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Notes on a Draw Sheet
Pete can't face his own feelings
Mauresmo chinks Serena's armor
Argentina rules (sort of)
By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net
Pete Sampras seeming never-ending soap opera continued this week, with the 14-time Slam champion pulling out of Roland Garros, Queens and Wimbledon and saying he has essentially hung up his Nikes, although he won't completely make up his mind until the end of the year.
"More like maybe 95 percent retired," he told the LA Times' Bill Dwyre. "[By the end of the year] it'll all be more clear to me."
Sampras' indecision has become a bit of charade and shows a real lack of self-awareness, something we have rarely seen from the seven-time Wimbledon champ. In 2001 and much of last year – when he embarked on his coaching merry-go-around and somewhat embarrassed Paul Annacone, Tom Gullikson and Jose Higueras – you could tell that he wasn't comfortable being a new husband and man in his early 30s.
He still had rid himself of being the carefree boy in his 20s, but he solved that puzzle last summer when he rehired Annacone and learned to trust his oncourt instincts again.
Now, Sampras is dealing with being a new parent and although he told the London Times' Neil Harmon that the responsibilities of being a family man have nothing to do with his indecisiveness, those of us who have been down the road of having to place one's son or daughter in a secondary role in order to get some work done know that he's just kidding himself.
"I have a wonderful family, but I want you to make it absolutely clear, to let people know that this decision has nothing to do with me being a father," he told Harmon. "It's about me as an athlete. If I had a goal that I wanted to achieve, the family would come to London. And I am my own boss. Of course, those who are close to me have had their opinions, but this is my choice. I'm just not driven right now.
HARD TO SAY NO TO BIG W
"This is hard to admit but it's true, I'm owning up to it. Wimbledon is the one place where I really get emotional, so you can imagine that this has been a very, very hard decision. I've wrestled with it for months and months. I just didn't want to put the work in on the practice court that was required. I'd go out there for a couple of days, but on the third I didn't have it in me.
"For me, tennis has been about victories, records, numbers. My six years in a row as No. 1 was agonizing, but I made myself do it. There aren't that many challenges left. I'm very content with the feeling that I can let Wimbledon go. I don't know if I'll watch it. I'll probably be anxious to see some results. I'll miss it when I'm 32, 42 or 52, but I have to remind myself what I've achieved, where I've been at. That's life."
So why not just retire now if he's let it all go? Because he hasn't, that's why. "The last couple of years took a lot out of me," Sampras said. "I had climbed the mountain and knew what it took to get there. There's a chance I'll play next year but my heart's not in it right now. But I'm just not ready to retire now. The day will come and the day is near."
That day may come soon, because it appears that Sampras is enjoying his Beverly Hills lifestyle with his wife, Bridgette and son, Christian. Maybe one day when he is taking stroll on the beaches of Malibu with his family he'll realize that he doesn't want to go to UCLA and play 100 practice sets with Justin Gimelstob and Taylor Dent to get ready for Australia next year. Or maybe he'll tire of getting sand in his shoes and give the tour once last crack at age 32. You have to believe he still thinks he can win given what Agassi is doing at a later age. But the question is, will he ever care about winning again?
"I'm not into farewell tours and saying goodbyes," he told Harmon. "I've got to be out there to win, doing whatever it takes to be what I want to be. I would be doing myself a disservice going out there and I don't want to do that to myself. You need to be on top of your plan, on top of your emotions, have a purpose. I've just felt like it's not there. … I don't want to close the door 100 percent. There might be a possibility I could play next year, I don't know that yet. … It's very difficult for me to have to own up to my own feelings."
Mauresmo chinks Serena's armor
It was easy to take Serena Williams' loss to Justine-Hardenne in the Charleston final last month with a grain of salt, but we needed to pour the entire shaker down our gullets after she fell 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 to Amelie Mauresmo in the Rome semis. That's not because we don't think that Mauresmo is a standout, elite player, which she is, but because Serena appeared to choke a little and we haven't seen that from the five-time Slam champ since 2001.
In the ninth game of the second set, Serena broke to take a 5-4 lead and had a chance to serve out the match, but she collapsed. In the third set, Mauresmo twice fought back from a break down. While serving doesn't matter much on clay, it's still rare to see Serena – who Lindsay Davenport recently called the best server in women's history – be broken multiple times, let along fail to close.
"I don't think there was one single thing in particular she did (to put me under pressure)," Serena said. "Every time I lose I think it's because of things I didn't do. If I'd have kept playing like I did in the first set, I would have won the match. I made far too many errors, especially on the serve. … It's always disappointing to lose, but it's better to lose here than in Paris (at the French Open). It's not the end of the world."
True, but what positives can Serena take out of the match? Zero and none. Back in March after she romped to the title in Miami, she looked invincible. Now the other players are finally seeing chinks in her armor.
Mauresmo will play No. 2 Kim Clijsters, who had a an impressive a 6-3 6-2 win over her doubles partner, Ai Sugiyama. Dare we says that Clijsters needs to the Rome title more than Mauresmo? We'll take that risk, because Kim hasn't won a tournament since early March.
Argentina rules (sort of)
Guillermo Cañas
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| Susan Mullane/Camerawork USA, Inc. |
How impressed should the world be by Argentina dominating Hamburg? Very, but not head over heels impressed. A number of the top guys were exhausted from Rome, especially Felix Mantilla and Roger Federer, who lost early. As Federer will tell you, winning Hamburg doesn't guarantee a great result at Roland Garros.
But what truly impresses us is not that four Argentines reached the semis, but that one of them wasn't Guillermo Cañas, who was their best player until he was injured last year. So a shout out goes to Guillermo Coria, Agustin Calleri, Gaston Gaudio and David Nalbandian for stepping up in a big way. On Saturday, Coria outlasted the more stylish Gaudio 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-0 and the broad-shouldered Calleri trounced Nalbandian 6-4, 6-1.
Sunday's winner will become the second player from Argentina to earn a Tennis Masters Series. (Cañas won Toronto last year).
"I think for the country this is just something very, very big, to have four players in the semifinal of such a major event, because it never happened in the past," Calleri said. "It's more like a coincidence of all the sacrifices that each one of us is doing. Not only the four of us, but also Mariano Zabaleta. It's our own sacrifice to make it to the top, because we never really got much help from the Argentinean Tennis Federation. There is not really a junior tennis scheme in Argentina. The only two players that got some help in the past were Coria and Nalbandian, that was it. I think that Gabriela Sabatini is trying to put something together to help juniors back home, which I think is great. But, there is nothing like that. I really don't know any Argentinean junior players coming through right now."
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