and I was struck by how well he's aging. Oh sure, his hair is thinning, but his face has filled out to the point where he now has a rugged, adult look. He put on some weight shortly after retirement, but he's shed that now and he's back around his last playing weight of 175. He took some of the weight off by playing intense three-on-three half-court basketball games with pals like former pro Alex O'Brien (they're so serious about it that they have a ref).
So, of course, I had to ask: "Do you dunk?"
"I used to," Pete admitted. "When I was younger. .."
Well, he's only 35 now, but time is especially tough on professional athletes. And no athlete has ever been more "professional" than Sampras, although Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Connors, and now Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal seem to be right up there.
I don't want to get into specific incidents and anecdotes that will be published in the book, partly because it's hard to do justice to bits and pieces of it here at the site. But I mentioned Pete's honesty earlier, and that was one of the dominant characteristics of our interview. Pete is a very shy guy, and one who took a long time getting comfortable in the public eye. In standard interviews, even with journalist with whom he had a good relationship, like me, he was always a little guarded. And he traditionally was very reluctant to reveal too much about himself. Plus, one his better qualities is that he's always been equally reluctant to reveal things he knew about others - you know, what you would call "gossip." I don't know a tennis player who gossips less than Pete, and I know many who gossip more.
Now, though, this is his book - it's not some interpretive riff about him. And he not only knows that he can speak freely and not risk being misinterpreted, it's his chance to tell his side of the story- something Pete can only do one way: honestly. And the great thing for me, as his co-author, was the way that not having to worry about being taken out of context and speaking frankly served to bring out some of the best - and sometimes suppressed - traits in Pete.
We covered a lot of territory, and the overarching theme in his early years is this marvelous, go-figure element. He did not become a prodigy and Grand Slam champ by accident. But he wasn't forced or molded into one, either. He was a regular kid with an extraordinary gift that he discovered quite by accident, and the dominant fact of Pete's life and career is that he was able to take that gift to maximum fruition. He wasn't "made" by anyone - not Pete Fischer, not Tim Gullikson, not Paul Annacone.
The elements that made Pete great were the personal attributes that jelled and became manifest at a slightly slower pace than his game. As he admitted, when we were talking about the beginning of his career, "The easiest thing would have been to become one of the top guys and then just enjoy life, win a few majors here and there, and call it good."
How Sampras become more than just a great player with a handful of Grand Slam titles is where his real distinction lies, and in a way that's going to be the core of this book. Because it took resilience, courage, maturity and a preternatural dedication to become the all-time Grand Slam champion. Pete was always perceived as a powerful player, but very rarely as a powerful person. That's probably because of his shy nature, the insecurity that tended to make him clam up or even get prickly at times, and his tendency to internalize what stress he felt (and he felt a lot).
Whatever the reasons, that was a great injustice and misapprehension, and for me that's going a great source of satisfaction: there's nothing like helping to tell a story that you don't feel has been told right, and one that you believe needs to be told for the best reason of all: the truth in it. Because this is a guy who deserves his due, not just as a champion, but as man - maybe not a man tailor-made for our time, but a man made from the basic stuff that means so much: honesty, dedication, discipline, dignity, and strong emotions. Yep, strong emotions. He never wore his heart on his sleeve, and he knew how to keep it away from his tennis; that's why so few people ever saw it. They will see it in this book.
Pete plays his first match against Petr Korda tonight in the Champions Tour. I get the sense that this venture back into competition is an experiment undertaken to see how he feels about swinging a racquet in something other than a backyard hit. The event will be televised locally in Boston, and I imagine it will be covered by the usual written and on-line press pariahs. I hope he does well and enjoys it; I think he's still got a lot to give, and he's better prepared than ever to give it.
