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by Pete Bodo
You all saw that Juan Martin del Potro, the new US Open champion, lost his first match back on tour the other day in Tokyo, to a qualifier no less. No reason to be alarmed about this, right? I look at that loss as symbolic, for just as winning the title in New York represented the end of something for del Potro, it also signaled the beginning. He's traveling on a different, faster track now, and it's impossible to predict how he'll react to the challenge. Could anyone have predicted the bottle-rocket arc of Marat Safin's career after he won his first major, in 2000?
Okay, Safin is everyone's favorite whipping boy when it comes to issues of consistency and talent-maximization. So let's look at an icon of productivity, Pete Sampras. He won his first major in high style, hence the frequent descriptions of Safin's debut a a Grand Slam titlist as "Samprasesque" - a comparison flush with biting irony because it was Sampras whom Safin bludgeoned to earn his first major title.
Sampras went almost three full years before winning another major, although he performed consistently enough always to be in the mix near the top. If I suggested that del Potro (and in this context, we can broaden the discussion to include Novak Djokovic) might go two, three years before he wins another major, would that make you want fling yourself into the River Plate?
It shouldn't, as Samparas's history clearly shows. The guy ended up winning 14 majors.
Sampras was just 19 when he won that first US Open title, Safin was 20 (although the difference in their ages was a more impressive-sounding 20 months; Sampras had just turned 19, and Safin would turn 21 in January of 2001). Djokovic was also 20 when he won his first major, Rafael Nadal had just turned 19 when he first struck gold at Roland Garros, and del Potro turned 21 just a few weeks after winning in New York.
So among the men under discussion, del Potro and Safin are the ones who feasted to Grand Slam table at the latest age, but the spread between all of them is relatively narrow. It makes sense that Sampras went almost three years until his next major because he was the youngest and had the most growing up to do, although Safin certainly didn't make the best use of his relative maturity, going over four years before he won his next (and only other) major, in Australia. But then, he's Safin. Nadal was the most consistent, although his startling prowess on clay is slightly deceiving; it took Nadal three years to win a major other than Roland Garros.
All this suggests that Djokovic and Delpo still has plenty of time to stay on track for greatness. But there's one other component in this discussion, and it can't really be quantified statistically, and that's desire. Sampras held a career-transforming conversation with himself shortly after losing the US Open final of 1992 to Stefan Edberg (almost two years to the day after he won his first major in New York).
Sampras ultimately made a conscious decision to pursue greatness at all cost. In his own words, he decided that it was easy to "hide" in the Top 10, popping up now and then to win a major or grab the no. 1 ranking. But he wanted more; he knew that the top player lived with a "target on his back," and he decided he could bear that burden. His fantastic run of Grand Slam success began in the middle of the following year with a win at Wimbledon.
I've sometimes wondered if Sampras's feelings, and his relative eloquence about them, bear some kind of cultural fingerprint. The story of his transformation from flirtatious contender into dominant champ is inspiring in a particularly American way, given this nation's pre-occupations with competition, second acts, and the ingrained Puritan work ethic. Would someone like a Djokovic, or del Potro, even be able to have such a black-and-white conversation with himself, given that it's initiated by something like a sense of culturally imposed accountability? Could he even conceive of having this dialog with an idea, one part of you telling some other part of you to man up? I don't know the answer to that.
!91477174 Roger Federer certainly hasn't entertained us with any tales of theatrical confrontations with himself - nor, for that matter, has Nadal imposed a dramatic, largely interior, personal narrative on his successful drive to break out of clay-court ghetto. Americans, I think, are inclined to ask themselves, What do I want out of life? in a fairly loud voice, whereas citizens in other parts of the world sometimes seem content to simply live and make their way as easily - or arduously - as their situation demands and/or their temperament allows.
Perhaps Federer was lucky not to have won a major at too young an age. He was almost 22 when he bagged his first title, at Wimbledon, but from that point on he operated on a stable platform at the peak of the game, and he has yet to experience his first serious drop in Grand Slam performance. His narrative is ridiculously un-dramatic; Joseph Campbell is probably rolling over in his grave, cursing the day this wretchedly easy-going Swiss was born.
Still, I have a feeling I know what Djokovic, or del Potro, would say if, on the eve of his first Grand Slam final victory, you asked if he wouldn't rather wait a few more years, when it might be a little easier to navigate the perils that accompany the benefits of becoming a great champion at a young age.
Are you nuts?