PETE Sampras has his 13 Grand Slam singles titles -more than any man has ever accomplished and maybe ever will. He has his seven Wimbledons and four U.S. Opens. What Sampras doesn’t have is his place as the undisputed ‘best-ever’ – an honor he thought he might earn when he won Wimbledon in July to break Roy Emerson’s Slam record.
“I have no problem saying that he’s the best grasscourt player who’s ever lived,” CBS’ Mary Carillo said.
That’s as far as she’ll go, as far as many will go, even his buddy and rival Andre Agassi, who realizes that Sampras not winning the French Open is a blotch on the resume that can’t be dismissed.
Agassi gives a long pause when asked by The Post if Sampras is the best-ever, agonizing over the answer. “It’s hard to argue in any sport who the greatest of all time is, let alone one that is so subjective to me,” Agassi told The Post yesterday. “I feel I can step on the court and beat Pete. And I think you’re going to find any champion from any era feeling the same way. But Pete has earned the respect of all his peers, especially me. And 13 Slams is a stat you can’t argue with.”
Or can you? “I would name Rod Laver,” tennis war-horse Tony Trabert said. “There’s Jack Kramer. But Pete’s certainly in the Top 5.”
Top 5? Sampras doesn’t play against members of the ATP tour anymore. He’s now playing against ghosts and tennis legends and his place in history. And that is why Sampras soldiers on, so that when he retires, nobody mentions Laver’s name in the same breath as his.
“He’s competing against legends, Laver, Emerson,” Carillo said. “He’s not competing against the Tim Henmans. He doesn’t say I really want to beat Greg Rusedski. He’s playing for history. He’s not playing for the prize money. He’s playing against Laver.”
“I’ve always said Laver was the best because he would’ve won a lot more Grand Slams,” tennis great Stan Smith said about Laver being banned from competing in Slams for six years after turning pro. Professionals were not eligible. “Record-wise, Laver is there. But Sampras isn’t finished yet. He could wind up No. 1.”
Maybe if he wins the U.S. Open that begins tomorrow, adds a couple more Wimbledons and another Australian before retiring, that ‘best-ever’ distinction will come his way. But not yet, not now. Not without the French.
Tennis is a game of survival and versatility and making adjustments to conquer the three different surfaces. And until he conquers the red clay, Sampras will never achieve the ultimate tribute.
Not only hasn’t Sampras won the French, he hasn’t come close – one semifinal berth in 1996, losing to Yevgeny Kafelnikov. “And by that time, he could hardly walk,” Trabert said. “It was pitiful.”
In some respects, tennis insiders view Sampras as a one-dimensional serve-and-volley robot without enough grit, fortitude, fitness or creativity to be labeled the all-time greatest. That’s evidenced by everyone interviewed for this story saying they doubted Sampras could ever get fit enough to win the bloody baseline wars of Roland Garros.
“He’ll never win it,” Trabert said. “I don’t think Pete has worked hard off the court as he could have. He won so many cheap points off his serve it helps him physically. That’s why he’s gotten away all these years without being totally physically fit.”
In Sampras’ defense, he revealed in a tennis publication this month he is suffering from a low-iron blood condition called thalassemia that afflicts people of Mediterranean descent and is the reason for his hangdog look on the court, especially in the sweltering heat of Flushing.
Still, Sampras is a junk-food addict who eats donuts for breakfast. Trabert recalls doing the trophy presentation in April following Sampras’ victory in Miami at the Ericsson Open. “He asked me if I could hurry it up because he had to throw up,” Trabert said. Not that he hasn’t done that before in Flushing.
Agassi takes immense pride in being one of just five players to ever win each of the four Grand Slam events – Laver, Don Budge, Fred Perry, Emerson are the others. Sampras won’t make the list.
“It requires different abilities to win on different surfaces,” Agassi said. “It requires a spectrum of ability. It’s still incredible to win 13 Slams. But I can tell you one thing for sure, I would not trade winning all four for any amount.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen for me,” Agassi added of winning the French. “So I don’t think the chances are in his favor. There’s just too many people that are specialists on their surfaces, especially clay.”
As Carillo says, “numbers can lie.” Although Sampras has 13 Grand Slams victories, Laver won 11 and was banned six years. Laver, too, won the ‘Grand Slam’ twice – all four events in the same year, twice winning the French. One argument in Sampras’ favor regarding numbers is three of the four Slams in the old era were played on grass. “Pete might have 20 Slams by now,” Carillo said.
So forget the numbers. Let’s talk about game and that’s where Sampras falls short. He’s viewed as not versatile enough to be considered the best to ever grace the tennis courts. Sampras’ groundstrokes are very average, no better than that of the top 50 players on the tour. That and his lack of fitness explains his French flameouts and his failure to win the Open since 1996.
Yesterday, Sampras took the court for Ashe Day festivities with an old Jack Kramer wooden racket. If he had played in the wood era, would he have become as great a champion without a high-tech racket that’s made his serve unreturnable.
“It’s frustrating for me to see him on clay,” Carillo said. “All of a sudden he forgets how to win. He doesn’t prepare himself properly to win a two-week clay-court event. His serve comes back to him on clay and it rattles him and he doesn’t know whether to attack or defend and all of a sudden he seems to lose his court intelligence and looks confused and the wily Spanish guys spit him out.
“It’s the thing that mars everything for him in the records books and he probably won’t win the French,” Carillo added. “Emerson and Laver figured out a way to beat the dirt. All the Aussies just kept coming in. They had to hand them a cake of soap and spent five hours to scrub the dirt from their shoes. I never got the sense Pete would be willing to put in that much to win the French. He’s resigned himself to that being the one jewel missing from his crown.”
Paul Annacone, Sampras’ coach, disagrees that he’s given up winning the French. “Ultimately that would be the exclamation point of his career,” Annacone said. “Appreciate what he’s done. If you get thrown into the conversation, just being mentioned, it’s nice. Ultimately, that’s what drives him, to win major events. Ultimately he wants to do it. But he relishes what he has achieved.”
