Pete Sampras

The Full Biography

Pete Sampras. Tennis player. The Palos Verdes kid who made a serve-and-volley afternoon into a pile of majors, then left the sport on a New York night and meant it.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a man in white at Wimbledon, tossing a ball, a serve that ends the point before the rally begins. Fourteen majors, once the record. Pistol Pete. What the still cannot show is Petros Sampras of Washington, D.C., a Greek-American household in southern California, a junior who took the 1990 U.S. Open at nineteen, a quiet that the boom era treated as a personality defect, and a living man who has been retired longer than he was a champion and has not asked to be talked out of it.

He was born on August 12, 1971, in Washington, D.C., the third child of Soterios “Sammy” Sampras, a civil engineer, and Georgia Vroustouris. The household was Greek Orthodox. Sundays were church. At three he found a racket in the basement and hit balls against a wall. In 1978 the family moved to Palos Verdes, California, where the weather let a seven-year-old play most of the year. Rod Laver was the idol. At eleven he met Laver and hit with him. The family joined the Jack Kramer Club. Robert Lansdorp taught him a forehand that drove through the ball instead of rolling it. Dr. Peter Fischer, a pediatrician and a tennis obsessive, converted the two-handed backhand to one hand on purpose: the lawn, he said, would want the slice and the reach. The boy stayed right-handed. He was not a show. He was a serve that kept getting heavier.

He turned professional in 1988, at sixteen, and finished the year ranked ninety-seventh after starting it in the eight-hundreds. His first tour match was a loss in Philadelphia. He took lumps for two years, the way a serve-and-volley kid takes lumps on hard courts that do not forgive a short chip. In 1989 he beat Mats Wilander, the defending champion, in the second round of the U.S. Open and lost in the fourth. He was not yet a climate. He was a California junior with a one-hander and a physician in the box.

The door was September 1990, Flushing Meadows. He was nineteen years and twenty-eight days old. He beat Thomas Muster in the fourth round. He beat Ivan Lendl in five sets in the quarterfinal and broke Lendl’s streak of eight straight U.S. Open finals. He beat John McEnroe in four in the semifinal. He beat Andre Agassi in the final in straight sets. He was the youngest male U.S. Open champion. The serve was already a climate. The face was already bored, or so the cameras decided. He was not bored. He was a kid who had just taken a major and did not see why he owed the press a dance. He won the Grand Slam Cup before the year was out and finished ranked fifth. The first title, in February in Philadelphia, had already come against Agassi in the early rounds and Andrés Gómez in the final. New York made the title a civic object.

The years just after the first major were an education. In 1991, as defending champion, he lost in the U.S. Open quarterfinals to Jim Courier and said he was relieved the pressure was off. Courier and Jimmy Connors did not let him forget the sentence. He won the year-end Masters Cup anyway — the first of five. In 1992 he reached the French Open quarterfinals and a Wimbledon semifinal. He lost the U.S. Open final to Stefan Edberg and called the loss a wake-up call. He played doubles with McEnroe on the United States Davis Cup team that beat Switzerland at home. He played the Barcelona Olympics on clay, his worst surface, and went out in the third round. He was already a pile of almosts. He was not yet number one.

On April 12, 1993, he reached number one for the first time, a rise the columns argued about because a major had not just arrived with it. He settled the argument on the lawn. Wimbledon 1993, over Courier in the final, was the first of the seven. The U.S. Open that September, over Cédric Pioline, was the second major of the year. He finished as the clear number one and became the first man to serve more than a thousand aces in a season. The toss, the first step, the volley that ended the conversation — that was the occupation. Commentators called it boring when they wanted a longer rally. The people who played him did not call it boring. They called it a problem with no answer.

1994 opened in Melbourne. He beat Todd Martin in the Australian Open final for the first title on that side of the world. He defended Wimbledon against Goran Ivanišević in a final the purists filed as too short and the players filed as a serve they could not live with. He arrived in Paris trying to hold four majors at once, the Laver weather. Courier beat him in the quarterfinals on clay that neutralized the toss. At the U.S. Open, tired, he lost in the fourth round to Jaime Yzaga in five. The year still ended at number one. 1995 was the year the rivalry with Agassi became a civic object. They split Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. Sampras won Wimbledon over Boris Becker — twenty-three aces, no break point faced — and the U.S. Open over Agassi in four, twenty-four aces. Becker, who had owned Centre Court in another decade, said the court now belonged to Sampras. He was not wrong.

The 1995 Australian Open is the fortnight the serve could not cover. His coach, Tim Gullikson, collapsed during the tournament and went home. The diagnosis was brain cancer. In the quarterfinal against Courier a spectator shouted at Sampras to win it for Gullikson. He wept on court and still won the match. He lost the final to Agassi. Paul Annacone took the box. Gullikson died in May 1996. The quiet man had a grief the toss could not end. That same year he reached the French Open semifinals, the closest the red dirt came to letting him in, and lost to Yevgeny Kafelnikov. He did not win Paris. He did not build a personality around the gap. At the 1996 U.S. Open he vomited on court against Chang in the quarterfinals, finished the match, and then beat Chang in the final. The body had already begun to argue. The pile kept growing.

Wimbledon 1997, over Pioline. The Australian Open that January, over Carlos Moyá. Wimbledon 1998, over Ivanišević again. Wimbledon 1999, over Agassi in a final that is still a Sunday tape — a serve-and-volley master class against the best returner of the era, a match people who do not like tennis can still watch. Wimbledon 2000, over Patrick Rafter, when the back was already a file and he served his way through a fifth set the country treated as a last hymn. That title was his thirteenth major, past Roy Emerson’s twelve. Seven titles on the lawn, seven-for-seven in Wimbledon finals. A modern mountain. He spent 286 weeks at number one, a record until Roger Federer passed it. He finished year-end number one six straight seasons, 1993 through 1998. He won five Tour Finals. He won Davis Cup again in 1995, in Moscow, three live rubbers, and after the first night against Andrei Chesnokov he had to be helped to the locker room. He was undefeated in Davis Cup singles that year.

He married Bridgette Wilson, the actress, on September 30, 2000. Two sons, Christian and Ryan, born in 2002 and 2005. The household was not a tabloid. He preferred it that way. The years after the thirteenth major were a dip the columns treated as an ending. He did not win a title in 2001. He arrived at the 2002 U.S. Open as a fading champion in the public mind, seeded seventeenth. He beat Agassi in the final in four sets. He did not play another tour match. He announced the retirement on August 25, 2003, at the U.S. Open, on the same ground as the first major, at a press conference that did not perform a farewell season. He was thirty-one. He said he had nothing left to prove to himself. He meant it.

I let my racket do the talking. That's what I am all about, really.Pete Sampras

The turn is that last New York night, and the refusal to become a farewell tour. A lot of champions hang on for the paycheck and the ceremony. He took the last major and went home. The exhibition circuit saw him. The competitive hunger that had made fourteen majors did not make a second career of almosts. He has said he was done. The record book, which Federer and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic rewrote, does not unwrite the seven Wimbledons. Sixty-four tour titles. A 762–222 singles record. Fourteen of eighteen major finals won. The serve is the remainder the math cannot move.

Bridgette and the boys have had a husband and father who is a Wimbledon climate and a man at a school pickup. Friends from the locker room describe a professional who was first in the gym and last to offer a quote. Agassi was the other American weather: Las Vegas, the hair, the reconstruction. Their rivalry is a civic object that is also a friendship the cameras did not always understand. Sampras won more of the big ones. Agassi won the public’s idea of a journey. A complete file holds both. The Sampras on an exhibition court in his forties was a man who had already been a pile and was now a neighbor with a serve. Both are the life.

The later years

Home is Lake Sherwood, in the hills of Ventura County, a California address that is not a press tour. He and Bridgette raised the boys out of the public eye on purpose. He did not become a coach of a stable of teenagers. He did not become a weekly booth. He appeared when the lawn asked him to appear. He played World Team Tennis. He played exhibitions with Agassi that were also a friendship on a payroll. He played Federer in a string of nights that were a passing of the record and a paycheck at once. He wrote A Champion’s Mind in 2008 with Peter Bodo, a book that is more locker room than confession. He has spoken, carefully, about depression after retirement — a champion’s weather the serve had covered. He did not make a memoir industry of it. He went home to the school run and the quiet.

In 2007, in his first year of eligibility, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport. The speech was a professional’s speech: coaches, family, the lawn, the debt to Gullikson. He did not use the occasion to reopen a career. He used it to close a file. He has gone back to Flushing and to Centre Court for ceremonies the tournaments required. He has hit with his sons. He has said, in interviews that are rarer than the columns would like, that the passion left when the last major arrived. He spent six months after New York trying to decide what was next. What was next was not another season.

Federer passed fourteen. Then Nadal. Then Djokovic made fourteen look like a first act. Sampras has been, in those interviews, a grown man about the math. He knows what he did on grass. He knows the era he did it in — a serve-and-volley decade the 2020s baseline machine has almost retired. He does not pretend his game would be the same game now. That honesty is a form of respect for the men who rewrote him. He is in his fifties. The toss is still a civic memory every last week of June. He does not owe Wimbledon another final. He already left one on the table in New York and walked away.

The household is still the job he chose. Christian and Ryan grew up with a father who had already been the pile and was available at dinner. Bridgette, who had been a working actress, retired into the same decision. Lake Sherwood is not a shrine. It is a suburb with a serve in it. He plays golf. He shows up for the occasional charity night. He has not tried to become a brand that explains the 1990s to people who were not there. The work was the toss. The rest is a man who meant the silence.

After the spotlight moved

It moved to Federer’s Sunday and then to Nadal’s clay and then to Djokovic’s pile. The 1990s American rivalry still plays on documentary television. Kids who never saw a serve-and-volley point still use his name when they mean Wimbledon. Palos Verdes still claims the boy. Flushing still claims the first major and the last. Newport has the plaque. Centre Court has the memory of seven finals and no losses. Paris has a gap he never tried to turn into a personality.

The record book is now a different book. Fourteen is no longer the men’s summit. Seven Wimbledons is still a mountain. Five U.S. Opens in the Open era remains a shared mark. Six straight year-end number ones remains a clerk’s miracle. The serve-and-volley afternoon he made into a method is almost an antique. That is not a failure. That is what a method does when the next generation changes the geometry. He left before the geometry finished changing. He has not asked to be talked back onto the court.

He came out of a Greek house, took New York at nineteen, took the lawn seven times, cried for a coach, beat Agassi one last night, and went home. If you only remember the toss, you have the still. If you remember 1990, Gullikson, the missing French, Lake Sherwood, and the 2002 silence, you have him.

Portrait: Craig ONeal · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

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