Sampras Answers the Call Again : Australian Open: Sampras overcomes distractions and fatigue to defeat Chang and advance to final.

A phone rang as Pete Sampras, all smiles now, spoke of his aching muscles, his creaking joints and the special quality of his gutsy run to the Australian Open final.

“It’s the president!” Sampras joked. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

For the first night in a grim week, a torturous time when his coach and friend Tim Gullikson has been undergoing brain exams for a grave illness, Sampras finally felt free to laugh.

Perhaps President Clinton will call Sampras if he wins this Grand Slam tournament on Sunday, and if he does it will be a call well deserved. Few athletes have performed at this level while going through such physical and emotional strain.

Sampras, the defending champion, walked gingerly, his body hurting everywhere, after coming off two straight five-set matches to beat indefatigable Michael Chang, 6-7 (8-6), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 in just over three hours Thursday evening.

Sampras, who plays the winner of Friday’s Andre Agassi-Aaron Krickstein match, said that reaching the final means more to him than the other five Grand Slam titles he’s won.

“This is the most special to me because of the circumstances and the fact that I was down and out against (Magnus) Larsson, and down and out against (Jim) Courier,” said Sampras, who lost the first two sets of both matches and was down 2-4 in the fourth against Courier. “I really fought back and showed more heart this week than I probably ever have, just refusing to go down without a fight.

“That’s really important to me. I think I’ve shown a lot of people that I might look kind of lackadaisical, but deep down inside I’m doing whatever I can to try to win.”

In the tears he shed over Gullikson during the Courier match, Sampras also revealed the emotional side of his nature that he had always sought to conceal. He had presented a stoic veneer on court, giving away nothing to his opponents or the crowd. But with the 43-year-old Gullikson hospitalized in Chicago after a dizzy spell that followed diagnoses of two strokes and a congenital heart condition, Sampras could hide his feelings no longer.

“I think people understand that I’m normal, I have feelings like everyone else, and that I’m not a robot out there, that I play the way I play, and the way I carry myself is just the way I am,” Sampras said. “I’m as normal as the guy across the street. I think that’s what people have to realize when they see tennis players. We’re not above everyone else. We do the same things everyone else does. It was a very tough thing to go through.”

Sampras said he’s been chatting daily with Gullikson and talking about strategy with him.

“He’s in good spirits,” Sampras said. “It’s nice that he’s home and with his family. He’s recovering and he’s doing good.”

Gullikson was still flying home from Australia when Sampras dueled Courier for four hours, but after hearing what happened, he said “it was a helluva win, and to win that match under the circumstances was an extraordinary effort.”

There were moments during the match against Chang when the enervated Sampras could barely move. Instead of running after everything, he picked his spots. Chang, meanwhile, chased every ball and seemed like one of those pesty Australian blowflies, always in Sampras’ face and refusing to go away.

“I was pretty tapped in the last couple of days,” Sampras said. “The match against Jim was very tough on the body. I think the point where I really started to feel it was in the middle, kind of in the beginning parts of the fourth, when the body is sore and I was just tired. That’s the time when you just have to play the points that you really have to win. If it’s 40-love, it doesn’t make sense wasting energy. The long match just takes its toll.”

Chang showed off the power he’s been developing, serving 20 aces at up to 120 mph. Sampras’ speed was up there, too, with a respectable 13 aces, but it was his solid play in long rallies and relentless attack at the net that won it for him after he took seven straight games from the second set to the middle of the third.

“I just hung in there like I did in my previous couple of matches,” Sampras said. “I knew if I kept on Michael from the backcourt, I could wear him down. And I did wear him down a little bit, but I myself was getting pretty worn out in the fourth. Fortunately, I have two days off now, because my body’s a little banged up.”

For Chang, the disappointment of losing was softened by the success he had in getting to his first Grand Slam semifinal since 1992.

Said Chang: “I realize that I’m getting closer and closer, and I think that if I just continue to keep my head focused and continue to work on everything and constantly improve I’ll have more and more opportunities. Hopefully, I’ll be able to capitalize on quite a few of those.”