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March 19, 2005

'I'm done. I've nothing left to give, nothing to prove'
By Neil Harman
Nearly two years on, Pete Sampras breaks his silence to talk about the moment he knew he had to retire
HE SKIPS from his golf buggy in jeans and trainers — country club dress codes are not nearly so strict as they are in England, it seems — and what strikes you first is that Pete Sampras is the personification of contentment. Second is the apparent pleasure he takes from the idea of spending an hour with someone whose job is to pry. Heavens, how he has changed. Retirement suits a 33-year-old, with a second child on the way, who does not have to wrestle with the concept of a mortgage.

It is 19 months since tennis waved off arguably its greatest champion and he has barely said a word to anyone in the sport since. He had never given more of himself than was absolutely necessary when he played with such majesty and that he disappeared from view after a raw night in New York — the image of Sampras, shoulders hunched and eyes watery, as he realised it was all over is still vivid — was not a grand surprise. The Howard Hughes persona sits well with him.

NI_MPU('middle'); That we are in the Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California, the town that rubs shoulders with Indian Wells, and that Sampras has no intention of poking his head around the door to see what is going on at the Pacific Life Open, one of the leading events on the tennis calendar, bears this out. Is he not just a bit intrigued?

“No, not really,” he said. “The first time you will see me will be Wimbledon, because that’s the way I want it. That’s the way it should be. Tim Phillips (the All England Club chairman) asked me to come the year after I’d stopped playing, but that was too soon. I would like to go when my son — maybe sons — are older. I’d love to sit with them in the royal box and just watch.

“Remember, tennis had been my whole life, it took me over completely. It was a tough sport, one that showed your true character out there, which I loved. But by the end I was holding on so tight to win that record fourteenth grand-slam (title) and only when I did it, I could breathe again. I was on my last fume against Andre (Agassi) in that fourth set in the (2002 US) Open final. If I hadn’t have served it out when I did, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Sampras did not call it quits on that spectacular night but something inside him said enough was enough. He began withdrawing from tournaments and when he called Paul Annacone, his coach, to his home in Beverly Hills on the proviso of knuckling down to practise for Wimbledon 2003, he knew deep down that he would not be making the journey.

“I thought, OK, this is Wimbledon I’m getting ready for, but on the third day I said: ‘Paul, let’s not kid ourselves, I don’t want to practise. I’m done, I’ve nothing left to give and nothing left to prove to myself.’ That was when I knew I was going to retire, but how would I do it?

“Friends said I should go to New York, to the Open, but I worried about exposing myself emotionally. The USTA said they’d love to honour me there and I thought, umm, OK, I’ll go. I didn’t spend any time before it reflecting on my career, I didn’t know what I’d feel, but on the way to the site, a trip I’d made hundreds of times, it suddenly hit me in the face and in the gut. My career was over.”

What a career: 14 grand-slam triumphs stretching from 1990 to 2002, including seven Wimbledons, and 64 titles in all, winning £25 million in prize-money. Six times in a row he ended the year as the world No 1 and it was all done with a style and self-effacement that made one want to know more.

For this was the inscrutability of Sampras, who found press conferences a chilling experience, who craved universal acknowledgement but preferred no fuss, who would have chosen to lead an anonymous life but who had it in him to be the best in the world at his chosen sport. And who, finally, married an actress and went to live in Los Angeles, one of the few who did both to escape the world rather than show off to it. He lives in a Tudor house on a hill, “tucked away”, he said. Just as he likes it.

He was there after “the surrealism” of Flushing Meadows and his farewell, thrashing around with his feelings. “I had began to resent the sport, I had let it affect me so much,” he said. “I remember playing golf with (Jimmy) Connors and he said that when you stop you don’t want anything to do with tennis. You don’t want to read about it, watch it, talk about it, you want to get as far away from it as possible. That happened to me.”

He gave a long sigh before adding: “There was no more pressure, no more stress.” But something had to fill the void. “I’ve been playing a ton of golf and my wife is pregnant, so I’ve done a little bit of that . . .” His laughter, something we had longed to hear when he played, filled the air of the Bighorn clubhouse.

“Bridgette and I are remodelling our house,” he said. “It’s taken a lot of time and money. I’ve been asked to play some (tennis) but I’m not interested. Nothing prepares you for stopping, there is no book on how to retire. Has it really been nearly three years?

“I’ve had my camp-feverish moments — what am I going to do today? I’ve started working out, spending a lot of time with my wife and kid and that’s fine, but I’ve always been a focused, competitive athlete. There will be nothing ever to replace what I had in tennis. I’m still going through the transition.

“The ironic thing is that sport exposed me more than anything else in life. I had only known one thing since I was 8 years old and once I got serious there was no hiding place, which is why I love the home I have now.

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