No Comebacks?

It was a small gesture, a brief, passing moment, but it captured beautifullythe doubt, introspection and desperation that once reigned in Pete Sampras’shead.

During a changeover of his second round match at Wimbledon 2002 againstGeorge Bastl, a virtual nobody from Switzerland, Sampras, along with towellinghimself dry and gulping down water, took out a piece of paper from his kit bagand immersed himself in it. It was a note from wife, Bridgette. It’s not knownwhat she wrote, but the career slump that Sampras found himself in then, itmight well have, as another tennis writer put it so eloquently, gone somethinglike this: "My dear husband, seven times Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras…"A honest, gentle, loving reminder of what he meant to her as a person and who hewas as a player.

By his own admission, Sampras had never previously read anything on a tenniscourt. Perhaps because he had never needed to. Since serving notice to thetennis world in 1990, his career graph had soared, and kept soaring, with hardlyany interludes that would lead to knives being drawn or obituaries beingwritten. Till then, that is.

Going into Wimbledon 2002, the cloak of invincibility that Sampras had wornthrough the nineties, as comfortably as his Nike whites, was gone. It had beentwo years and 33 tournaments since he had won a title, and Wimbledon was hisbest shot to set the record straight.

But here he was, staring at defeat, in the very place he had come to own likeno other man. He sat, slumped in his chair, a faraway look on his face. Hiscareer was on the rocks, his legacy in the danger of being tarnished and thecriticism reaching a point where his marriage was being blamed for hisindifferent performance on court. Sampras lost the match 6-4 in the fifth, butleft Wimbledon insisting to retirement-baiters that "I have another Slam inme" and that "I plan on being back".

He got it right -- well, almost. A month later, Sampras won the US Open,beating arch-rival Andre Agassi, and rushed to the stands to embrace avery-pregnant Bridgette. Basking in the mellowness of an unlikely victory andimpending parenthood, he contemplated giving into the temptation of going out onthis high note.

Eventually, he decided to play on, but didn’t specify a schedule. Duringthe winter, he and Bridgette became parents, and he has probably become as adeptat changing nappies as hitting running forehands. But, he hasn’t come back tothe Tour yet, routinely pulling out of tournaments, with the latest being fromthe French Open and Wimbledon.

It might well be the end of the road for Sampras.

It is one thing for Sampras to skip the Australian and the clay court legs;it’s quite another for him to say pass to Wimbledon, specially given thedisappointing circumstances of last year. See, for Sampras, Wimbledon wasn’tjust another annual stopover on the tennis calendar. Grass was the perfect allyfor his natural serve-and-volley game, the hallowed centre court of theAll-England Club his backyard, and Wimbledon the perfect follow-up to make upfor the annual disappointment of Paris (the only Slam missing from his dossier).

During the nineties, a legion of male tennis players found out, much to theirdismay, that if there was a Sampras pencilled in the Wimbledon draw, they hadtwo options: eye the runners-up salver or book an early flight home. Sampras wasvirtually unbeatable through the decade, winning seven titles in eight years. Itwas on the grass of the All-England Club that he would demonstrate best what hewas capable off, giving master-classes in the dying art of serve-and-volleytennis. Last year’s ignominious exit meant Sampras had unfinished business,and the urge to find redemption might just draw him back.

But things changed after the title win at New York. Sampras made peace withhimself on the mediocre phase of his career that culminated at Wimbledon 2002.The need to ‘prove’ himself isn’t as crying as it would have been had henot won the US Open. And that’s why his withdrawal from Wimbledon might wellsignal the end to a remarkable career.

A total of 14 singles Grand Slam titles, the most by any male tennis player;number one finishes for six consecutive years; 64 tournament wins; an impressivewin-loss record of 762-222; member of two winning Davis Cup teams, though henever quite showed the respect or the enthusiasm for this prestigious teamtourney; $43 million in earnings, and this doesn’t include endorsements.Barring the French, he’s won everything there is to be won by a tennis player.Regardless, he can look back upon his playing days with great pride and walkaway without regrets.

Sampras, though, is still non-committal about calling it a day, leavinghimself a small window of possibility, just in case the competitive itch startsto scratch again. Many had thought that the prospect of one last waltz on theWimbledon grass would draw Sampras from his self-imposed exile. It was aromantic notion, a real-life story-book ending in cynical times, for a deservingtennis player.

It’s a feel-good picture. The greatest tennis player to have played thegame, making his final appearance on the courts where he established hisdominance, with a chance to achieve closure on an unhappy chapter of his careerand sign off the way he waltzed in -- in a blaze of glory.

Sure, he would be rusty, coming of a lengthy lay-off. But still, given hisexplosive serve-and-volley game, the significance of the occasion and theever-diminishing number of pure grass-court players, it would take a braveperson to not give Sampras a fair shot at Wimbledon.

Ironically, much as Sampras has needed Wimbledon to define him as a tennisplayer, Wimbledon also needs Sampras -- perhaps, more than ever before. Sampras,with his preference for Rod Laver as idol, clean-cut white clothing andgentlemanly conduct, was a throwback to a more genteel era in tennis. Similarly,Wimbledon is probably the last surviving bastion on the Tour, the one major thathasn’t been kicked around and deformed by rampant commercial interests.

Wimbledon continues to cling to age-old traditions -- not with the airs of astiff British upper lip, but with charm and grace and purpose. The symbols ofthis deference for continuity are many and diverse: white clothing, greenexteriors that haven’t been defaced by corporate billboards, a passage fromRudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ inscribed on the walls leading on to thecentre court, the one-day gap between the semi-finals and the finals… Andwhile the powers-to-be at the All-England Club can maintain this status quo,with their overflowing coffers, they are pretty much powerless to counter theother, more significant threat lurking that could diminish the tournament’senduring uniqueness on the tennis calendar.

It is the reluctance of players to follow their serve to the net and instead,as they do on other playing surfaces, grind it out from the backcourt -- thevery anti-thesis of grass court tennis. If this trend continues, and there’severy reason to believe that it will, one of the novelties of Wimbledon -- ofshowcasing a style of tennis that isn’t favoured by most players on othersurfaces -- will surely erode. And that’s where Sampras, as one of the lastpractitioners of grass-court tennis, is important. The prospect of seeing Hewittand Nalbandian, or two of their countless clones, gingerly hit ground-strokesfrom the baseline on the second Sunday is pretty uninspiring.

Sampras hasn’t yet closed the door on his career, though a comeback now iswishful thinking. According to Paul Annacone, his coach, Sampras is in goodphysical shape, though he’s not tennis sharp. After practising regularly tillMarch, Sampras has slacked up, and has been hitting once a week, just to keep itgoing. Annacone reckons Sampras needs around two months of consistent effortleading into Wimbledon to stand a chance. A year down the line, the duration ofthat lead-up effort might well stretch further.

McEnroe, Borg and Becker, before him, all took sabbaticals from tennis afterscaling the peak, but none won majors in their comeback. So, there’s arechallenge for Sampras -- to win a major after a lay-off, to win again atWimbledon.

Sampras first came to Wimbledon as a 18-year old in 1989, and this is thefirst year since then that he won’t be there. Maybe, just maybe, sitting inthe cool confines of his Beverly Hills home, watching centre court on TV mightstir up nostalgia, make him shadow-swing some aces in his living room and longfor that competitive intensity. Maybe, another year of potting around watchingLakers games and handling his business interests might reinvigorate him for onelast shot at the big time.

And, if none of that works, maybe Bridgette can scrawl some more words forhim, to be read at Wimbledon 2004, moments before he walks up to greet the Dukeand Duchess of Kent.