Sampras’ Ability Is What Sets Him Apart

The trouble with Pete Sampras is, you can’t tell by looking at him whether he’s winning, 6-0, 6-0, or struggling with his backhand and losing two sets to love.

He has the same bemused stoical expression on his face. He looks as if he really doesn’t care much one way or the other. In the U.S. Open last year, he was beset by stomach cramps, but no one knew because he didn’t look appreciably different from when he felt fine.

You have no idea how much this annoys the British tabloids. They have come to rely on American Wimbledon champions to be tantrum-throwing, racket-throwing, self-indulgent semi-sociopaths who misbehave on court and have the most juicy off-court relationships a keyhole reporter could wish for. The Brits love Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors. They wish Sampras would either go out in the round of 16--or get tangled up with some reigning TV or movie queen or insult the British Queen. They want a soap opera, not a sport.

All Sampras is, is the best tennis player in the world. He just doesn’t act like it. On court, waiting for a serve, he frequently hangs his head like a guy who is a suspect in a child murder or has just spilled soup on his hostess.

He has the dark good looks of a matinee idol. He’s as polite as a butler. He doesn’t have the Huckleberry Finn-ish appeal of a Jim Courier, but he’s as American as the hot rod and probably could have been a cleanup hitter if someone hadn’t put a racket in his hands at age 7. He plays tennis like a guy dealing blackjack. All he does is beat you.

That’s dramatic enough for most people, but the world expects tennis to be a sitcom.

Even Willie Mays’ cap would fly off when he went out to rob someone of a three-base-hit--Willie used to wear them purposely one size off, so they would. Muhammad Ali used to narrate his fights for the ringside audiences. Babe Ruth used to step out of the box and point to the bleachers.

Pete Sampras just slams an ace by you. And looks apologetic.

It’s a heady feeling being No. 1 in anything. To be to your sport what Michael Jordan is to his, what John L. Sullivan was . . . Louis, Hogan, Nicklaus. Sampras has a chance to be to his sport what Tilden, Budge, Kramer, Perry and Laver were.

It’s a responsibility as well as an honor. Sampras wears it well.

He’s what the public likes--the home run hitter, fastball pitcher, KO puncher, long-drive artist. He’s got the equalizer--the 140-m.p.h. serve. He’s got the dunk shot. Sampras is not boring. Unless you consider a guy with a machine gun boring. Sampras plays tennis the way Dempsey fought--or Ted Williams hit. He blasts you out of there. No opponent ever considered him boring. Stefan Edberg maybe; he kind of surrounds you. But not Sampras; he terminates you.

It isn’t as if he’s just a poker-faced bomber. Sampras has all phases of the game--drop shots at the net, blistering backhands and, very occasionally, the lob, although that’s not much needed with his firepower.

It’s kind of unfair. It’s like giving a lion another tooth, a bear another claw. On the nights when the serve isn’t working--and it’s like a fastball in pitching, he says, because there are times when he can’t keep it in the strike zone--he can fall back on a variety of shots even Edberg might envy.

Now that he’s about to take his place on a pedestal of the game, shouldn’t he want to spice up the act--show up at Wimbledon with a bimbo on each arm, bottle of champagne in his Lamborghini and his picture in the supermarket gossip sheets? How abut getting “colorful,” i.e., smashing rackets, kicking cameras, cursing umpires, calling the All-England Championship “the pits”?

Pete Sampras laughs. “That’s not what I’m all about,” he tells you. “I’m not the flamboyant type. I’m not out there to overshadow the tennis. I go out to win tennis matches. And I hope people enjoy watching that.”

If not, presumably, they can watch “Falcon Crest.”

Sampras learned that racket-throwing was bad form from an irreproachable source, his father. “He told me if I was going to get into that, I better get out of tennis,” he recalls. “Also, he told me he didn’t want me to embarrass my mother.”

Sampras hits every ball as if it owed him money. His serve-and-volley game is merciless when it’s on. He dispatched a mystery opponent, Andrew Sznajder, who is only 155 slots below him in the world rankings, Tuesday night at the Volvo/Los Angeles tennis tournament at UCLA in just over one hour, 6-1, 6-2.

Sznajder, a likable sort, groaned, held his head in his hands and rolled his eyes skyward as eight aces and countless forehands down the line roared past him like express mail. Sampras just looked like a guy waiting for a bus. On some of his aces and winners, Sampras didn’t even bother following them in to the net, just started walking to the ad court as soon as he’d hit them. They should at least have given Sznajder a blindfold and a cigarette before they lined him up.

The British tabloids may not find this exciting. But any sports fan who wouldn’t find Pete Sampras exciting wouldn’t find Stan Musial at the plate with a full count or Joe Louis with his man on the ropes or John Daly off a tee exciting either. Sampras finds 40-love at set point plenty exciting. So does the guy he’s playing against. Pete Sampras at the net is as exciting as Michael Jordan at the top of the key any old day. Because the next sound you hear is going to be, “Slam dunk!”

You’re seeing No. 1 doing what he does best. That’s as exciting as it gets. In any sport.